“God damn it, please do. I’ve had a taste of that, and it turns out, I don’t like being lonely. More to the point, I’ve had a taste of loving you, laughing with you, being with you, and it’s the best thing in the world.
“I spent a long time being afraid. Having a big family is stressful. A young family is stressful. But you know what else I’ve learned? Being alone is stressful. It’s not the make up of the family that’s the problem. I don’t want to be driven by fear anymore.”
“Oh…”
He swayed toward her, wanting so much to draw her into his arms. But he kept going, because this was the most important part. “Making more of a family with you would be a gift, not a burden.”
“I—” She stopped. And then she burst into tears.
“No, no, no,” he murmured.
Her fists clenched tight in her lap, her knuckles turning white. Her nostrils flared as she struggled to control herself.
“It’s okay.” Helpless, he moved off the couch and knelt in front of her. “Let it out.”
“I’m scared, too,” she finally admitted. “I had this narrative in my head. We would be a fling, we would have an end point, because we wanted different things in life. And that was safe. Even though it hurt.”
“Give me a chance to show you what I should have shown you the first time. That I’m the guy you can trust to hold your hand when you get scared.”
“I don’t know how.” Her voice hitched.
“We’ll figure it out together. I didn’t know what I wanted in life until you walked into it. So I’ve got some baggage I’m carrying around, these rules I made for myself, but they don’t make me happy. You make me happy. I’m willing to do the hard work to figure out the rest of it.” He held out his hand. “Give me a chance.”
Time stood still.
Then she slowly slid her fingers over his and gave his hand a tentative squeeze.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” he whispered. “It’s okay to be scared.”
She nodded.
“I love you,” he repeated. It felt damn good to say.
She nodded again, and he smiled. Her lips worked their way into a delicate smile. “I love you, too.”
The world’s most beautiful four words.
She slid into his lap and he embraced her as tight as he could. He held her until her breathing softened, slowed, and then he kissed her.
It was like taking a first big gulp of air after being under water. Two weeks without oxygen, and now his soul was full again. Her lips tangled with his, her tongue darting out to welcome his. He deepened the kiss, hungry for more of her sweet, warm, sunshine-y taste. She gobbled him up in the same way, her hands finding his face. Holding on.
It took them a while to get their fill of each other.
As she gazed at him, her eyes glowed almost golden with unshed feelings. “It was so hard to be apart from you, and I couldn’t make sense of it. I thought I could just grieve and move on, but I couldn’t. I was in denial, too.”
“Maybe we were both afraid of getting this close to someone, for different reasons.”
“But you aren’t now?”
“No.”
She screwed up her face. “I still am.”
“That’s okay. I’m never going to break your heart again.”
“You didn’t. I did that to myself because I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud that I wanted to make babies with you. I told myself that wasn’t on the table, and still dove headlong into wanting what I couldn’t have.”
“You can have it.” He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and held her still when she tried to duck her face into his neck. “Kerry, if you want kids, I want to have kids with you. I can be alone when I’m dead. I’ll get the vasectomy reversed. They do that. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll find the best quality donor sperm your uterus could ever imagine.”
