The scent of us filled the room.
I was his, completely and utterly, and the thought sent a fresh wave of heat through me as I nestled closer, inhaling him…knowing I’d never want anything else.
I lay tangled against him, my cheek pressed to his chest, the rhythm of his heartbeat steady under my skin. The room was quiet except for that sound in my ear…living proof that this was real.
But I couldn’t get something out of my head.
“I keep thinking I’m going to wake up,” I finally whispered when the thought threatened to choke me. “That this—us—is some perfect dream I don’t deserve.”
Matty’s arm tightened around me, his lips brushing my hair. “You’re not dreaming, baby.”
I smiled faintly. “That’s exactly what someone in a dream would say.”
He huffed a quiet laugh, and for a while, we just breathed together. My body should’ve been at peace, but my mind was already running back to places I didn’t want to go.
“Do you know who Ophelia was in literature?” I asked finally.
He went still beneath me, thinking. “Was she a Shakespeare character?”
I nodded. “InHamlet. She loved him so much that when he broke her heart, she lost her mind. She wandered into the river in her gown, singing songs until the current pulled her under.”
Matty’s fingers traced up my spine. “That’s dark,” he murmured. “Why would your mom name you that?”
I laughed, but it sounded more like a sigh. “That’s what I asked her when I came home from school after we’d read the play in class.” I traced the edge of his ribs with my fingertips, trying to keep my tone steady. “She told me she thought it was beautiful. That Ophelia was gentle and loyal, and she loved harder than anyone. She said the world broke her, but at least she never stopped feeling.”
I paused, staring at the wall in the dim light. “But when I was fourteen, she told me the truth. She said she named me that because she almost died giving birth to me. She said she remembered lying there, hooked up to all the machines…realizing that what you love most can be the thing that kills you.”
My throat tightened. “She wanted me to remember that. That love isn’t soft—it’s sharp. It demands something back.”
The words still hurt, all these years later.
I didn’t tell Matty the rest—that right after that conversation, when she’d found my notebooks and the names I’d scribbled inside them, she’d said it again.You’re living up to your name, Ophelia. The love you think you have for those boys is going to drown you one day.
Maybe she’d been right. Maybe I’d always been standing at the edge, waiting for the river to take me.
Matty’s hand slid up to cradle the back of my head, his thumb tracing slow circles against my neck. “Then she never saw this,” he said softly. “Because what we have—it isn’t the kind of love that kills you. It’s the kind that keeps you alive.”
My chest ached so hard I could barely breathe.
I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that he didn’t know what my mother had seen in me. But his eyes were steady, sure in a way mine had never been.
“And if this is a dream…” He leaned closer until our foreheads touched, his voice a low promise. “Then neither of us is ever waking up.”
I smiled against him, my eyes stinging.
Maybe the river inside me hadn’t been waiting to take me after all.
Maybe it had just been waiting for him.
CHAPTER 23
MATTY
Creak.
The sound that woke me wasn’t loud…just the softclickof the door to my room opening.
But it sliced straight through sleep.
