He didn’t move. Couldn’t.
“Don’t.” My voice barely a whisper. “Not yet.”
“Not yet.”
He stayed. We stayed. His weight settled. He was still inside me, slowly going soft, the wet of us mixed everywhere. On my stomach. On his. Between my thighs. Across the duvet, underneath us. His mouth pressed slow against my temple, my cheek, my mouth.
“Thank you,” he murmured against the ink.
Whatever was left of me unstitched. I cried. The ugly kind, tears leaking sideways into the pillow, into his shoulder, into his neck. He held me through it without fixing it. Without making it smaller than it was.
When the shaking slowed, he eased out of me. Slow. Careful. The slip of him pulling free pulled a small, soft sound out of both ofus. He pulled me into his chest. Tucked my head under his chin. His hand spread between my shoulder blades.
“Are you okay?”
My voice came shredded. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.”
“You’re crying.”
We lay there for a long time. His heart against my ear. The careful Ellis tic, that thumb sweep, traveling up and down my spine in long, slow strokes.
“She’ll come around,” he said, after.
“Yeah.”
“And if she doesn’t, I’m here.”
“I know.”
I pressed my face into the hollow above his collarbone. Closed my eyes. Felt the slow up-and-down of his thumb on my spine and the steady drum of his heartbeat under my ear and the wet ink of the Libre tattoo where my own tears had pooled.
Free.
Different definition tonight.
Chapter sixteen
Sierra’s idea. The pact.
We were at her place on a Tuesday, just the two of us, which was rare these days. I’d been spending most of my free time at Ellis’, and Sierra had been building her life around Lauren in that all-consuming way people do when they’re newly in love and haven’t yet learned to ration it. But she’d texted that morning. Come over, important, bring wine. Something in the phrasing told me this wasn’t casual.
She’d opened the door looking like she hadn’t slept. Salem wound between her ankles as I stepped inside, and Sierra pulled me straight to the couch without the usual pleasantries.
“I’m telling my parents,” she said. “About Lauren. About being pan. All of it.”
I set the wine on the coffee table. “When?”
“This week. Thursday. Tobias and Thalia are going to be there for backup.”
I studied her face. Sierra was the bravest person I knew in all the ways that mattered. She’d tell off a catcaller twice her size without flinching, showup for anyone at three in the morning without being asked. But this was different. This was her parents. Her dad, who still thought “normal” was a thing people could be, her mom, who measured love by how closely it resembled a Hallmark movie.
“Okay,” I said. “That’s big.”
“I know.” She pulled her knees up to her chest. Salem jumped into her lap, and she held him like a shield. “I can’t keep hiding Lauren from them. It’s eating me alive. And Lauren deserves better than being someone I only talk about in safe rooms.”
That hit close to home.
“You should do the same thing.”
