If anyone is fucking this up, it’s me.
“Maybe that’s the only answer I can give.” Her face grows guarded, any openness quickly fading away.
“I’m not trying to force you,” I groan. “I know you’ve been in survival mode, but you can pause. You can slow it down. You can… I don’t know.”
“That’s the thing.” She sounds sad now, sighing as all the fight bleeds out of her. “Youdon’tknow. You don’t know that I can do any of that. Believing it isn’t enough. How do you have more capacity to take on hurt? That’s a problem. I can’t keep doing that. I’m either fully in or fully out, and you know I can’t be fully in. It’s only been a few days since I first came here, running back to you to fix everything. It doesn’t matter what I felt on the inside or what was going on before that. This is our reality.”
“I know. I’m not trying to ask you to decide in a moment. I don’t need you to have all the answers.”
“Don’t you deserve that though?”
My temples are beginning to pound again. “Esme…”
“Whatever that dream was, I’m here. I’m right here. We’re here under the stars and it’s beautiful. Can’t that be enough?” She’s already pulling away, even as she asks.
I feel sick. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. Nothing came out right. She’s tired. Exhausted. I see that and Icare. I don’t want to break her and hurt her. I can’t push her. She’s not ready.
I slither back a few inches, angling myself to the very edge of the blanket. We’re back to having a literal fuckinglifetimein the chasm between us. “They’re beautiful,” I agree. I flip onto my back and try to stifle the sound of my heart cracking right down the middle.
She hears it anyway. Even if she doesn’t want to believe it, she knows me better than anyone. Her next breath trembles on the release and rasps on the inhale. My whole body feels like one massive bruise.
Her eyes flick over to me. I can feel them on my face even though I’m not looking at her.
I debate standing, tugging her up, and urging her to go inside. She should get some sleep. Just because I’ll be awake, staring at the ceiling, afraid to close my eyes in case the dream comes back, doesn’t mean that I need to keep her awake. I’ll be rehashing every single word and nuance and action from tonight. Fighting it out, churning it over, battling with myself. She shouldn’t have to do that. I don’twanther to.
She sighs and I can practically hear the storms in it, but instead of pulling away and retreating, she glides across the blanket, slings her arm over my chest, and cuddles up to me with her head nestled right in the crook of my neck and shoulder. It was made for her. Swear to god.
“I’m sorry,” she whimpers. “So, so sorry.”
My hand catches hold of hers and presses it into my chest, as if I could translate everything in my heart to her with a single silent touch. She tenses and I do too, both of us silent and taut.All my hopes and agony seep to the surface. The fire is dying and the stars are still so bright, and all of it is a hole punched into me.
It’s not that she doesn’t want you. It’s that she can’t.
I know there’s a vast difference and it’s only that knowing that keeps all my feelings from spilling out of me in a messy rush of anger and sorrow, grief and pain, confusion and pleading. There are degrees of devastation, and I feel every single one of them as the purple black night presses me down into the earth.
“You’re so quiet.” Esme pulls her hand from beneath mine, but only so she can trace circles across my chest.
There’s nothing more I should say. I’ve overwhelmed us both.
My breath is so hitched inside my lungs that it rushes out in fits and starts. My chest rises and jerks beneath her fingertip. Is she spelling something? Painting pictures? Drawing a map so we can find out way to each other?
If her answer is no, I need to accept that, no matter how hard it is. I knew that before we came up here. I need to let this be her choice. The difference between now and every bit of the past is that I’ve said it all. I’ve put it all out there. Her not choosing it, or not choosing this time, isn’t her rejecting me. I hope that she knows that. I hope I haven’t fucked it all up by not being clear, or being too clear.
My head is a wrecked mess. I need to stop talking. Thinking. If I keep going, it might explode.
I tighten my arm around her, drawing her tighter against me.
Don’t leave. Stay. Stay with me, even just for a few more hours.
I know I’ll always want more when those hours are up. Isn’t that built into our nature as humans?
“Tell me some of the myths,” she whispers. She was always better at knowing them, but she loved to hear me talk.
I do. I tell her everything I can remember until my voice wears thin and the heat of Esme pressed against me causes my eyes to grow heavy. Until darkness greater than the night wraps around me. It feels like she’s the one keeping watch, protecting me, standing sentinel to wait for a morning that’s not far off.
Chapter 15
Esme
