Chapter 7 #2
I unfold under his hands like something finally given permission to bloom, every careful, contained piece of myself coming undone at once — not lost, not ruined, the way my father feared, but found, entirely and for the first time, exactly where I've always secretly wanted to be found.
He moves slow at first, deep and deliberate, reading every gasp and shiver like scripture he's determined to memorize, adjusting the angle of his hips, the pressure of his hands at my waist, until he finds the exact rhythm that has me arching up to meet him, breath catching, fingers digging into the muscled plane of his shoulders.
There's a moment, somewhere in the slow unhurried middle of it, where he stops entirely, forehead pressed to mine, breathing hard, hips still, just to say, "You're allowed to tell me to slow down. Or stop. Or anything at all. I need you to know that."
"I know."
"I need you to actually know it. Not just hear it."
"Gabriel." I cup his face in both hands, steady, certain, my whole body still humming from where his is pressed against mine.
"I have never in my whole life felt safer telling someone exactly what I want.
That's what you've given me tonight. Not just this.
That." I roll my hips against his, deliberate, an answer with no words needed. "Don't stop."
He makes a low, rough sound against my throat that isn't quite words, and whatever careful restraint he's been holding onto finally, gently, gives way to something more urgent — deeper, faster, his mouth finding mine again as the rhythm between us builds, unhurried turning to something both of us are chasing now, though he never once loses the tenderness underneath it, one hand cradling the back of my head like even now, even like this, I'm something worth being careful with.
The moonlight moves slow across the ceiling as the minutes stretch and blur, his name spilling from me again and again, low and broken, and mine from him, reverent even at his most undone, until the whole small room narrows down to nothing but heat and breath and the two of us, moving together like we've been doing this — like we've been this — for years instead of hours.
When it finally happens — slow and full and overwhelming in a way no sermon on transcendence ever prepared me for — I gasp his name into the quiet, back arching, every nerve in my body lighting at once, and he follows only seconds behind, my name broken against my throat, and holds himself still above me for one trembling second afterward, both of us breathing hard, watching my face like he's committing it to memory.
"I've never felt closer to anything holy than I do right now," I tell him afterward, breathless, half-laughing at my own choice of words, and he laughs too, soft against my collarbone.
"Don't let the Reverend hear you say that."
"He'd have a fit."
"He'd have several fits. In succession."
"He'd probably reschedule the whole Sunday sermon around it. 'A Cautionary Tale, by Reverend Thomas Calloway.'"
"With visual aids."
"Don't you dare joke about visual aids."
"I'm not joking. I'm terrified. I've met the man's PowerPoint slides for the stewardship campaign. He does not mess around with visual aids."
I laugh so hard I have to bury my face in his shoulder to muffle it, shaking, and he holds me through it, clearly pleased with himself, pressing a kiss into my hair like my laughter is its own kind of reward.
"You're ridiculous," I tell him, once I've recovered.
"You love it."
"I do," I say, and the ease of admitting it — no fear behind it now, no careful hedging — settles something loose and warm in my chest. "God help me, I really do."
"See, now that's blasphemy. Bringing God into it right after the visual aids joke. Very inconsistent theology, Ruthie."
"I contain multitudes."
"You stole that from me again."
"I improved it again."
I pull him closer instead of answering, and he comes willingly, and we move together slowly through the rest of it, tender and unhurried, the whole small room filled with moonlight and quiet laughter and the particular, sacred hush of two people who've each spent their whole lives being told who they're allowed to be, finally choosing, together, who they actually are.
Afterward, I lie wrapped in his arms, moonlight pooling silver across the wings inked into his back, and I trace the feathers slowly with one finger, following each line like I'm painting it into memory.
"Who did this?" I ask. "The tattoo."
"Guy two towns over. Diesel knew him. I was twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. Wanted something permanent that wasn't a scar for once. Something I chose, instead of something that just happened to me."
"Did it hurt?"
"Less than you'd think. More than I let on at the time. I've got a reputation to maintain."
"Your reputation is currently lying face-down in a bed above a garage, letting a preacher's daughter trace his tattoos and ask him embarrassing questions. I think the reputation ship has sailed for tonight."
"Fair point." He shifts, turning enough to look at me properly, moonlight catching the line of his jaw. "You can ask me anything, you know. Tonight, or any night. I don't have a lot of things I keep locked up anymore. Not with you."
"They named you right," I murmur, finally, tracing the last feather down to where it meets his shoulder blade. "You just had to meet someone who'd tell you."
He goes very still beneath my hand.
"Ruthie."
"I mean it, Gabriel. I've watched you all month.
The way you are with the brothers, with Knox, with a stranger's bike you fixed for free because you saw a kid crying about it.
The way you walked into my father's church, hat in hand, for a woman you weren't even sure would forgive you for it.
" I press a kiss to his shoulder blade, right at the joint of the tattooed wing.
"You've been Saint this whole time. Everyone just kept calling it a joke. "
He pulls me closer, arms tightening around me like he's afraid I'll disappear if he lets go, and when he speaks his voice is thick with something I've never heard in it before.
"Nobody's ever said that and meant it," he says. "Not once. Not in thirty years."
"I mean it," I say again, quiet and certain. "Every word."
He holds me like I'm the first thing in his entire life he's actually let himself believe he gets to keep, and outside the window, the church bells have long since gone silent, the whole town asleep around us, oblivious to the fact that somewhere above a motorcycle clubhouse, a preacher's daughter and the man everyone underestimated have just quietly, completely, remade both their lives.
I fall asleep with my ear against his heartbeat, and it is, without question, the best sleep I have had in twenty-five years.
I wake once, sometime before dawn, to find him still awake beside me, one arm curled protectively around my waist, watching the ceiling like it holds some answer he's been searching for.
"You're not sleeping," I murmur, half into the pillow.
"Didn't want to miss it. Watching you sleep. Sounds strange when I say it out loud."
"It sounds strange when anyone says it out loud."
"I've got thirty years of missed sleep to make up for. Figured I'd start with the good kind, watching you instead of staring at a ceiling wondering if the next house is gonna keep me."
I turn to face him properly, tracing the line of his jaw with one finger, and he catches my hand, presses a kiss to the inside of my wrist, unhurried, like we have all the time in the world, which, for tonight at least, we do.
"You're going to be exhausted for work tomorrow," I say.
"Worth it."
"Gabriel."
"Ruthie." He pulls me closer, tucking me against his chest like I'm something worth keeping warm.
"I've spent a lot of nights in my life not sleeping because I was scared of something.
This is the first one I haven't slept because I didn't want to lose a single minute of something good. Let me have this."
I don't argue further. I let him hold me instead, watching the window slowly lighten from black to gray to the first faint promise of dawn, and somewhere around five, we both finally drift off together, tangled and unbothered by the world outside, for exactly as long as the world is willing to leave us alone.
It doesn't leave us alone for very long. But that morning, at least, belongs entirely to us.