David frowned and didn’t say a word.
“Go on,” I continued. “Tell me I’m broken. Tell me my anxiety disqualifies me from finding someone who’ll care for me. Tell me my hair-picking makes me impossible to love.”
His jaw ticked, upset over my bait. “You’re not. It doesn’t.”
“Then what makes you so different? So unique that the rules change for you?”
He looked ready to protest, but let out a low, exhausted chuckle. “You won’t ever make this easy.”
“I promised you, remember? I never will.”
Something broke within him at those words. David closed the distance between us, his mouth crashing against mine. We found ourselves on our backs again, legs entangled in the cotton sheets.
“I need you to know that I’m going to give this my all,” he said, breathless and resolute. “And maybe that won’t be enough, but I will do it.”
I didn’t know if he meant us, his recovery from his disorder, or surviving the rest of this season. Either way, I nodded and told him, “I know.”
I woketo the chill of early morning seeping through the windows and the tempting smell of bacon. David stood with his back to me, shirtless, in the kitchen area as he transferred a pancake to a stack. The second I rustled underneath the covers, he looked up.
“Morning.” David’s smile was small, but it lit up his eyes in such a way that they provided far more warmth than the mountain of blankets I was under. He clicked off the burner and stacked one last pancake before coming over.
“I was going to make you something,” I whispered as he crawled back into bed beside me.
“Got to wake up—” He took his time kissing me. I tried to pull back because of my morning breath, but his groan in protest was too convincing. “—earlier than this to beat me to it.”
“How are you feeling?” I pulled back to get a good look at him. An image of him scrubbing away at the sink flashed across my mind. David’s brows tightened, probably thinking of the same thing.
“Be honest,” I told him when he shook his head, ready to brush the question off. “It’s just me.”
He kissed me again, parting my lips gently to offer a hint of tongue. I lay back down with him on top of me, my thighs wrapped around his waist.
“And don’t distract me.” I laughed against his mouth.
“Demands, demands,” he tsked, his body relaxing into mine. “Is this how every morning is going to be with you?”
I stilled at the thought of getting so familiar with David’s bed and feeling like it was as much mine as his. My stomach fluttered, wanting that vision for the future so badly.
“Every,” I said, trying to keep my voice light and gaze without too much meaning. Too much desire.
“Good,” he whispered into my ear before playfullynipping at the lobe and sitting up. “Want me to make you a plate?”
“Only if you talk to me after we eat,” I bargained. “Really talk.”
David brushed his thumb across my chin before nodding and climbing out of bed. “Alright, Daredevil. You win this round.”
“I’ve won them all.”
He chuckled. “What’s this revisionist history?”
“A victor’s right.”
“You mispronounced ‘wrong.’”
I laughed. David came back to bed with one plate, which we shared, and a glass of orange juice for just me. He cut the pancake into triangles before I could touch it. And he made sure the bacon stayed out of the syrup. I kept looking up at him between bites, my mind just now catching up to the fact that I wasn’t just on good terms with someone I’d routinely argued with for years. I was in bed with him, having breakfast, and wishing time would slow to a stop because the minutes were already moving too fast for my liking.
“What does really talking sound like?” he asked after dumping our dishes in the sink. David came back to bed with a warm, wet washcloth. I froze when he reached for my hand and carefully wiped the sticky parts of my fingers.
“Like you telling me what happened,” I spoke quietly because being too loud could risk waking yesterday’s fears, and I needed them to fall asleep for good. “Why it happened?”
