“I love you.” I bump my nose with hers.
“Since we’re confessing things,” she murmurs, “can you confess some things too?”
“What do you want to know?” I ask.
“Everything.”
“Okay.” I take a breath. “I’ve thought about the same things you have—especially after my mother.” My ribs shrink around my heart and lungs as I think about it again. “I told you about…some of it. It was really hard, Natalia.”
“I know, baby, I know.” She kisses the corner of my mouth. “I know.”
I sniffle, wiggling my nose, and she presses her body in closer. “When I visited you in the hospital, it was during the week of her first anniversary. That week has always been sohard, remembering the hospital, wake, and burial. I hate it so much, Natalia.”
“I know, it’s okay.” She kisses my temple this time.
I swallow. “When I visited you, it was because you were the only person I knew who would understand what I was feeling. You were the only person who knew what it was like to want to die and I know that sounds horrible and dark… But you were the only person who understood that part of my mind that I couldn’t show anyone else.”
“Rowan…”
“I know what it is to hate yourself, sweetheart,” I rasp, my throat sore from holding back my tears. “And when I went to see you—when you came through that door in those weird pajamas and your hair in messy french braids. Natalia, you made me feel like I wasn’t alone. You gave me so much peace.”
Her lips find mine this time and it’s all consuming, earth shattering, and healing, all in one. I moan quietly against her mouth and slowly, together, we lower onto the mattress again. Her body presses into mine from above and between her legs I grow hard.
“You aren’t alone,” Natalia whispers on my lips, the promise sealed with a kiss.
“No?”
She shakes her head. “You have me.”
“I do?” My heart.
“You know you do.” Her lips find mine is a soft touch.
“I do,” I say and sigh. “Natalia, you can’t keep doing this.” I pause, gauging her reaction. She remains quiet. “Wecan’t keep doing this. I love you, Nat. I love you and I’m a patient man. Ilove you.Don’t let your head ruin this. Don’t let it tell you what isn’t true because I’m here for good. I’m not going togive up on”—I inhale sharply before I whisper—“the love of my life.”
Her beautiful eyes water.
“But, sweetheart, you’ve got to let me in.” I kiss her sternum, lingering there long enough that I think I feel her heartbeat. Then I pull back and look up at her, my chin against the bone and her hands brushing through my hair. “I’m here. You want to talk? I’m here. You want silence? I’m here. I just want you to let me in all the way. I can’t… Sweetheart, I can’t keep fighting my way in, and you have to stop shutting me out. I’m begging you?—”
“I think you are in,” she whispers. “I think that’s why I was—Youarein, Rowan.”
I kiss her heart again.
“You’re in,” she echoes as she turns onto her side to face me.
“Promise me?”
“I promise I won’t shut you out anymore.”
“You don’t have to do it alone,” I whisper.
“Neither do you.”
I smile. “I don’t.”
My hands roam over her body, inches of flawless skin that I have memorized. With her lips moving on mine, my tongue grazing hers, I count each vertebrae of her spine. I measure her waist and hips in my hands so I can mold her from memory and pretend I’m holding her when I miss her. And I kiss her harder to imprint myself on her lips and hope that she leaves her own on mine.
Natalia rolls her hips and swallows the small moan that comes out of me.
