Excitement morphs her beautiful face, and I steal a kiss… right before I steal a french fry.
“Nope, but can’t wait to see it, baby.”
She scoots closer and slips her arm over mine, leaning into me, the contact always something she craves. “I’ll show you when we get home.” A brief pause lingers between us before she asks, “Do you want to talk about it?”
Itbeing the session.
I exhale and shake my head. “Not much to talk about, Sunshine. We talked about my mom and how I feel about her being back in prison.” My gaze drops to the necklace around Maisie’s neck, the small silver whistle that I saw one day while tagging along while she was thrifting. I got it mostly as a joke, but she loves the damn thing and refuses to take it off. “I told him that it’s the most secure I’ve ever felt, knowing that she can’t contact me and that she’ll never get anywhere near either of us again. It feels like I’m going to finally be able to… I don’t know, move on for the first time. To try and heal.”
Maisie nods, squeezing my arm tighter. “I’m proud of you, Wilder. I hope you’re proud of yourself too.”
I… am proud.
If there’s anything that the woman beside me has taught me, it’s that I’ve got to treat myself with the same respect with which I treat her.
And I’m fucking trying.
It’s hard erasing a lifetime of the shit that I’ve been telling myself, but one step.One foot forward. That’s the only way I’m going to move on from the past and let myself live.
Yeah, that’s what my therapist says, if you couldn’t tell, but I think he’s right about that.
“Thanks, baby. You know I couldn’t do this without you,” I murmur, dipping my lips to hers, my voice dropping low. “I love you so much, Maisie. So fucking much.”
Her lips find mine, and she kisses me in response, fingers moving to my hair and threading at the nape. When she pulls back, she’s breathless and her eyes slightly glassy. “I love you. More than you know.”
It’s moments just like this where I feel more hope for the future than I’ve ever dreamed possible.
These quiet moments that exist between just the two of us, when I feel her goodness wrapped around me.
She said she’d love me enough for the both of us, and she’s spent every day showing me exactly that.But she doesn’t have to because I love her the same way.
My sunshine girl.
And I’m never taking it for granted.
One Year Later
Wilder
Sometimes I think about that little boy I used to be.
Late at night, when Maisie’s asleep, safe in my arms, her soft, warm body curled against mine.
When her breathing is slow and even, our house is quiet, my stomach full and our bed warm. When I’m left alone with my thoughts.
I think about all of the nights when I had none of these things and what I would’ve done for them.
I think about how different life may have been for that little boy if he could see where we are today. If he knew that there was hope in all the hopelessness surrounding him.
I wonder if it would’ve changed anything. If that little boy could’ve seen that there’s a light, so warm and so fucking bright, that’s going to guide him out of the dark. If he could’ve seen that love isn’t the weakness he believed it was, but what ends up saving him.
Maisie Delacroixsavedme.
I don’t think she truly realizes just how broken I was before her.
She knows everything about my past, my mother, the neglect and abuse I suffered, the abandonment, every painful detail that I kept buried in fear of it pulling me under completely.
And she stayed. She never once wavered, no matter how heavy it got, and it means everything. More than I’m capable of articulating.
