“Tess.”
“Mm?”
“I need you. Slowly.”
I shiver. “Yes.”
“I want you to know that I love you. Before anything else. I need you to know that first.”
Every nerve in my body pulls taut. Not a shiverbut something deeper,structural, like a foundation shifting to make room.
“Take me upstairs, Sullivan.”
The loft is warm because the heat from the wood stove has been climbing all night.
Sullivanplaces me on themattressandundresses meslowly, as ifhe’sunwrapping a gift.My glasses first, which he sets on the small bedside table.Thenthe flannel, easing it back over my shoulders.Myt-shirtfollows, his eyes on my face the whole time, asking with every inch.
Then he stops. He looks. His eyes drop to my breasts and stay there for a longmoment, and his jaw works.
“Tess.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re so fucking beautiful.”
I give him the samelookI’vegiven my mirror for years.The look that says I have lumps.The look that says I have stretch marks from the summer I was twelve and grew four inches in three months.The look that says I have a stomach and hips and thighs that have never matchedanybody’sidea ofbeautiful, including, on most days, my own.
“Sullivan, you don’t have to?—”
“Stop.”
Hedoesn’tsay it harshly. He says it the way he asks me ifI’mwith him during a kiss. Patientandanchored.
“Sit up for me.”
I sit up.
Themattressdips as he settles beside me. He puts his hand flat on my stomach, his palm warm and huge against the softness of me, his thumb tracing the finesilverylineson my hipwhere my skin remembers being twelve.
“Thisbodyhas carried you, Tess.Every part of you.Yourlaugh. Your stubbornness. The way you talk to trees. The way you throw Tupperware at a manyou’veknown three minutes.”
My throat tightens, and tearsstingmy eyes.
He inhales ashakybreath as hishand covers my left breast.“And your extraordinary heart.I haven’t hadwordsfor a long time. But I have a word for this. For you. You are beautiful.”
Now I’m crying, the tears spilling down my cheeks.
He cups my face and thumbs away the wetness.“I see you, Tess. The whole of you.Every soft place I wanted to put my mouth since the first morning you waved at the trees. You’re beautiful. Not despite. Because. Youdon'thave to believe me yet.I’lljust keep saying it until you do.”
“Sullivan?”
“Yeah.”
“I believe you.”
“Good.”
He kissed the corner of my mouth, the place under my jaw, the curve of my throat where my pulse is hammering.
