Billie
He carries me up the stairs with my face against his neck and lays me on the bed the way you'd set down something you were afraid to break.
Neither of us speaks. He disappears into the bathroom and the faucet runs.
A minute later, he's back with a warm, wet towel and he cleans me in slow passes, wiping the mud and the blood and everything else off my skin.
His hands are so gentle I almost don't recognize them.
When he gets between my thighs, he pauses and looks at me with something close to pride.
"Made a mess of you."
"You're a dirty, disgusting man." I snort.
"You love it."
I do. God help me, I do.
I lie there and let him care for me. He puts the warm cloth on my welts, the scrapes on my knees, a nick above my nipple.
His bite mark.
"That's getting antibiotic ointment as soon as I'm done cleaning you up." His face has turned concerned. "Pawpaw got carried away."
He tosses the towel to the floor and lies down beside me. The bed dips under his weight and I roll into him with an exhale.
His skin is still cool from the rain. I press my face into his chest. The thump of his heartbeat slows as the rough pad of his index finger traces down my nose.
His face is flushed, his hair wrecked, sweat and rain drying on his jaw.
But his eyes. God. I could live in the way he's looking at me right now.
"There she is," he says, his thumb tracing circles on the side of my face. "There's my girl."
His girl. My entire being exhales.
"Hi," I whisper back.
He pulls me tight, chest to chest, legs tangled, his arm heavy around my waist.
"How'd you like that little bunny?" he asks into my hair.
"Ask the railing. I think I left teeth marks." His chest shakes under my cheek. "The chase was new though," I say. "How long have you been planning that?"
"Since you wrote that scene. The one with the woman running through the field." He runs his hand up and down my back. "You deleted it, but I'd already read it."
"You have my Dropbox password, Rhett. Nothing is deleted."
"True. I know it all."
I smile against his chest. This is what we are. The man who holds a knife to my throat is the same man who leaves track changes on my manuscripts with comments like "tighten this dialogue" and "this made Pawpaw hard, keep going."
The hands that pin me down are the same ones that rub my feet on the couch while I write. I trust him with my body because he earned that trust with years of other ways of showing me he loves me.
He reads the darkest things I write and doesn't flinch. Doesn't try to fix me. He just shows up and makes it real.
"The porch was a nice touch," I say. "Not in any of my drafts."
"Improvised." His chest moves up and down.
"Romantic being ass fucked by Grandpa in the rain."
"I do what I can."
The storm is winding down.
The first few months of us, I couldn't breathe under it. My father's face. The silence at a family dinner thinking when we'd have to explain that Pawpaw and Billie are together. That the age gap is thirty-two years and we don't care.
I've stopped carrying that weight. Whenever we decide to tell them, they'll either understand or they won't. The people who love us will come around.
And until then, I have this. The games, the writing, the quiet mornings after when he makes me coffee and reads my pages and tells me which scenes made him hard and which ones need a second draft.
"I'm going to write about tonight," I tell him.
"I know you are."
"The chase scene is going to be incredible."
"It better be. I got mud in places mud has no business being."
I laugh into his chest and he squeezes me tighter.
"Hey," I say, tipping my face up to look at him.
"Hey."
"I love you."
He cups my jaw in his rough hand and kisses me. When he pulls back, his thumb traces my bottom lip.
"Love you, sweetheart. More than I know how to say."
"Good thing I'm the writer, then."
He chuckles and we kiss. The rain softens to a murmur and my body hurts and feels so alive.
Rhett's breathing evens out but his long arms stay tight around me. I listen to his heartbeat and think about the ring he gave me, tucked in my nightstand drawer where no one will find it until we decide to show them.
I press closer and the storm fades and the house goes quiet around us.
I fall asleep already writing the first line of our happily ever after.