“I can’t communicate this.”
“Why not?”
“Because, if she knows what I want, it’s as good as mine. It’d basically be manipulating her. She is so unfathomablykind. She’d sacrifice herself completely for anyone if they’re sweet enough about it. She needs to know whatshewants. And I need to be okay with that not being me.” A cuss leaves me, and I feel like a child again, curled up, panicking after a failure left my back blazing. The memory of my father’s belt buckle hitting me israwin my brain. In this moment, I’m a child again while Viktor looms nearby, stable and kind and a voice of reason in the darkness of the pain we all endured. “Iloveher, Viktor. Ilove her. She makes me so happy, and I don’t even know why. I don’t know what’s different about her beyond that—” I swear. “—look in her eye that screamssupplication. I shouldn’t be wanting her for her submission. She’s just…everything about her…is precious. She puts little stickers in her rainbow recipes, and she hasn’t sung yet, but every time she hums while she’s baking, pressure builds like hope in my chest that her remarkable voice might bring forth words, and that I might know them, and that we might turn to each other like we’re in a musical and harmonize so perfectly nothing else will ever give me the same high.” Gripping my hair, I whisper, “I am not a gentle person, Viktor…yet she’s as delicate and soft as a cloud. I can’t crush her in my fists. I can’t bottle her. I can’t have her. At the root of it all,” my voice breaks as tears fall, “I’m not good enough for her.”
Gentle, Viktor rustles my hair, and I look up to catch his smile. “Lukas, that feeling is exactly what will make you good enough for her.”
“Don’t give me hope,” I hiss. “I will abuse it.”
“No, you won’t.” He rises. “Not if it means hurting someone you love.”
My heart fragments.
He offers me his hand. “It’ll be okay. Promise.”
Gripping his hand, I swallow bitter helplessness, and dare to hope that he might be right.
