The terrifying thought moves through me like a wave, not the panic of it, not the choking terror that I felt in the water, but the simple, enormous fact of it. I was in the water and I was dying. Nobody knew and the water was pulling me under and I thought it was over. I really believed the last thing I would ever see was green water and gold light.
And the last thing I would ever feel was regret.
Then Tex came swimming toward me looking like a mystical creature rising out of water.
I couldn't believe he came for me. But I shouldn't have been surprised. Tex is bigger than life. Tex yells at hurricanes.
He came for me because he's Big Tex, and Tex doesn't leave his people in the water.
I look at his face the way I've wanted to look at it for weeks. Without the part of my brain that's always asking what does he want from me and when do I have to pay. I can see him with clarity now. With the sharp, aching focus that comes from me knowing how close I came to never seeing him again.
The scar above his left eyebrow, thin and white, that I've never been close enough to see before. The way his dark hair falls across his forehead when it's not pushed back. The gray in his beard at the corners of his jaw, just a few strands, thatmake him look like a man in his early thirties who has lived hard and loved big and carries things for other people without ever putting them down.
I almost didn't get to have this. The thought scares me all over again.
I almost let the fear eat the rest of my life the way it ate everything before. I almost drowned with a box full of things I never said. The waste of that, the sheer stupid waste, hits me so hard it takes my breath away.
I'm done being afraid of this. Tex and I have something. I know it, I feel it, and I never want it to end.
I make a choice and close the six inches between us.
Not the way I closed it in the water. This is different. This is me, awake, breathing, clear-headed, choosing to move toward him.
I move slowly. Not because I'm scared this time, but because I want to feel every fraction of distance that I'm choosing to erase. I slide my body across the sheets until my side is against his side, and then I lift my head and place it on his chest. My ear presses against his skin, and I can hear his heartbeat. Slow. Steady. The most solid, perfect sound in the world.
I put my arm across his body. My forearm rests on his stomach and my hand curls over his ribs and I'm holding him. Not the way I held him in the water. That was survival. Not the way I held him falling asleep. That was need.
This is me choosing him with a clear head and dry lungs and both feet on solid ground. This is me wanting him.
I'm done treating every good thing like a trap and every kind person as a threat. I almost died today and the only thingI wanted, the only thing that mattered when the water was over my head and the light was fading, was Tex.
This enormous, loud, gentle, stubborn man who talked me through a hurricane and gave me a knife and named me after a storm and swam into a rip current to save my life.
His breathing changes. The slow, deep rhythm stutters, catches, and I feel his body tense under me. A fraction of a second, a full-body awareness of the weight on his chest, the arm across his stomach, and the head over his heart. Then it registers. I feel the moment he understands what's happening, who it is, what it means.
He goes still.
That careful stillness I've felt before when I've touched him. The kind where he barely breathes, where every muscle locks in place, where he turns himself to stone so he won't disrupt whatever fragile thing has landed on him.
His heart rate picks up under my ear. I can hear it accelerating, the steady thump quickening by ten beats, then twenty. The heart of a man who has feelings so big he can't contain them and is trying anyway.
I lift my head to look at him.
He's awake. His brown eyes are open and they're looking at me and there's so much in them that I couldn't process it all in a single lifetime. Hope and fear and tenderness and caution and something raw and deep that he's been keeping behind the jokes and the nonstop talking for weeks.
He doesn't speak. He doesn't move. He's waiting. The way he always waits. Giving me the space to decide what this is, to set the pace, to choose.
I reach up and touch his beard. I've wanted to know what it feels like since the first week. Since I stood in thebar kitchen and watched him cook bacon and talk to eggs. I wondered whether the beard was soft or rough, whether it would feel the way it looked, warm and full and wild. I touch it now. My fingers brush the hair along his jaw, light at first, barely making contact, and then I press my palm flat against his cheek and let my fingers sink in.
It's softer than I expected. Thick and warm. The hair curls slightly around my fingers, and underneath it his jaw is strong and solid. I can feel the muscle flex as he clenches his teeth, holding himself still, holding everything so still. His eyes haven't left mine. He's watching me touch his face with an expression that looks like a man watching something he's been waiting for, and he's afraid to breathe because a single breath might end it.
I trace my thumb along his cheekbone. I feel the crinkle lines at the corner of his eye, the ones that appear when he smiles, and I run my finger along them gently, learning the shape of his happiness with my fingertips.
I lean down and kiss him.
Soft. Tentative. My lips against his, barely there, a question more than a statement. I don't know what I'm doing.
I've been kissed before, but never like this, never because I chose it. Never because I wanted it, and the difference between this and everything that came before is so vast it's like comparing the ocean to a bathtub.
