“No, I’m used to long days with little sleep.”
“Did you get little sleep last night?” I ask him. “What time did you leave me anyway?”
“Three. I didn’t sleep after I vacated your room.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“Just my thoughts keeping me up.”
“Care to share what those thoughts are?”
He moves his hands to my heel, and I nearly kick him in the stomach from how good it feels.
“You know the thoughts already. They just seem to be haunting me.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I don’t believe so,” he answers, and that doesn’t sit well with me. I didn’t expect him to ask me for a three-step process of getting over his fears, but I thought that he’d maybe say something like...being here helps. Holding you helps. Feeling you helps.
But as he rubs my foot and stares off into the room, I notice something more and more as the hours get closer to my welcoming. He’s distancing himself.
Sure, he might be in my room, at night, rubbing my foot, and that seems like he’s close, but his heart and his head are not. They’re elsewhere.
It’s been slowly happening all day, and I’m starting to see why.
I lift up on my elbows to look him in the eyes. “Keller, I feel like you’re pulling away from me.” Might as well get it all out in the open.
“I’m not.” He shakes his head. “Just trying to find my footing again. Being at Strombly with you means I need to make some adjustments, not to mention the new role I have. I’m dealing with much change and navigating it.”
“Are you second-guessing being with me?”
His eyes glaze over, and my pulse picks up when he doesn’t answer.
“Keller, are you?”
“What?” he asks, his eyes focusing on me again. “No, Lilly, I’m not.”
“Okay, because it kind of feels like you are.”
“I’m not. Like I said, just a lot to unpack.” I shake free of his grasp and move to straddle his lap.
“Unpack it with me. Let me help you. You don’t always have to be so strong; you can be vulnerable too.”
“You have enough to worry about and don’t need my baggage.”
“Keller,” I whisper while placing my hand over his heart. “What don’t you understand about you and me being in this together? This isn’t always about me.”
“You matter most, Lilly.”
“Enough with that,” I say. “You matter just as much as I do.”
His eyes lift to mine, and they seem almost sad as he says, “Lilly, I love you, but that will never be the case.”
“Forget the crown, forget the country, forget all of that. What we have is between you and me, Keller and Lilly, and no one is equally more important than the other. So, tell me what was troubling you. Tell me how I can help.”
“You can’t,” he says with frustration. “So just fucking drop it.”
Caught off guard by his sharp tone, I back off his lap and sit on the edge of the bed, unsure of what to do, how to get through to him. Doesn’t he see this as an equal partnership? That I need him just as much as he needs me?
