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“Hey, hey, hey.” He slid his chair next to hers, close enough to rub her back. “What’s wrong?”
“What am I…going…to do?” Her voice was shattered, and he realized that even though they’d talked about real things, hard things, even though he’d teared up more than a few times during their phone conversations—no big surprise there—she never had. He didn’t like it, Mira crying.
“Come here,” he said, pulling her onto his lap, holding her while she wept so silently the only sign of it was the wet spot her tears left on his shirt.
“What will I do?” she asked the safe space between his neck and shoulder. “What will I do when she’s gone? When she leaves like everyone else?”
Everyone else?He supposed it made sense, after her dad, and then her stepdad, and then Paul, that she felt abandoned, left too easily. Well, good or bad, he never left anyone easily.
Sliding an arm under her knees, cradling her against him, he rose from his chair. While she clung to him, he carried her into her bedroom. After closing her door behind them, he placed her on her bed, slotted in behind her, curled his body around hers, and waited, letting her cry, not speaking. Not leaving.
“We never talk like that anymore,” she said softly after several minutes. “But we used to. We used to talk like that all the time. We’d have these long conversations about parenting, about life and religion and politics over a glass of wine after Ian had gone to sleep. I hadn’t realized how long it had been. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed them.” A deep breath shuddered through her. “I hadn’t even realized they were gone.”
He pressed a kiss to her spine, right over the first note of her tattoo.
“She was so lucid tonight. She was soMom. And every time she wakes up like this, I know I shouldn’t, but I always wonder, is she getting better? Has this all just been a bad dream? Are all the doctors wrong? Are we the lucky ones?”
Wrapping his arm around her waist, he pulled her close.
“But then she’ll get confused again, she’ll forget. She might not even remember that tonight happened. Tomorrow she might, but in a month? A year? These memories that mean so much to me and to her, they might just…vanish.” She bent her knees up, hugging them tightly to her chest, and Cole slid his arm around them too. “It’s always been us. After everyone else left, we always had each other, me and Mom. And I feel so selfish, but I don’t think I’m strong enough to watch her leave me too.”
There was nothing to say to that, nothing that he thought would help, so he didn’t try. He only held her, running his thumb over her wrist, letting time pass. Eventually, her shoulders relaxed as she released her knees, took his hand in hers, and pulled it up to her lips.
“I’m sorry I’m falling apart,” she whispered into his knuckles. “I know this isn’t our deal. You don’t need to stay here with—”
“Fuck our deal,” he said. “Respectfully.”
“Cole, I’m serious.”
So am I, Mira.“It’s okay. Sometimes we have to fall apart. Life does not stop and start at our convenience, right?”
The tiny laugh she huffed made his heart ache.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised. “If you need to cry, I’m here. If you want to talk, I’m here. If you want to stare at the wall in silence, I’m here. Whatever you need tonight, I’m here.”
Her lips were soft on his skin, but her fingers squeezing his were cold. “I think I have to tell you something,” she said. “But I’m worried you’re going to think I’m weird.”
“Okay,” he said with a half smile.
“It’s just,ugh, this is so embarrassing, because what I’m doing, the way I’m acting when we’re together, it makes no sense. It—”
“Is this about the secret orgasms?”
Rolling over to face him, her mouth set—ironically—in a little roundo, she said, “You know?”
“Of course I know.” She might be able to stifle her moans well enough, but she could never hide the way her cheeks and her tits flushed red, the way she gripped him when she came. “I can feel it.”
She groaned, burying her face in his chest.
“What’s wrong?” He brushed a hand over her hair.
“What’s wrong?” she repeated in an unnerved rasp. “I’m having silent orgasms. I have no idea why. And you’ve known the whole time!”
He couldn’t help but smile. “I just figured you didn’t want to jinx it. Like when the Mariners are on a streak or your record is climbing the charts. You don’t talk about it. You just keep your head down and hope for the best.”
Clearly, she didn’t want to laugh, but she did anyway, and he loved the sound. Then she looked up at him again, her eyes pleading. “But it’s not okay. It’s not okay, becauseIam not okay. It’s just, you’re too good. You’re too good in bed. You’re too good in…me.” Cupping his cheek, she said, “You’re too good, Cole. And it scares the shit out of me. It scares me so much I’m having silent orgasms. What kind of weirdo does that? I mean, nobody in their right mind does that. But that’s the thing. I’m not in my right mind when I’m with you.”
He hadn’t been in his right mind since he first laid eyes on her, but even if the sensation felt phenomenal to him, it made a solemn kind of sense that it might not feel that way for her. And maybe that was the thing, the stop sign she kept trying to erect between them. He was ready for the challenge of moving heaven and earth to be with her, and she already had so many challenges that adding one more to the pile might make it all feel insurmountable.
