“Is this why you didn’t want to spend the night with me?” he asks, his fingers running up and down my arm, soothing me. His presence in general calms me, and I already feel better compared to before he walked in.
“I didn’t want to bother you,” I whisper, my voice barely audible.
“You’ll never be a bother to me,” he says, pressing a kiss to my clothed shoulder.
“Why did you come in?” I ask after a couple of minutes of quiet.
“I always kiss you goodbye, especially when you sleep in your own room,” he whispers, and it makes my breath catch.
“You do?”
“Yeah,” he admits, pulling me impossibly closer to him.
“I didn’t know that.”
“Now you do.”
We lay in silence as he holds me. He doesn’t ask questions or press for any kind of information, which I’m grateful for.
He’s always been good at waiting until I’m ready to talk.
I roll so that I can see him, burying my face into his bare chest as he holds me tightly against him.
I let out a small sigh. I’d never told anyone about this side of myself. Not that anyone would ever care enough to listen or ask.
“I just want to be enough.”
I have to pause and take a few breaths; the tears are coming hard now. I find it hard to keep the emotion out of my voice.“I was a nobody for eighteen years. I still probably am, but now I have people who care. People who message me, making sure I’m ok if I skip a day and don’t post. Who tells me that I’m pretty andasks me how my day is going. I have hundreds of thousands of people who care. And while it makes me feel better, I’m still so fucking alone.”
“You’re not alone, baby. You have me, Mocha, and Kaden,” he whispers into my hair. I bury my face back into his chest as I start sobbing again.
“I want a girl friend. I want late-night gossip. I want sleepovers. I want someone to send me a million Loops because their home page was just loaded with things that reminded them of me. I want to go on shopping trips. I want someone to go to the gym with.” I hiccup and have to force myself to stop rambling so that I can breathe.
“I’m sorry for not noticing your pain earlier, my sweet girl. But I see you, and I will never look over you again.”
I shake my head. The last thing I want is for him to take any of this on himself. He deserves so much more than this.
“I pick you,” he whispers after a minute or two of silence.“I pick you. I will continue to pick you over and over. Over my job, over your dad, over just about anyone or anything, because you deserve that. You are the sunshine in so many people's lives, baby. Whether you realize it or not, you shine brighter than the sun, but even the sun has a dark side. And that’s ok.”
“You don’t have to choose me.”
“If I didn’t want you, I wouldn’t be lying here in this bed with you. If I didn’t want you, I would have never kissed you, and I definitely would have never taken you to bed. I’m not good with words, and I’m not good at feelings, but I want to keep choosing you. I need you to let me. I need you to stop pushing me away. I want to know what you’re feeling, the good and the bad. I can’t help you if I don’t know if anything is wrong.”
I nod, knowing deep down that he has a point. The moment he decided to kiss me, the second, third time, and all the times after that, he was choosing me over his best friend. Even today,he chose to stay home with me. To use a sick day or two, to make sure that I’m ok.
“No one has ever treated me like you have. Even when you take away all the kisses and the sex, you're a good person. You’ve shown me more kindness in a few months than anyone else has in my entire life.”
“That’s because you deserve it. You mean more to me than you’ll ever realize. It’s ok to have hard days. It’s ok to put your phone down. You don’t need to justify anything that you do to anyone. You just need to do whatever it is to make sure you get out of the dark hole. You wanna cuddle, eat ice cream, go to a rage room? We can do whatever you want, baby. You let me know.”
I nod against his chest, clinging to him because once again, without even realizing it, he’s saving me. Picking up all my shattered pieces and molding them back into a person.
“Can we just lie here? I didn’t get any sleep,” I whisper.
“Of course we can, for as long as you need,” he affirms, kissing my head and rubbing my back.
I cry for a little bit longer, but eventually I’m so exhausted that I fall asleep and I stay asleep for quite awhile. I breathe him in, and remind myself over and over again that I will always have him, no matter what.
I don’t know how long I rest for, but when I wake up, Beckett’s arms are still around my middle, and I’m safely secure against his chest.
