“And yet when I tell you that I’m not good enough for you, you ignore me.”
“Because I still want you. Flawed and likely to push me away at some point. I. Still. Want. You.”
He had trouble wrapping his head around that, because his track record almost guaranteed they’d crash and burn. That he’d let them, maybe even passively engineer it, and he didn’t want to do that to her. He didn’t want to hurt her out of some misguided fear of commitment.
“It’s okay, you know. I'm not going into this blind. I know we come from two different places. I know that you can’t let yourself want too much.” The softness in her voice just about killed him.
And she was so, so wrong. He tried to be equally gentle, but it was hard, because that wasn’t his nature. “You don’t think I want you?” He took a deep breath. “I want you so much it hurts. I want you in ways I don’t understand, because you’re not my type.”
“Gee, thanks.” She stuck her tongue out at him.
“The type I allow myself.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “Because the truth is, I like everything about you. Everything. And that scares the shit out of me.”
“That’s the nicest sideways compliment anyone has ever given me.”
“It wasn’t meant to be…let me start again.”
She shook her head. “You don’t need to. I get it.” She paused. “You never let anyone get this close to you?”
He shook his head. It was kind of an idiotic thing for a grown man to admit to, but she deserved the truth.
“So all your relationships…”
He finally voiced what he’d danced around before. “I’ve waited for them to fall apart. Encouraged them to die a natural death, maybe. And you deserve a guy who will fight for you. I’m not that guy.”
“Trust me, fighting tooth and nail doesn't work either.” She kept looking at him, steady-like, as if he hadn’t just said he wouldn’t fight for her. Or maybe like she’d heard him and opted not to believe him, which took a crazy level of faith he didn’t have in himself, and he told her as much.
She just shrugged. “But if you figure out what you want, you won't let it get away. You’ve told me about how that is in every other facet of your life. It just hasn’t happened in love yet. And maybe it won’t. But I’m not afraid of…” She trailed off.Loving you. Maybe that was the end of that sentence. Or maybe it was something simpler. Wanting you. Giving it a go. Those were more likely.
But even if it was love she was hinting around, that didn’t scare him as much as he thought it would.
If you figure out what you want, you won't let it get away.
He wanted her that much. He wanted her with every cell in his body.
They lay there for a moment, and then she glanced away. “Can I tell you something else?”
His voice was hoarse when he finally remembered to answer. “Anything.”
“I had a bit of revelation last night. It was an emotional show, you know, because I was strung tight from the night before and yesterday morning. And I’ve always run scared from those big emotions. That’s what happened in Savannah, the night before I flew up to see Hope. The night before I met you.” She slid her fingers through his, pressing her finger tips against the blanket beneath them. He watched as she flexed her hand, then pulled it free of his so she could rub her knuckles with her thumb.
“May I?” He touched her gently and she nodded.
He rubbed her fingers, rolling the skin gently as he massaged up and down each digit, and slowly she continued. “In Savannah, my fear got the better of me. And maybe last night wasn’t fear, but it was still a lot of big emotions, and I didn’t let the wave pull me under. I didn’t mean to, but I feel like I crested it, instead. And it was so powerful.” A tear popped out of the corner of her eye, just one, and she didn’t stop talking. He watched as it rolled down her cheek and plopped onto the pillow. The whole while she kept talking in an awe-filled voice. “I’ve always been so scared to give up that control. To really let go. And I didn’t need to be scared of it, you know? Because there’s magic there, in the places we get pushed.”
“Yeah.” He wouldn’t have put it like that. But now that she had, damn but it made sense. “Control is a big deal for me, too. I don’t know what it feels like to let go.”
She re-focused on his face, her eyes soft. “Maybe I can help you with that.”
“You think so?”
She walked her fingers across the bedspread until she was close enough to touch his bare chest. “I know so.”
“How are you gonna do that?”
“First, I’m going to get you out of that towel. And you’re not going to move a muscle until I say so.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
