Chapter 27 #3
She closes her eyes, like she needs a minute.
“It’s always been on the inside,” she says slowly, like she’s explaining something not just to me but to herself too.
“What was going on with my body, I mean. I had doctors tell me over and over again for years that what I was experiencing was normal, even though I knew it wasn’t because none of the women I know get cramps so excruciating they pass out or sometimes bleed so much they end up in the emergency room.
They told me periods getting worse over time is normal as you age and made me feel like I was to blame when medication didn’t work for the pain or when going on birth control didn’t help the bleeding even though I knew that couldn’t possibly be true.
But because I couldn’t see it with my eyes, I started to believe the doctors.
I thought maybe it really wasn’t all that bad, and I was just being dramatic.
Making everything up even. It’s a real mindfuck to be told over and over again for years by people who are supposed to be the helpers that the thing happening to your body isn’t actually happening the way you’re experiencing it or it isn’t that bad when you know it is. ”
Caitlin shrugs, like she’s accepting all of it, and I feel a hot rush of anger for all the years she spent alone and in pain, for all the doctors who didn’t take it seriously, and all the work she had to put in to get to this point.
I want to burn down the fucking world for her, and for all the women like her.
But especially for her. “I guess it’s just a whole other kind of mindfuck to see the incisions.
That for the first time in all these years, my outside matches my inside.
” She shakes her head, her shoulders drooping with exhaustion, and when she says, “I’m just so tired,” I know she’s not only talking about right now.
“I know, baby,” I say quietly, leaning my forehead against hers and knowing with more certainty than I’ve ever known anything that if I could take all of this from her and carry it myself, I would do it without a single second thought or an ounce of regret.
I unfold the T-shirt and pull it over her head, helping her push her arms through the sleeves before pulling the tie out of her hair and unraveling her braid, raking my fingers through the silky strands before braiding it again, just to feel the way she sighs back against me. “Let’s get you into bed.”
I help her situate herself against the pillows then grab the glass of ice water I refilled for her, holding it to her lips so she can take a couple sips.
When I go to set it back down, I feel her reach out and take my hand, winding her fingers through mine.
Turning back, I see her studying me intently.
“Will you…stay with me?” she asks tentatively, like she thinks I might say no.
She doesn’t understand there is no force on earth strong enough to make me leave her. Right now, and, I think, possibly ever.
For the first time in my life, I think I understand what it means to stay, if she’s the one I’m staying for. Only her.
“Always,” I say simply, feeling that word deeply in my soul.
I pull my shirt over my head and shove my sweatpants down, sliding into bed next to her.
Slowly, she curls herself around me, settling her head into the spot on my chest that belongs only to her, letting out a sigh that sounds like relief as her body relaxes into me.
I wind an arm around her back, holding her close to me and setting my hand low on her hip, careful to keep it away from her incisions, stroking her hair with my other hand.
“You never touch my stomach,” she says, her voice thick with sleep.
It’s a statement, not a question, but I answer it anyway. “You don’t like to be touched there.” I press a kiss to her hair, my eyes dropping closed as I breathe her in.
“How do you know?” she asks. “I never told you. I never told anyone.”
“I pay attention to you,” I murmur, trailing my lips over her forehead and watching as her eyes flutter shut. “I care about what you need. How you feel matters to me.”
Caitlin sighs, shifting closer to me, her breathing starting to even out.
“I think I might love you,” she says, her words so quiet they’re barely audible, but I hear them like she’s yelling into a megaphone, and my heart thrashes wildly in my chest even as everything inside me quiets.
Stills. Calms in a way it never has before.
She’s mostly asleep and definitely has no idea what she’s saying, but somehow that makes the words even more potent.
A window into her innermost thoughts. Ones maybe even she doesn’t know are in that beautiful, brilliant brain.
That feels like a precious gift too.
Caitlin sleeps, head on my chest and one hand splayed across my heart, and I stay awake for hours, watching over her, knowing without a single doubt there is nowhere in the world I would rather be than here.
That she might think she loves me, but I am one hundred percent certain I love her too.