I'd never once lain in the dark afterward and feltrearranged. She thought I was the one who'd given her something tonight. She had no idea she'd handed me the thing I'd spent half my life making sure nobody could reach.
I pulled her in tighter. She was mine to care for now. Even if I couldn't say it out loud yet. Even if I had no clue what I was supposed to do with that.
23/
a man who stays
julian
I never really slept.I drifted somewhere around three, maybe four, with Alyssa asleep on my chest, and then I was awake again at five, staring at the ceiling. I didn’t move, even with her body making my arm go numb, because there was nowhere on this earth I’d rather have been than right there, watching her sleep.
I’d spent the better part of two decades making sure this exact thing never happened to me. Every woman before her kept a distance where they couldn’t reach anything that mattered. I wasn’t looking for this, yet here Alyssa was anyway, asleep with her mouth hanging open and her guard all the way down.
I wanted her in my life. And to have her the way she deserved, I was going to have to take apart the entire framework I’d spent years building. The careful machine I’d made of myself so nothing could get in far enough to take me down. She was already in, past all of it. The machine had failed, and I wasn’t sorry about it.
Lying there thinking, I could see my father. Not in the room, but back then. Lying on the floor beside a bed he couldn’t bring himself to sleep in anymore. A big man knocked down to nothing, because the person he’d loved since he was ten years old was taken out of the world. Love did that to him. That was what waited on the other side of letting somebody matter that much. You handed them the power to end you, and prayed God let you keep them.
I shut my eyes until the picture faded. When I opened them she was still there. Still breathing. And I made myself look at the choice I was making without flinching. I could keep Alyssa at the edge of my life where losing her couldn’t level me, or I could have this. Not both. And the thought of going back to the careful nothing I’d had the nerve to call a life? That was a no.
So… all in, then.
I don’t do things halfway. I wouldn’t know how. If I was doing this, Iwas doing it the way I do everything that counts, which is completely, with everything I’ve got. Even with my father on the floor in the back of my mind. Even with no idea how to be a man who stays. I’d figure out the how. Deciding is the part that matters, and I’d just done it, watching her sleep.
I wanted my head right before she woke, so I eased my arm out from under her and she frowned and resettled, but didn’t wake up.
I needed to go for a run. I found a notepad and wrote two lines.
Gone for a run. Don't go anywhere.
Left it on top of her phone and ran until the sky went gray and then pink at the edges, and somewhere in those miles I worked out how I was going to handle this.
Because it was going to require handling. I was usually a particular kind of man in this area. I didn’t do gentle as a long-term setting. I could be demanding, and I didn’t hold back when I didn’t have to, and I’d never had a reason to. With Alyssa it was going to be different. I’d realized it the second I settled between her legs and felt her brace.
She’d angled away from me, like she was looking for somewhere to hide. Like her own pleasure was a chore a man would want to skip. Then she cried from beinglookedat. From being wanted out loud with nothing asked back.
A woman doesn’t get to that place by accident. Somebody gets her there slow, over years, until she stops knowing she’s hungry. The cold that went through me thinking about how she had been treated had nowhere to go, because the culprit was already in the ground.
She wasn’t inexperienced. She was unexplored. Which was, in some ways, more delicate. I was going to have to be patient. Careful. Learn her pace before I pushed a limit, let her lead wherever she wanted to go, and stay in that space, until she forgot what it felt like to brace. Until being desired started being the thing she walked in expecting.
By the end of my run I had it mapped. Every way I’d take my time. Every limit I’d let her set. I’d give whatever she needed from me, for as long as she needed, at her pace. I was good with that. More than good.
Alyssa was still asleepwhen I got back. I took a shower and when I came out she still hadn’t moved. I stood in the doorway of the bathroom and looked at her. One arm stretched into the space where I had been. I crossed the room and got back into bed, slid behind her andsettled her back against me. Her hand found mine in her sleep and held it.
She started to wake up, and I pressed my lips to the top of her head. She tipped her face up and found me looking down at her.
“You showered?”
“Went for a run.”
“Without me?”
“You needed your sleep.”
“Mm. You smell good.” Then she kissed me with her hand on my face and the morning light coming through the curtains. She looked at me and smiled, then started moving down.
My first instinct was to stop her. I didn’t want her feeling like I expected her to. “Alyssa.” I caught her shoulder —patient, generous, I thought— “You don’t have to?—”
She stopped and looked up at me, and it was not the look of a woman who needed reassuring that nothing was expected of her. It wasn’t that look at all.
