As he let himself feel as she had a moment ago:
Ripped raw by this confirmation, but made whole at the same time.
Oh, it made him so whole he put a hand to his chest. And it took him a long time to speak. Like he couldn’t, at first. He had to fight past the emotion to concede. “And I can feel that now. But I could never have then,” he told her, finally.
All of which she understood. Even if she also didn’t at all.
“Just because I didn’t tell you I loved you?” she asked, thinkingunfair, unfair.
Yet somehow it wasn’t even the whole answer. It was more.
“Yes, in part. But also just because I could never imagine anyone being that incredibly kind. Even if I could have guessed you loved me, should have guessed it, I could never have known you would be that generous. You apparently love me enough to brave Hell for me, but Nancy, oh Nancy, you were willing to let me be. How could I ever have known that you’d be willing to let me be? That to see me happy, you would have borne a kind of agony I couldneverhave. Like seeing me one day, on the street. Watching me pass you by with some other girl, living a life that you might have once dreamed of. I think you actually dreamed of me, my darling Nancy, and you still unselfishly tried to set me free. Oh lord, I don’t know if I could ever have unselfishly set you free,” he said, voice so marveling, so full of awe as he said it that she could hardly take it. She couldn’t take any of it—not the words, not the sentiments behind them, no, no, no, it was too much.
It made her clutch her chest, too.
And not just because of everything it meant.
Because he was wrong. He was wrong.
“But Jack, you did. That’s exactly what you did. You let me go. And not even while thinking there was someone else. You made an imaginary man in your mind, and weighed yourself poorlybeside him. Compared yourself to him constantly, hoped you were him and always felt you fell short. And yet you were never bitter about it, never furious. There was never a moment when you made me feel that I should expect less. In fact, you were so sure I should expect more that you showed me every day, and then sent me on to be with whoever you thought you weren’t. But youare. Youare, Jack. If my heart is good, then yours is a wonder. And itdoes not belong in Hell,” she said, heart pounding as she did it. Every word coming out so passionate, so fierce that she was standing by the time she was done.
And the air rung in the aftermath.
The walls shook, so heavily she expected him to react.
But he didn’t—or, at least, he didn’t react to that. All he seemed able to see now was her. All he drank in was her. He stared like he had on the road, as if she was some wonder. Then he simply crossed the room in one stride, and took her face in his hands just as he had after the spell, and kissed her. He kissed her. He kissed her without asking, without suggesting, without anything at all except all the things he’d wanted to express a thousand times, and always fell short.
And he did it for a long, long time.
He claimed her mouth. Then when her mouth wasn’t enough, he kissed her cheeks, her face, her neck. And he finished by holding her so tightly to him, she wasn’t sure where he began and ended. All she could feel were his arms around her, his hands in her hair, his forehead pressed against her temple.
The way he rocked her.
The way he whispered her name.
The way he said the words:I love you, Nancy. I love you.
Like all her dreams of being passionately adored.I am that girl, she thought.The one who gets swept away, desired, thought of every day. I was all along, and just didn’t know.And now she gotto. She got to so much that she couldn’t let it go. They were in Hell and they were most likely in big trouble and a thousand things were arraigned against them. But all she could do was let herself be held. All she could do was hold him in return.
They stayed like that for a long, long time.
And even when he finally broke the spell, she could hear the reluctance. He spoke against her temple, as if he didn’t want to break the contact. “You’re going to really be mad at me when I say this,” he said, and she didn’t want to understand what he meant. But she remembered her last words—you don’t belong in Hell.
And knew.
“Is it that you’re trapped here now? It is, isn’t it.”
“Of course I am. The moment a deal is broken, my time on earth is forfeit.”
“Then maybe I can make another one. Maybe I can just do it again.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Nancy. Nancy, Nancy, Nancy, oh what bliss it is to say Nancy. What it is to tell you I love you. To hear you say you love me. You’ve no idea how much that will hold me up when I am ground down,” he said, so rapturously it almost made her sink into him again.
But then she processed that resignation in his voice, and no.
No. No. She could not have that. She wouldn’t. She refused.
“It would be even better to not have to be ground down at all. Nowthink.”
