My eyes did a few more rapid blinks, and I swallowed again.
“No. Absolutely not. I’m . . . fuck . . . scared shitless.”
His grin grew.
“No more checklists. No more notes. No more hiding, okay?” His voice was so calm. How could he sound so damn calm? “I’m falling for you, Benji, for your crazy hair and internet persona and especially for the way you treat our animals. I’m falling for your 6 a.m. sleepy smile and your 3 a.m. exhausted stare. I want to know you—all of you—and I want to feel you even more.”
My shirt was halfway unbuttoned by the time he finished talking. He stopped with the buttons and slid his fingers inside the fabric, pressing his palm against my smooth chest.
“Your heart feels like it’s going to beat out of your chest,” he said.
I blinked a few more times. “It feels like it. I guess it’s been a while, I mean, since, you know—”
My head tried to droop, but Peter's finger lifted my chin to keep our gazes locked.
“I know. For me, too,” he said.
“Are you sure you’re ready?” I asked, immediately regretting the words. He’d gotten naked and waitedon the couch for me. At some point, I had to trust the signs.
What he said next gave me pause.
“I’m honestly not sure.” His gaze fell from mine, though his hand didn’t stop its exploration. “You know about David, about what I’ve been dealing with, about what I’m still going through. I can’t promise to have all that sorted. It’s not. It’s nowhere near sorted.”
“Peter—”
“Let me get this out, okay?”
I nodded and watched him, reveling in the sensation of his hand on my skin.
“I’m falling in love with you, Benji. I have been for weeks and was too stubborn or blind to admit it. I think about you when you’re not here. I can’t stop thinking about you. When I make dinner, I wonder if you’d like whatever I’m making. Iwantyou to like it because I made it for you. I sit up at night, waiting for you to come home, because I want your smile to be the last thing I see before I go to sleep. I make coffee at ungodly hours just so we can start the day together.”
He drew a breath, closed his eyes, then opened them again.
“I’m broken, Benji, shattered in a million pieces. Losing a partner will do that. But I don’t want to bebroken anymore. I want to heal, and the wanting is often the first step along that path. The wanting is what allows a person to want other things, too.”
“Like me?” I whispered, not trusting my voice for more.
“Exactly like you.” He nodded. “No, that’s not right. Exactly you. No one else. Just you.”
I tried to suck in air, but it stuck somewhere in my throat. I coughed a few times, covering my mouth with the back of my hand. Peter grabbed a glass of water from the side table and handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said, gulping down water as quickly as humanly possible. The liquid trembled with my hand.
Peter’s hand left my chest and reached up to stroke the side of my face.
“I’m crazy about you, Benji, and . . . I know David would want me to be happy. He’s probably smiling down from some puffy cloud, screaming for all the other angels to hear, ‘It’s about time, you idiot.’ I can almost hear him laughing.”
A tear slipped free and tried to make it down my cheek. Peter’s thumb caught it and wiped it away.
We sat like that, Peter naked, his hand stroking my face, and me with my shirt half open and mouth fully open and brain trying desperately to catch up to everything he’d just said—and everything it meant,which was everything.
“Say something,” he said after an interminable stretch of silence.
“I . . . Peter . . . I’m . . .” I pressed my face into his hand, desperate for anything to distract me from the words that refused to come. I was good with words. I talked a lot, more than most people. I never struggled with words, damn it.
Peter smiled, his small, warm grin that meant he understood everything perfectly without the need for language. That was his superpower, after all, knowing without saying or hearing. If I lived to be a thousand, I might never know how he did it.
And so, rather than wait for my answer, he pulled me to him and gave me his own.
