He tilted his head on his pillow. “Do you want me to?”
“No, I’m tired, but no. You don’t have to drop it.” I traced the curve of his pec back and forth. “Remember when I told you about when I first decided to keep Katty, I kept thinking I wanted to finally see someone who looked like me?”
“I remember. I see you in her too. I’m sure when she gets older, she’ll become more and more like her gorgeous mama.” He touched my chin, turning me fully toward him. “But that’s not what you were frowning about.”
“I’m a little scared,” I rushed out.
“Of…us?” His eyebrows winged in surprise.
I nodded. “Not just you and me, but all the good knowing you has brought into my life. It’s…well, I’ve done some reading on adoptees, especially those who never knew their birth parents,and a lot of us carry a sense of abandonment. Things feel impermanent no matter how secure we are.”
His eyes were locked on me as he listened intently. “I know something about abandonment.”
“I know you do.” I rubbed my lips together, trying to gather my thoughts. “I don’t know anything about my birth parents, other than they gave me up. They didn’t want me to find them or have any clue who they were, and that’s something I always carry with me. You know the song ‘The First Cut Is the Deepest’? That was my first cut. It happened at birth and never healed. I don’t think it ever will. So…I just…it’s difficult for me to accept that I can have and keep good things. Sooner or later, reality will set in and it’ll all be taken away. And I know it’s irrational, but that cut…”
He nodded solemnly. More serious than I’d ever seen him. “You even felt that way with your dads?”
I sucked in a shaky breath. “I think I did. It wasn’t always at the surface like today, but it was there. Forever in the background.” I exhaled, just as shaky. “I’m a lot more work than I seem, Ben. Now’s your chance to bow out.”
“Nope.” His fingers spread out beneath my jaw. “I’m not bowing out, Mazz, and I’ve never been afraid of work. The thing is, you are the easiest person I have in my life. My brothers get all emotionally constipated. I have to drag shit out of them.”
My nose crinkled. “Ew. Poor word choice.”
He chuckled, pecking my nose. “See? This is what I mean. You’re easy as hell. Even when you spend the day frowning, you’re still my goofy Mazz, and you open like a beautiful flower when I shine a little sun on you. And I don’t know how to make you feel more secure, or even if I can, but I’m all in with you. I’m so into you, it’s kind of gross.”
I had to laugh, even as my belly swooped. “I’m grossly into you too.”
“You are?” His eyes lit. “How gross?”
“Disgustingly. If I had a notebook, I’d doodle about you.”
“That’s it. Tomorrow, you’re getting a notebook. I demand doodles. Ineedthat to happen.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m one-hundred-percent sure plenty of girls have filled pages and pages with your name in hearts.”
He shook his head. “But not my Mazz. You’ve never put my name in a heart, and that’s all that counts.”
“Well…” I moved my fingertip to the center of his chest, tracing a heart. Then I moved to the center of the invisible shape and wrote his name. “Now I have. Do you feel better?”
Somewhere between the point of the heart and theB, he’d stopped breathing entirely. My eyes flicked up to his face. He’d caught his bottom lip between his teeth as he stared at me, shock and awe written all over his features.
I pressed on his chest. “Breathe, baby.”
Warm air expelled from his lungs as he continued to stare. I pushed up his chest to bring my nose to his, our eyes connecting. Brushing my lips back and forth along his, we breathed together.
“You are the sweetest man I’ve ever known, and I was raised by two very gentle men. I’m sorry you understand how it feels to be abandoned. No matter what happens between us, I won’t ever do that to you.”
He covered the invisible heart with his hand and cupped the back of my neck with the other, holding me in place.
“You’re not supposed to be comforting me,” he croaked.
“I’m only telling you the truth.”
“Well”—he squeezed his eyes shut for a long beat—“if we’re being truthful, I should say I’m really in love with you.”
It was my turn to stop breathing. “You are?” I nibbled his bottom lip. “Open your eyes and say it again.”
He squeezed his eyes shut even harder. “I’m kinda scared shitless. Feels better to keep them like this. I don’t have to see your look of horror.”
