Only Lincoln’s steady breathing and the erratic beat of my heart while I listen to him.
Maybe that’s why I quietly admit, “You know, Ivy is actually my middle name. My first name is Gianna, after my mom, but Ivy always felt right. Like I could be my own person.” Whoever that is.
His lips brush my ear as he speaks. “It suits you, as all things do.”
The dark hides my smile. Such a smooth talker.
“Okay, I spilled,” I say, nudging him. “Your turn.”
He hums, a rumble I feel down to my toes. “Is that so?”
“No secrets, remember?” I whisper, feeling like the liar I am.
He says nothing for a while, and I sink into the feel of his fingers quietly mapping out my body in the dark, never straying into dangerous territory, simply memorizing me with his hands.
My first music teacher was a bit of a prodigy on the piano, could play with his eyes closed and always looked as though the music played him, rather than the other way around. As though it was a frequency he was especially attuned to, and his hands were his way of letting it flow through him.
Lincoln touches me the way Mr. Spencer played.
Passionate. Adoring.
Eventually, long enough that I’ve almost forgotten what I asked, he admits softly, “I don’t have a middle name.”
I turn over to face him, and while I can’t make out his expression, I swear I can see him smiling. “Tell me everything.”
He grazes my nose with his. “It started while Darcy and Emma were kids. Some wanker made Emma cry over her name, and I joked that mine was worse. Guessing it would make her smile, and after a while, she completely forgot why she was upset. I kept meaning to tell her the truth, but she enjoys the game, and it’s never bothered me.”
Jesus. Even as a kid, he was putting others first. Knowing what they needed and helping them.
“Are you cold?” he asks when I shiver against him.
In fact, I am, but I like it. In truth, I love summer exactly because the temperature drops so suddenly here at night. As though the world’s temperature gauge is a little buggy, blinking out only in this spot at this precise time, year in, year out, but working enough that no one’s bothered to fix it. The chill is a relief.
“Yes, but you’ll think it’s silly,” I say.
“There isn’t a single thing about you that I don’t want to know, and not any of it could ever be considered silly.”
It’s times like these where words fail me.
I stare up into the darkness, basking in the anchor of him as the night settles across my neck and shoulders. “When we were kids, our apartment caught heat like an iron stove, and the only way to clear it out at night was to keep the windows open. Ciara and I would lie on the floor under the window and count down the sunset, waiting for the first gust of cold air to come through.” I close my eyes and sink back into Lincoln a little more.
“It always felt like magic. Like every scrape Mom kissed better, or the swell of the orchestra when love conquers evil. We’d lie there so long I could hear my teeth chattering. It was like finding a portal between worlds— hot and cold, day and night. It’s the first time I ever thought maybe being different was a good thing. That someday there might be a person out there who would enjoy my oddness too.”
“There is,” he says with so much certainty that my heart threatens to stop, fumbling and skittering over its next few beats.
Sometimes when Emma is sweet, or Ciara sends me a video of my nephew Remi, I’ll fill up on so much love it overflows, and for a moment, I can’t move, preoccupied with remembering how to breathe, holding myself together while my chest aches.
Lincoln makes me feel that way.
I hug him tighter, closing my eyes while he continues to stroke my back, sending shivers down my spine. I wonder if this is what Other Ivy is doing, off in the alternate universe where our relationship is real and not a performance for his family.
Does she get this every night? I could handle that.
“Good night, darling,” he says softly, and it’s so perfect I could cry.
It’s bad this time, the sheer, unadulterated wanting of him. Every once in a while, it’ll hit, and I need to steady myself, the room tilting like standing too fast, the swoop of my heart in my chest the only indication that it’s not the world that he’s irrevocably moved, but the very core of me.
If only I’d said no to the masquerade. I wouldn’t know the feel of his hand in mine or how it sounds when he whispers my name in my ear to get my attention, as if it’s ever strayed far from him.
