“How come?”
I couldn’t voice how or why I thought it was wrong, but I could check in. I could try to understand, to prove that I saw him, and I wanted him, and nothing of what made him who he was would put me out or make me think he wasn’t worth the hassle or whatever it was that he thought on any given day.
Ever turned around then. He’d been staying still too long, so it shouldn’t be a cause for concern, but he didn’t just move to a different position. He got his legs off the bed, and he sat with his back to me, while I had asked him a question.
All the alarms started going off in my head, the need to reach for him so strong I could feel it climbing up my throat along with my heartbeat.
My palms grew clammy.
“I don’t wanna have to deal with it today, is all.”
It so wasn’t all.
He was a terrible liar. He was aware that he was.
“Are you going to be for real?”
Ever groaned. His head hung low.
I waited. It was all I seemed to do. All I could think of doing.
“What do you want me to say?” he asked. He wasn’t turning back, but I could see him fight the urge to move around. The urge to leave. “Whatever I say, you’re going to think I’m out to trap you into doing something I don’t want.”
“I’m not,” I argued. It was instinctive, even if the words felt like a lie on my tongue. I had been doing that, struggling with the knowledge that he wouldn’t and the pit in my stomach that he could if he wanted to. “Come back here. Please.”
Ever hesitated. He hesitated, when he was usually the most touch-starved beautiful sight every time I asked him to get anywhere near. Every time I was within reach.
I was going to be sick.
I always felt a little sick the day I had a therapy appointment. Even more so when I had to wait because someone was running late or taking longer than planned.
Today, I already felt like I was going to hurl, and I hadn’t even had breakfast.
Fucking great.
“Why?”
I sighed.
“I just need to fix this. Please.”
It took more than a few seconds. I watched, completely still, as his throat bobbed up and down, his Adam’s apple protruding against his neck. Eventually, he was facing me again, and I didn’t overthink it. I just needed him. I needed him to understand that he was everything. That I loved him, therapy or not, fucked up shit with Marian fucking Stuart or not.
I needed to draw strength from him, too, to soak in the suppleness of his lips, the barely there vanilla aftertaste from the gloss he’d worn last night. The way his body gave in to mine, even when he wasn’t sure about this. When he was expecting me to pull away and discard him, as if that had ever been within the realm of possibility. It hadn’t. I knew it, but maybe he didn’t. Maybe I had discarded him, not in any major way, but in the ways that mattered to him. To who we were.
“I love you.” The words were whispered against his parted lips. Then again, against his flushed cheeks, against the whimper that fell off his lips before he buried himself against the crook of my neck. Before tremors followed, and I wrapped my arms around him as tight as I could manage. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
I felt him shake his head, but I didn’t give him enough room to pull away. He’d have things to say, but I wasn’t ready for them. I didn’t want to keep talking. I just wanted to let our bodies…reconnect? Was that the right word?
I didn’t know.
He was the only thing that had ever made sense. The only person I’d ever felt safe around.
“You and me against the world,” I croaked out the words. The words that were supposed to be a silly, childish mantra without any meaning beyond those years in boarding school, but were way more than that. “I promise.”
“I still don’t want the cage on.”
“Why?”
