Oh well. I would never be known for my decorum anyway.
My shoulders slumped, and I let him hold the weight of my head with his finger as I studied his blue eyes, strong jaw, and nose with a tiny little scar at the top, and his full bottom lip and thin top one.
“You keep talking about being overlooked,” he said, waking me from my memorization. “But nothing about you and this night has been forgettable, Bee. You’re the most interestingperson I have ever met. These last few hours have changed me ir-irrecoverably,” he said softly and carefully.
All my injustice and hurt evaporated like the superficial thing it always had been. Looking at the raw honesty pouring from him, it became clear that of the two of us, despite my bold claims to the opposite, only one of us here was truthful tonight.
I understood now that any attempt to seduce him was the growing understanding that this night would end, and I would lose a chance at closeness to him.
The desperation to hold him was only tobeheld for a little while longer.
But now it didn’t feel so important,thisfelt important. This breathing of each other’s air, this learning of how to talk to each other. Maybe that mattered more than any physical connections ever would.
“Trust me, I’m not forgetting about this night or you anytime soon.” His hand moved from supporting me to wrapping around my neck, his thumb brushing along my jawline to send tremors throughout me. “But what sort of person would I be if I took advantage of this situation? How would you feel about yourself later? How would I feel about myself later?”
I let his words sink in and truly listened to him like I wanted to be heard.
And I understood then. Owen was agoodman trying to do the right thing in a bonkers situation. A situation I had caused.
More than that, he was somebody I wanted in my life for more than a night, longer than the objective of a bored, rich man. I wasn’t ready for this night to end. Every hour that ticked by meant going back to a life I never felt a part of. I would never be okay without him now, and that realization terrified me. It made me lash out in a ridiculous manner.
I had been lying to myself. I’d been watching and studying how “normal” humans operated from a dusty shelf on the edgeof rooms my whole life. And I didn’t want that anymore. Hadn’t that been what NYNB was truly about? Changing how the world saw me?
I had to come clean about this night and what it meant if I wanted to change.
“It’s not just about the statue, Owen,” I started slowly, wrapping myself farther into his flannel.
“I’m listening,” he said, and the relief was tangible in my neck and shoulders.
“I can’t explain to you how it feels to be overlooked and forgotten time and time again. It changes a person’s psyche. It makes me feel like I have no value. Tonight, I was meant to take the reins of my life back. I’d heard everybody talking about their big plans for the new year and I started thinking that I wanted that too. I thought getting that story published would help the statue, but it would also help me. And now, after these hours with you, I understand something else.”
He held my hands, and I took a deep breaking breath in.
“I don’t want this night to end and go back to normal,” I started hesitantly, voice wobbling on its way out. “I think that if, in the future, your eyes move over me without stopping or seeing me like everybody else in this town, I-I think that I might just shatter into a million pieces,” I said, my entire heart and soul on display for him to see.
And all I could hope was that he continued to handle me as gently as he had been.
Chapter 17
Owen
Bee’sraw honesty was a new level of authenticity that ripped through the last bits of chivalry that held me together. I scooped her fully to me. I held her trembling frame as close as I could without crushing her.
Go back to normal? I’d already forgotten what “normal” life was. Looking back was like Dorothy looking back to Kansas after the Technicolor experience of Oz. I’d been in a world of sepia tone until Bee splashed every color in the rainbow over everything.
I kissed her forehead as I found my words.
“Absurd,” I said as I kissed her temple. “Silly.” I kissed her other temple. “Maddening.” I rubbed my nose along hers. “Woman.” My lips brushed along hers.
She gasped, and her arms gripped me tighter.
“There is no going back to before. I just don’t want to scare you.” She spoke of her heart shattering, and it was how mine felt if she were to look at me the way the rest of the town did. If she saw me as a big dumb brute, but she hadn’t yet and probably she never had.
“We only really met a few hours ago,” I said.
It was a rationalization, a reminder to slow things down. We couldn’t be behaving like this with just a few hours between us.
But did that matter? I said it but I hardly believed it. It felt like my soul had always known hers; I felt that I knew her and her needs instinctually. Poets talked of this connection, and I thought they all were just fools in love, but maybe there was something to finding a person who was genuinely meant to be in my life. A genetic design to it all. How had we been this close for all these years only to see how well we fit now?
