“I’m glad I’m the first.”
“And last,” I say.
She looks up at me with a smile. “Let’s cuddle for ten minutes, then talk.”
“Sounds good to me,” I squeeze her closer to me, not wanting to let her go, and close my eyes, taking in the smell of her, the feel of her body on me, the sound of her soft breathing.
I don’t know how long passes, but I’m certain it’s more than ten minutes. I feel half asleep while awake, my body calmer than it has been in a long time.
“Are you sleeping?” she whispers.
I open my eyes. “Areyousleeping?”
She breathes out a laugh, and turns onto her back, but stays close enough that our sides are still touching. The air around us changes to something with a little more tension.
And I know it’s coming.
I’ve never been good with this… talking about feelings. Never had to do it before. That’s not the type of family I grew up in.
“We have a lot to talk about,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll go first.”
“Okay.”
I’m glad she’s offering to go first, because I have no idea where to begin.
“I was wrong to flip out the way I did when all that happened, but I was scared, and didn’t know what to do. Running and telling you to leave me alone was wrong, but in a way, I don’t regret that I did it. I learned a lot about myself—and you—in our time apart.”
“Good things, I hope,” I say with a little laugh.
“Mostly, I think.” Her tone is serious, and she continues. “I know you were watching me the whole time I was at Sam’s. I know what you were doing to him, which—“ Her tone gets harsher and she pins me with a glare. “—is so wrong, and you better promise me right now that you’ll never do anything like that again to one of my friends. I don’t care who they are or whatthey’re doing, whatwedo is between us and us only. I don’t consent for others, and I am not okay with that.”
I can’t help but smile at her harsh tone. Like a little kitten showing her claws. I take her hand, kissing the back of it. “I promise, little dove.”
Her eyes shine at the nickname.
“It took me a long time to realize all of this, but Jaxon… I missed you so much.”
Fuck.
“I missed you too,” I say, my voice raspy.
She turns to face me a little more, our hands still linked.
“I want us to be together, I want to be with you, I want things to be the way they were, but… I’m scared.”
“Relationships are sc—”
“I’m not scared of a relationship, of commitment. I know I want to be with you, I love the way you make me feel. What I’m afraid of is what you did. I…” She shakes her head, her face pinching into confusion. “I get why you did it, it’s just hard to understand how you did it so easily.”
“If you grew up with parents like mine, you’d get it. I understand why it scares you, but this is the life I came from, Sailor. The life I’ve been trying to get out of for so long.” I pause for a moment, then add, “I told myself I wasn’t going to tell you this, that what I did before we got back together—“
“You knew we’d get back together?”
I want to sayyes. Tell her that I wouldn’t have stopped until it happened, but I need to be truthful.
