For one second, he doesn't respond. One second of absolute stillness where I think I've made a terrible mistake, where the old fear fires and tells me to pull back, to apologize, to run.
Then he kisses me back so gently.
His lips are warm and soft under the beard. He kisses me like I'm something he doesn't want to break. Precious and damaged and worth every ounce of care he has.
His hand comes up, slow, and touches the back of my head, his fingers sliding into my hair, and the weight of his hand is there but it's not pressing down. It's not holding me in place. It's just resting. Just being there. Letting me know he's here without trapping me.
The kiss deepens. Not into hunger, not into urgency. Into certainty. Into the feeling of two people who have been circling each other for weeks finally stopping, finally standing still, finally saying yes.
I want this.
His mouth moves against mine. I can feel his heartbeat under my palm where my hand is still on his chest, fast and hard. My own heart is matching it beat for beat.
We break apart. Not far. An inch. His hand is still in my hair and his breath is warm on my lips. His brown eyes are right there, so close I can see the gold flecks in them that I've never been close enough to notice before.
"Stormy," he whispers.
"I don't want to be afraid anymore." My voice is thick and raw. It doesn't sound like me. It sounds like someone braver. "I thought I lost you. When I was in the water. I thought I lost you before I ever really had you. I was so sad."
His eyes fill with tears. His throat moves and for the first time since I've known him, Tex doesn't have words. The man who fills every silence, and narrates his own life like a one-man show, can't speak.
His hand moves from my hair to my face. His palm cups my cheek, huge and rough with calluses, and his thumb tracesthe line of my cheekbone the way I traced his. Learning me the same way I learned him. His touch is so light it barely exists, but I feel it everywhere.
"I'll always be here," he says. His voice cracks on the word here, splits right down the middle. "We can take all the time you need."
I don't say anything. He doesn't either. We don't need words to express what is between us. We lie there with his hand on my face, and my hand on his chest, and the silence isn't empty. It's full. It's the fullest silence I've ever been in, heavy with everything we just said and everything we didn't need to say.
I just want to lie here and breathe the same air as him and feel his heartbeat under my hand slowing down from fast to steady.
We stay like that for a long time. His thumb moves in slow circles on my cheek and our eyes close and we're just two people in a bed, breathing together.
"Boys?" Sheila's voice comes up the stairwell, distant but clear. The voice of a woman who has been patient long enough and is now shifting into operational mode. "I hate to interrupt, but the parking lot isn't going to set itself up. I am one woman with two hands and a bad hip that I am absolutely going to start using as an excuse if you don't come help me. Tex? Everything okay up there?"
Neither of us moves.
"That's Sheila for you," Tex says. "She's worried sick and is going to come up here if we don't answer."
"I know."
"She won't knock. She'll bust through the door and she'll see us and she'll have opinions. Loud opinions. Opinions thatwill be expressed at length and in detail and will probably include the phrase 'it's about damn time.'"
I lift my head and smile at him.
"Ah, there it is," he says softly. "I've been waiting forever for that smile, Stormy."
"Boys!" Louder now. Closer. The sound of sensible shoes on the staircase.
"Coming, Mama Sheila! Be right there!" Tex calls, and his voice is back, the big warm voice that fills rooms and the empty spaces in my chest. "For the record, I want it noted that I waited six weeks. Six weeks of not kissing you, Stormy. Six weeks of watching you walk around my bar in my t-shirt and I didn't do a single thing about it. I deserve a medal. Or at least a plaque. A small plaque behind the bar awarding me for patience. You stay here and rest. You've been through hell today. I'll go help Sheila."
I sit up and look at him lying in the bed, this giant man with the soft eyes and the mouth I just kissed.
"I'm okay now," I say. "I can go back to work."
He frowns. "No, I think it's best if you rest today. You almost drowned and you swallowed a lot of saltwater."
I roll my eyes at him. "I'll stick close by so you and Sheila can keep an eye on me. Come on, we've got a bar to run. I'm fine, really. I can't stay here in bed. Let's go."
"You're as stubborn as me sometimes," Tex says.
