“Sorry,” I rasp what feels like an eternity later, drawing back and scrubbing my hands over my face. “I?—”
She pulls them free, cups my cheeks, forces my eyes to hers. “Don’t you dare apologize.”
“I—”
But I can’t finish the sentence.
Because I don’t know how to finish the sentence.
I shouldn’t be crying. I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t be hurt. I shouldn’t feel scared or devastated or completely untethered in a world I suddenly don’t know…
But I do feel all of those things.
“You’re allowed to have emotions. You’re allowed to be hurt. I know what it’s like, at least part of what she went through, but she decided to bring you into this world, and you deserved more than the neglect and emotional abuse, the cold disdain”—I try to turn away but she forces my gaze to stay on hers—“You’re her baby, and if she couldn’t be a parent to you, she should have freed you to find that with another family, another mother.”
Those words hit me hard, draw those stitches a little tighter.
Because she’s right.
“And don’t get me started on your father. He’s checked out, letting her pull her shit, and all he can say is ‘Respect your mother?’ That’s bullshit and as pathetic as the scenes she seems to live to make.” She traces her fingers over the cheek my mother slapped. “It was abuse, all of it, and he didn’t step in when he should have—not today, not in the months I’ve known you, and clearly not while you were growing up. That’s just as evil.”
“Baby,” I begin.
Still hurting.
Still feeling raw inside.
But not bleeding out from internal injuries.
“I won’t let her do it again,” she growls. “I swear if she puts her hands on you again, I’ll…” Her eyes flash with fury. “I’ll show her the meaning of a slap. She’ll be the one with the red mark on her cheek and it won’t be small and?—”
“God, I love you.”
“—I don’t care if she presses charges, don’t care if I go to jail?—”
“Starfire.” I slide my hand up her back, into her hair.
“It will be worth it?—”
“Teach, take a breath.”
“—because she needs a taste of her own medicine and Blake needs space so he can live his life. Oh,” she adds her face changing, softening. “He’s going to move in with us. He asked and I said it was okay.”
“Baby—”
“And I know it’s presumptuous to say us because we’re still new, but we’ve spent every night since Utah together—well, every night you’ve been in town, that is—and I don’t want that to change and?—”
Fuck it.
I tilt back her head, press my lips to hers.
And I kiss her with all that I’m feeling—the pain and devastation, the love I have for this woman who’s never hurt me and would fight those who do. I kiss her with the need I always have when she’s near, the joy she brings to my life, the careful way she cradles my heart.
Not just taking.
But giving back so, so much.
“I’m okay,” I say when we break apart, lungs heaving.
