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“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Okay. Come into the kitchen and I’ll make you something to drink.”
She gingerly climbed out of the nest, keeping the blanket around her like a cape and refusing to meet my eye. The pack didn’t have a ton of liquor, but we had found it in our initial search of the kitchen looking for cat food. They had all the ingredients, so I fixed up a Shirley Temple for each of us and added a light splash of vodka to hers. She held it with blanket-clad hands and sipped slowly.
“Are you going to leave me hanging or are you going to explain?”
She swallowed down a gulp before speaking. “I feel like the most selfish cunt in existence for keeping you when I can’t give you what you want.”
I slipped closer to her and forced her chin up so she had to look at me. “Are you an expert on what I want? We’ve already talked about that.”
“So you don’t want someone who can say they love you?”
“Can you say that you don’t?”
Luna’s eyes were wide and pleading. “That’s an unfair question.”
“I don’t think so. I care less about what you say to me in this regard, and more about your actions. I’m not saying you do love me, but the things that you’ve done for me don’t exactly scream indifference.”
“I think we both know I’m not indifferent to you.”
“Exactly. And you don’t hate me, so we’re on the right side of the spectrum.”
She took another long drink and set the glass aside, lifting her chin off my fingers so she could tuck against my chest with a groan. “You deserve more than the right side of the spectrum, Luca. You deserve someone who can scream their love from the rooftops.”
With a sigh I wrapped my arms around her. “Not everyone is a rooftop screamer. It would be weird if you flipped the switch like that. I know who you are and I don’t expect you to be different.”
“So fucking reasonable,” she grumbled. “That just makes me feel worse.”
I shrugged, laughing softly. “You know who I am, too. If you want someone who’s going to fight with you, you’re gonna have to look elsewhere.”
Her arms slunk around me, fingertips curling in my shirt. “I do appreciate it. I don’t think I could handle conflict like that anymore.”
“Nor should you have to.”
Any words she could ever give me would always be eclipsed by how she chose to behave. She couldn’t say she loved me, but she could give me her time, her body, her vulnerability. She handed me the secret treasures of her life and didn’t even realize the gravity of it. Maybe she didn’t notice how much she’d shared with me that she hid from others. But I knew.
“What if I can’t ever say it?”
“One day at a time, remember?”
“But—”
I smacked her butt through the blankets. “No buts. How about, instead of getting all twisted up about me loving you, you try to enjoy it a bit? It’s supposed to feel good to have people love you. I won’t bring it up again so there’s no pressure.”
“It does feel good, but that doesn’t mean it’s less scary. I just want to be good enough for you.”
I barked out a laugh. “Do we actually have that exact same fear running around in our heads?”
“In what universe are you not good enough for me?” Luna asked incredulously.
“Um, in all of them? Have you met you?”
Luna scoffed. “So what does it mean if we’re both worried about that?”
“I mean, logically that would mean we’re both good enough to deserve the other, but I’m not entirely certain how well either of our brains will accept that.”
Luna scaled the counter and pulled me closer, wrapping her legs around my waist. “Mine is definitely not going to accept that, at least on my side, and I’m pretty sure Auggie would smack us both upside the head for saying that.”
