He waltzes back in, with his hands empty, and he sits back down and starts eating like nothing happened. I clear my throat, quirking my eyebrow when he looks at me.
“I found an audiobook,” he blurts out, his face flushing as he clears his throat. “I know you like listening to audio while you’re working, but I thought maybe we could listen to this one together?” he offers, hopefully, a shy smile on his face.
“Tell me what it’s about?” My question comes across as a statement, but he still goes into detail. It’s a romance because, in his words,I only like romance,which isn’t… wrong. But it’s about a crime organization, with a cop and a Mafia boss. And I think it’s sweet that he found a book that he knew would interest me, but also something he would enjoy.
“Yeah, do you want to start it tonight while we wash dishes?” I say, standing up and collecting the dirty plates.
Adam thrusts his phone into my hand, grabbing the plates from me and calling over his shoulder as he walks into the kitchen, “I already have it downloaded, you just have to hit play.” Well, okay.
I click the side button to wake his phone up, and I freeze, the phone falling from my hand onto the dining table.
I hear Adam fumbling around in the kitchen, making me hyperaware that I’m justsittinghere.
He comes back in and the freshly baked cookie smell greets my nose as he sets a plate of cookies in front of me.
“I had your mom make some dough for us that I could freeze. I thought you might like them…” He trails off when I don’t look at him or say anything. “What? What’s wrong, Hunter? Do you not want them? Don’t feel bad, we can save them for tomorrow.” His voice drops in disappointment at the end. I want to tell him it’s perfect, the fact that he thought to have my mom’s cookies here because he knows how much I love them. It’s such an Adam thing to do, to go out of his way to be kind and considerate.
His arm reaches to grab the plate, and I grasp his wrist with my hand. Trying to speak past the lump in my throat, I croak, “What’s that?” I point to his phone, and his eyebrows crease.
“What’s what?”
“On your phone.” He grabs the phone from where I dropped it, clicking the unlock button like I did.
“It’s, uhm”
“It’s me,” I say, monotoned. It's the picture of me that he took at my nineteenth birthday dinner from the arcade restaurant. The one right before we kissed in the bathroom, when my parents and Danielle were living their lives and doing whatever the hell they were doing while I was having an out-of-body experience. He kept that picture? For this long. Has it always been his lock screen, or did he just recently change it?
“Yeah, it’s you,” Adam says. “But it’s always been you. Don’t you get that, Hunter?” He breathes deeply, turning my face to look at him. His mismatched eyes shine bright with emotion. “It’s always been you. Even when I had to watch you with Thomas, and then with Trent. When you left, I had to keep upwith your life through the internet, scavenging the web for any crumb of details I could find about you. But I did it. I did it even when it felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest. I dealt with it because no matter what happens to me, I always want you to be happy.”
“Adam—” I start, not sure what to say.
“Give me a minute. I need to get this off my chest,” he says, his eyes pleading with me. I nod, sitting in my chair while he towers over me. I’m not intimidated by this position, though. If anything, I feel powerful knowing that I can bring this much out of a man who has been closed off to the world.
“I’ve kept that picture as my lock screen since that night. Even if sometimes I thought you were never going to come back to me, I still looked at that picture and felt grounded.Youground me, Hunter. You’re my anchor, holding me steady and keeping me from drifting too far. I have loved you since that day, when we kissed in the clearing, and when I sat at the dining room table with your mom and she told me stories about you growing up. It didn’t make sense to me, and it still doesn’t.”
“My love for you doesn’t make sense, because it’s this all-consuming feeling. If I go the rest of my life only loving you, that will be enough for me. You’re more than enough for me.”
He’s loved me since that day. The day when we were atmypond, and after I confronted him in the woods and he pressed his lips to mine for the first time. He’s right, it shouldn’t make sense, but that’s the thing about love. It doesn’t follow what we think it should be, it does its own thing. And that’s the beautiful thing about life, we never know what it has planned for us, but we have to trust that there’s something out there for us. And Adam is that something for me, he always has been.
“I love you, Hunter. You’re it for me. And I’m so fucking sorry it took me this long to be able to tell you that.” Two trails of crystal tears stream down his face, and I stand up, cuppinghis face in my hands, rubbing the stubble of his cheeks with my thumbs.
“Don’t. Don’t be sorry.” I press my forehead to his, inhaling a shaky breath. “I love you, too, Adam.” I keep my eyes on his, his eyelashes brushing against his cheeks when they flutter shut.
“I love you. I love you. I love you,” he repeats like a mantra, and I let the words wash over me, accepting them and accepting his love as I do. “I’ll never let you forget it.” He vows.
“I’ll never let you forget, either, because I love you just as much,” he chokes, and he buries his face into the crease of my neck while his body wracks with sobs. I soothe my hands up and down his back.
“Don’t give up on me,” he says, sniffling and pulling back.
“Never.”
No matter the problems we run into or the arguments we get into, it’ll be us against the world. Just like it should have always been.
Our emotions are running high while I drag him to the bedroom, grateful that he gave me a tour of the cabin after our shared blow job session in the living room.
I need more now, though. I needhim.
When we get to the bedroom, I’m on him. Kissing, biting, sucking. Leaving my mark on him so he knows that he ismine.
