“I have nowhere to go,” I murmur, just as my lungs close in on me.
“The fuck not,” he grumbles. Gently, he turns me around so I’m facing him. He cups my cheek in his palm and looks intently at me. “You’ll stay here with me. I’m not letting you go.”
“But your parents?—”
“They can fuck off.”
I purse my lips. He’s not thinking logically.
Things would have been a lot different if his parents weren’t here. I could consider staying here for a day or two until Mom declared that I could come back—but will she though? Questions start piling up in a stack, one by one.
Is she looking for me right now?
Is she worried about me?
Is she thinking if I’m safe or not?
Disappointment fills my heart because I don’t have the answers.
And I’m someone who likes to have the answers. Whether it’s derivatives in maths, chemical equations in chemistry, research in biology or theories in physics. I like it when I know the definite solution. The uncertainty of anything bothers me. It triggers my anxiety, not knowing the unknown.
“You don’t need to worry about my parents. They won’t bother you. But if they say anything, just tell me, okay,” he says.
I give him a weak nod.
His mother seems nice, but I don’t know anything about his Dad. I wonder what is he like? The only thing I know is, he hates him a lot.
“I’m going to take care of you,” he promises.
That makes me burrow my head in his chest. I don’t want him to see the way tears blind my vision because not knowing what’s going to happen next is killing me from the inside.
In the midst of it all I do something that is so stupid.
“I love you,” I say, without thinking.
Heath’s fingers dig into my hair as his whole body tightens.
“What?” he asks in a raspy, low voice.
“I said, I love you,” I tell him.
The tension hangs in the air, and our rugged, fast breaths fill the tiny space between us. It’s so quiet that you can hear a pin drop.
It’s a miracle that he can’t hear my heart is racing.
After a long moment he says, “That’s my line, Rose.”
I look up at him in bewilderment. “What?”
“I love you.”
Helovesme?
He loves me.
Our gaze connect and our hearts beat at the same rhythm.
Something inside of me, that was broken, mends.
