This time it’s more gentle, less urgent. We’ve burned through the desperation and hunger from being apart, and what’s left is something slower and sweeter.
The water makes everything soft and slippery and unhurried. We’re not chasing anything. We’re just…here. Which sounds simple, but for two people who’ve spent months running from this, it’s the best kind of simple.
When we finally make it back to bed, damp and sated, he tucks me against his broad chest. I press my face into the curve of his neck, where his skin is still warm from the shower. His arm is heavy across my waist. I can feel his heartbeat against my shoulder, steady, solid, real. The kind of heartbeat that says I’m not going anywhere.
I thought I’d lost this forever.
And that thought causes a tiny nugget of anger to rise up inside me.
“At some point, we need to talk about the fact that you thought you knew what was best for me and made a decision without consulting me,” I say, raising my face to look at him. “That’s not okay.”
Leo pauses. His thumb stops its slow circle on my hip. “I thought the most important thing was that you repair your relationship with your brother.”
“You thought that was more important than what we had together?” I can’t hide the hurt in my voice.
“I tried to tell you how I felt about you, but you weren’t ready to hear it,” Leo says, the muscles in his throat working.
“I thought… I thought you wouldn’t ever be able to love me back the way I loved you if you had the wound inside you that Vaughn had caused,” he continues. “And I thought that you wouldn’t be able to repair your relationship with your brother if I were around. I just want what is best for you.”
I lie there, replaying Leo’s words in my head, examining them from all angles.
I can’t deny that I retreated any time Leo showed signs of wanting more. I’d been so conditioned by Vaughn’s rejection—by the slow, grinding lesson that loving someone fully only gives them more of you to find unbearable—that I’d treated Leo’s deepening feelings as a countdown to him leaving.
“You might have been right in this instance,” I finally concede. “But going forward, I need to know you won’t make any decisions you believe are in my best interest without talking it through with me first.”
He strokes the side of my face. “Oh, trust me, Archie, I’m never making a decision about your happiness without you again.”
“And I might not have been ready to hear how you felt about me before, but I am now,” I say. “In fact, feel free to tell me as many times as you like.”
Leo reaches out to thread his fingers through mine.
“‘I love you’ doesn’t feel strong enough,” he says quietly. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone. I didn’t even know it was possible to feel this way about someone.”
He nuzzles into my neck.
“I love the playful Archie, but I also love the serious Archie. And I love everything in between.”
I blink hard. Several times. There appears to be a situation developing with my tear ducts that I’m going to attribute to dust and absolutely nothing else.
“Okay, those are good words,” I manage to say.
“I aim to please,” he says. “Although I’m still struggling to get my head around the fact that you knew the truth about your accident the whole time. I was plagued by guilt over it.”
I can’t keep a small grin from sneaking onto my face. “You were so committed to making it up to me that it seemed rude to stop you. Do you know how hard it is to find a man who’ll voluntarily dress as a mermaid?”
He huffs out a laugh.
“We’re like that painting of Lady Grey,” I say. “The details might have been false, but the emotional truth of us isn’t.”
“I’m not sure if comparing our relationship to an unfairly executed seventeen-year-old is the most romantic analogy possible,” he replies.
“It totally fits,” I argue. “Don’t forget the painting was found by accident while someone was looking for something else.”
A smile crosses his face.
“You’re right. I was looking for revenge and found something better than I ever imagined.”
“Meanwhile, I discovered that being drenched in maple syrup and breaking my ankle can have a remarkable silver lining. It’s fair to say we both learned things in this whole experience.”
