I shake my head, hiccuping. “Come here,” I rasp. “I just need you right now, please, baby.”
I pull her to me and wrap my arms around her body tightly, burying my head into her stomach. “Christian,” she sobs.
Her fingers tangle in my hair and she just holds me to her body, letting me cry.
CHAPTER 9
Lana
Christian spent his first night here. Downstairs in the guest room. After...
Afterall that.
I crossed a line, the one I drew. To be fair, it was always a murky line. Was I really ever going to pay attention to it? I’d like to say yes. I was going totry.
It was a blip. A glitch in the system. That’s all. I didn’t think about it when it happened and that wasmymistake. That is what happens when I’m around him now. I forget to think!
I need to think around him because I can’t afford loss—losing him andanotherpart of myself when he goes. He already has so much of me and I have more of him than I once thought I did—I realized that last night when I stepped into the guest room.
He has given me the power to make him weak, and he would let me. Maybe hewantsme to break him down, strip him apart, and find his very center to check for myself if it’s healed. Ifhehas healed.
I don’t need him to be perfect, I need him to be better.
I’m staring at the ceiling, hoping he’s still downstairs and wishing I could stop being so stubborn. Wishing all of it could go away,beokay, and we could just be happy. But things like happiness don’t come easily for me.
The last thing I got easy that made me happy was Christian. Theonlything that made me immeasurably, incomprehensibly, irrevocably happy. He was easy to fall in love with. He had this energy about him, even when he was angry at the world and exhausted from the weight of his pain, he could make everyone in any room like him.Everyoneloved Christian.
Loving him has been the easiest thing I’ve ever done—will ever do. Like breathing. It just happens, even when you aren’t paying attention. You breathe without thought because your body does it for you automatically, that is loving him.
Easy.
Lana
I have a problem
Isabelle
What?
Natalia
WHAT?!?!
Lana
Something…may have happened
Last night
And it was good. Too good.
Isabelle
Oh god
Natalia
What happened?
