“I probably should. Actually, I definitely should. But no, I haven’t.”
“Oh, okay.” I glared at him. “Does that not seem hypocritical for you to say, then?”
He hung his head, taking a deep breath. “Yeah, it does, actually. But if you go, I’ll go, too.”
A bribe or an agreement? I wasn’t sure what to call it. “I just don’t like the idea of someone knowing the inside of my head. It scares me. Having someone else know. And it won’t even do anything, anyway. I can’t change the past.”
“No, you can’t change the past. But you can let all of this emotional weight be shared, and you can learn new copingmechanisms—healthy ones. Shared sadness feels a million times lighter than sadness that isn’t.”
“Maybe I don’t want to share it.”
“You shared it with me. Does it not feel a little better? A little lighter?”
I looked up at the TV just to avoid the ever-present, caring look in his eyes. It almost made my skin crawl—how intensely he looked at me like I meant something to him. Right in the middle of the sea that were his eyes were two mirrored images; both of them were of me, looking right at him. As if I was the only thing that mattered to him when we were facing each other.
There was a prison in my chest. A cage where my heart, soul, and the evils of my past were locked in strict confinement. I’d carried its weight for so long, coming to a point where I barely noticed it. It was just a part of me—this cold, sinking structure that sat square where love, happiness, and my understanding of myself were meant to be.
“Moon?”
I jerked my head, looking at Emerson, his hand resting on my knee as he leaned closer toward me. He didn’t say anything else, letting me watch as his attention flicked between both of my eyes. What was he searching for? I wasn’t sure there was anything to see in them anymore. I felt hollow and…
Empty, almost.
So fucking empty, yet full. Full of someone else’s genuine care to replace the hatred I held inside of me. Hatred that’d weighed me down all these years, forcing me to slow my entire life down. But for the first time in so long that I couldn’t remember the last, I simply felt lighter.
“What’s wrong?” Thank god he was whispering, or else it might’ve been too much all at once.
The understanding and realization that, yes, I felt fucking lighter. I finally felt like I could take a step and not trip overthe ground beneath me. I took a deep breath, relishing in the fact that I could. I could breathe, and I could hear the steel bars inside creak and whine as they shifted with me, rather than bending me to their shape.
Looking straight at the mirrored images of myself, I started to nod. “Yeah. Yeah, it feels lighter.”
He reached over, cupping my cheek in his palm. “That’s how it feels when you finally share the heavy part, rather than letting it keep getting heavier.”
My eyes started to burn, but I refused to let any tears fall. Though my voice wavered, I refused to let myself sound weak. Even if I looked scared, I refused to admit it to myself. “Can we go to bed?”
“Oh, Moon. Of course, we can. Come on.” Emerson stood, grabbing my bag.
I followed behind him to his bedroom, catching myself on a couple of stumbles on the way there. When the lights were turned off, and I was comfortable lying on my side underneath the blankets, I listened to the rustle of the bed as Emerson got in behind me. I watched the air from the vent beneath his window blow through the window curtain, flapping around just enough for the moon to shine through.
It was beautiful. The way it almost sparkled, only shining light on a small part of the floor. It peeled back the layers of the darkness surrounding us, but it never fully revealed anything before the darkness was ready to become bright.
The bed dipped as Emerson got situated and scooted closer to me. I could hardly hear him over the fan he always kept on high beside us. “Come here, baby. Let me hold you.”
His voice had my breath catching in my chest, coming out as a small, tired gasp. Tears made their way into my eyes, blurring my vision. He sounded so sincere. He sounded like he needed tohold me, needed to protect me so badly, it’d eat him alive if he couldn’t.
I turned around, sniffling, as I pressed my face into his chest. His arms acted as my anchor, keeping me from flying to the sky with how light I felt. I let him hold me. I let him protect me. I let him whisper into my hair, his lips pressed against my head. “I’m here. I’ve got you, baby. I’m right here. I’m holding your heart, okay? No matter what. No matter how heavy. I’ll keep helping you.”
Just like the notes. Just like he’d said before.
Giving my heart to someone was messy, and it was heavy, but it wasn’t as devastating when I had someone to hold it with me. I think, deep down, I already knew I’d given a part of it to him. And I didn’t think I minded being called baby as much as I thought.
I felt too light to care. I felt too relieved to think about it. I felt, for the first time in fifteen years, like maybe everything would slowly start to be okay.
Chapter Twenty-Two
If there wasanything to know about Moon, it was that there was a one hundred percent chance he’d suddenly turn into a blazing furnace if he was held through the night. His body seemed to suck all the heat out of me and harbor it in him, making an oven beneath the blankets, already pre-heated to four hundred and seventy-five degrees. Just right to cook a frozen pizza.
I fucking loved it. Couldn’t get enough of it, actually. I’d take the sweaty, stuck-together skin over not having him in my arms any day. I’d say it was a small price to pay, but it wasn’t even a price to pay. It was a price I’d beg for if I had to.
