Chapter Fourteen #2
“What’s there to talk about?” I ask nonchalantly.
I don’t want her worrying about something that is in the past. I’m here to take care of her. Not the other way around.
“What do you need from me, Tyler?”
I need you to let me take care of you.
“I need you to eat.” I hold the spoon back up.
“Seriously.” She lays her head on the couch cushion.
“Don’t make me play airplane with you,” I say, holding a spoon in the air. With that, I get a smile. Almost.
“Tyler,” she laughs again “Please.”
“Please, airplane?” And I start making fucking airplane noises.
“Absolutely not!” She hops from the couch. “This is childish!”
Yet, she’s laughing and smiling. It’s the most incredible thing. I’d do anything for that smile—even playing god damn airplane. So, I continue to chase her around, making fucking airplane noises if it means those laughs will continue to grace me with their presence.
“Tyler, no!” She laughs, running around the apartment, still wrapped in her blanket. Her feet pad the floor as she runs around the kitchen.
Here we are—just Tyler and Sunny.
She stands on one end of the small island while I stand on the other, spoon still raised.
“No,” she says with a grin full of laughter.
There it is. A full fucking smile. And I just stare, completely forgetting what I’m even doing as I watch her. Cheeks round with happiness, eyes wide with mirth, and those lips, pink and smiling and all because of me.
I did that.
What she does to me is something I can’t name.
I can only feel it. An undeniable pull between us, as if there is something deeply woven in my heart.
The way it stutters and finds a new beat to be in rhythm with hers.
The way I know the number of freckles that cover her nose.
The way there is something so real between us, despite not being able to see it.
What started as an obsession has completely morphed into something so much deeper.
And yeah, we are far beyond friends now. Even if she doesn’t know it yet.
She seizes my moment of failure, my moment of weakness, and dashes towards her room.
I never got to act this way. At all. She lets me open up that part I didn’t even know existed. The human part. The childish part. The part I thought died the day I was nine years old, laying in that hospital bed.
She jumps into her bed, heavily breathing despite the grin on her face. It’s there. I did that.
“A little out of shape there?” I tease.
She rolls her eyes. “I’m compromised.”
“Well, since you aren’t going to eat this, I’m going to go package it and put it in your fridge.” I point behind me towards her little kitchen.
After I pack everything up, I come back to the makeshift doorway of what she deems her room and lean against it, my arms crossed.
I notice a book on her nightstand and nod towards it. “Whatcha reading?”
She turns the bathroom light off and walks over to the nightstand. Her face is bare of any makeup, glowy from her skincare routine I know she just did and fuck, despite the fact her nose is still red and she’s sick, she’s so fucking perfect.
She grabs the book. “It’s called Looking for Alaska by John Green. It’s basically my Bible.” She hugs it to her chest.
“Read it to me,” I say.
She blinks. “You might not like it.”
“I like you,” I smile. “Does that count?”
She breaks my stare, trying to hide the blushing smile forming her lips. “Okay.” She sits on her bed, and I follow after, cozying myself right next to her. And fuck, my heart beats a little faster.
“What happened to the book?” I ask, noting it’s ripped up with some burn marks on it.
Her eyes move from the first page, staring at the wall ahead of us. Something in her shuts off at my question. She’s lost somewhere deep in that head of hers.
“Sunny…” Her eyes flick back to me. “What happened to the book?”
She toys with the tattered corner. “I was reading one night and he…wanted attention.”
I close my eyes, trying to steady my hands that are trembling with an anger so visceral it’s rattling my bones.
“I just told him to let me finish the page, and he got upset.” She murmurs.
“He said I loved my books more than him. That it was dumb, reading the same book over and over. That my literacy must be compromised since I can’t read anything else,” Her voice waivers.
“So, he snatched it from my hand and tried to rip it but failed, which only made him angrier.” A pause.
“I tried to stop him but he…he pushed me down back in our bed and ran out of the room and grabbed the candle that was lit on our coffee table and tried to set my book on fire. Pieces of it fell on our carpet and almost caught flame. He almost burned our apartment down,” she says with a moment of clarity.
She shakes her head. “I should have left that day.”
There’s that look again—shame, guilt. The look of had I left sooner, where would I be?
“Anyways,” She takes a deep breath looking at me with a small, weary smile.
My heart cracks open at the sight, bearing itself to her in offering to exchange for hers.
It’s broken too, but hopefully it can give her relief from her own.
That thread I feel between us rattles in the wake of the heartbreak I feel emitting from her.
That string has made one thing abundantly clear—her pain is mine, too.
“It can be easy to start melting together abuse and love. The lines between the two can become blurry.” I place one of my hands on hers.
“A starving person will eat anything. That’s what he did to you—he starved you of the things you deserved.
So, when he gave you a fraction of what you needed, you devoured it.
Clung to it in hopes of the next serving to be just as special and substantial.
” I hook a piece of hair behind her ear as those beautiful, round blue-green eyes watch me.
I’m almost certain she leans into my touch, just a little bit.
“I understand, Sunny, I do. And even if I didn’t, you don’t owe anyone an explanation to how you felt and why you stayed. What matters now is that you left.” My thumb lazily moves back and forth on the soft skin of her face. “Now, are you going to read to me?”
I listen to that soft voice for an hour.
With my hands behind my head, I watch her. She’s curled into me, gracing me with her soft vanilla and coconut scent. I want it covering my clothes, my hair, on my skin and all over my home.
Even in her sweatpants and oversized shirt, sickly and falling asleep, something inside me aches so desperately to have her closer.
It pulls at my fucking heart, persistent and needy and inching me closer and closer to doing just that.
I can’t help that every fiber in my being just wants some connection with her.
Whether it is by tracing those lines that define her stomach, or holding her hand or playing with the curls on her head.
Seeing her eyes get heavy, I motion for the book. “Let me.”
She hands it to me and inches closer, getting comfortable for sleep. Her skin simply brushes mine, and desire blooms in me again to pull her closer against my chest and read to her until her eyes close and her breathing becomes rhythmic with mine.
I’ve never wanted moments like these until I met her.
It physically fucking hurts at this point that I really can’t. I just need some contact. It scares me, because I feel things I have never experienced before. Quickly, too. So, so quickly.
When I look down and see she’s fast asleep with her head against my chest, and still curled into me, every instinct in me says to not leave.
I move closer, draping my arm along her back, cradling her to me.
I pull her just a little closer so I can be her source of warmth.
I read every single page of the book she loves so we can talk about it.
Every single word.
I want to stay like this all night, and I almost do, but tonight, I only get a few hours of this moment. Of us.
Once I finish the book, I set it down and face her as much as I can without waking her.
I move the curls that escape her bun out of her face and start tracing all the features I’ve already memorized.
From the dark eyebrows, the pert nose, and pink lips.
I love it all. I don’t fucking care if she knows or if she feels it. Maybe I want her to know.
It’s pathetic, because I already ache and miss her even though she’s right here. She’s right fucking here but she’s already running, already planning her next out. Leaving it all behind before it even gets a chance. Before we even get a chance.
As I memorize her features, the words come out before I can even stop myself, before I even realize I feel what I say.
Then, I feel it all at once.
In one single moment, my life completely changes its trajectory with four simple words.
“I love you, Sunny.”