I turn around to face him, shaking my head, unable to form words yet, so he keeps talking.
“I’ll wait as long as I have to for you. This was really just so I could feel close to you, even on those days you don’t want to be close to me anymore. This isn’t me making a move on you again, I promised.”
A tear manages to roll down my right cheek, and a small sob breaks free of my chest when the emotion gets to be too much for me. He pulls me into his arms, rubbing his hands up and down my back soothingly.
“Hey,” he whispers against my ear. “No pressure. Whenever you’re ready to give me a chance. I won’t fuck it up again. However long you need, okay? Take your time.”
He pulls back just a little, hands on my arms, taking in the expression on my face. One of those hands comes up and wipes the single tear away from my cheek, and his hand stays cupped there. That face I love so much leans forward, and his lips meet my forehead softly.
It only takes a couple seconds to get my breath back, that overwhelming swell of feelings swallowed down, and I have full clarity once again. I know what it is that I want. What I’ve always wanted.
This man.
This beautiful, caring man who has a bigger heart—even if sometimes it comes out in weird ways—than I know what to do with.
That’s a lie. I want to start by claiming it for myself.
I don’t need to ask him to make that move on me. I’ll take it myself.
My hands come up from under his arms to clasp both sides of his face firmly, and I pull him to me, bringing our mouths together for the first time in our lives in a kiss that’s waited a dozen years to bloom.
He’s stunned motionless, but that’s okay. I’ve been dreaming of what I’d do to this mouth since I first learned about anatomy and all the fun ways to use it.
My lips press against his softly, surely, once, twice, and again. I readjust my hands on his face and go back in, opening my lips the slightest amount as I kiss him, cherishing the plush softness of his mouth, how different it is from the hard lines of his face.
My breath dusts across his skin as I pull back once more, and something like a grunt comes from him.
He shakes his head rapidly, like he’s trying to clear it, and panic strikes into my heart, down into my stomach and my core. That alarm in my head starts to go off, sensing danger.
Is this…not what he wanted after all?
“No,” he says. My heart falls down to my toes, slips down through one of the cracks in between the planks of this deck, and buries itself in the soil twenty feet below. Without his heart in return, I have no use for mine, anyway. Maybe it’ll sprout roots and grow into a statue of sorts, a commemoration to the boy I spent my entire life loving, who never did quite want me back in the same way, even when he thought he did.
He must be able to see the horror, the despair somewhere on my face, because he speaks up rapidly. “Baby, you don’t have to…fuck,I want you to, but you don’t have to do this.”
Relief soars through every cell in my body as realization strikes me, and it’s then I notice how his fists are clenching, the tightness of his jaw, the way his brows are drawn, eyes closed, his breathing controlled like he’s in pain. He’s still fighting this, still thinks he doesn’t deserve happiness yet. But he wants it just as much as I do.
“Aaron.”
His eyes fly open. No sound comes out.
“I want this.”
He starts to shake his head again, but I clamp my hands on either side of it, keeping him in place, his eyes on mine. Getting through to him.
“I want you. Regardless of the treehouse. The gifts inside it. This…homage to our bond. The picture in the magazine this morning. I. Want. You. It’s what I came here today to tell you.”
His eyebrows fly into his hairline, and he still manages to look puzzled.
“You…you want? Are you sure?” Realization dawns across his features, light suffusing all those cloudy parts. “Wait, is this you saying yes?”
“This is me saying yes, Aaron Stone.”
In a single blink, I’m suspended midair, being cocooned by his strong arms and spun around at a speed that would make me dizzy if I wasn’t living for the expression on his face as he whisks us around. If I could capture this moment, turn it into art, and stare at it forever, I’d label the piecegiddy af.
As we spin, he places kisses all over my face, the top of my head, my neck and throat, the exposed bit of my shoulder from where my sweater has been tugged aside with the motion—anything he can reach, apparently. The softest, most loving and adoring kisses I’ve ever felt. Everywhere but where I want them.
“Aaron?”
