Loving Lukas is easy, too.
Maybe some people will always be harder to love.
Yeah, or maybe some people should be sent through a wood chipper.
I blink and force my eyes back up a few lines.
Loving Lukas is easy, too.
Loving…me?
Clara loves me?
“Cupcake?” I murmur.
Her coloring halts, and she looks my way when I twist to see her. Sniffling, she smudges quiet tears off her cheek. “Yes, Lukas?”
“Did you mean for me to see this?” I offer the page to her.
Her damp eyes scan it. “Yes? I gave it to you, didn’t I?” Her gaze halts as she catches the line I’m talking about, then she stiffens. “Oh.”
So, she didn’t mean for me to see this. She forgot this was in here.
She pulls her lip into her mouth as she caps her pen and turns it over between her fingers. “I thought I kept all of that sort of thing in myothernotebook.”
There’sanothernotebook? Filled with thoughts aboutme?
Her attention slashes to my eyes. “Before you ask, no, you can’t have that one.” She reaches for this one. “Actually, I should make sure the rest of this is kosher, too.”
“It’s paper, cupcake. Trees. No pork. Perfectly kosher. Vegan, even.”
“Kosher definition number two. We’re not discussing Jewish law, but if we were, I’d need a rabbi to bless that in confirmation of its pork-free-ness, so…”
I roll when she stretches, and she tumbles against my chest.
Flushed, she pushes herself up, looks at the notebook I’m holding out near the headboard, then finds my eyes. “Please, Lukas?” she whispers.
“Again.”
“Please?” Her damp eyes whimper, droplets clinging to her blonde lashes. “My King.”
I cup her face, brush the pad of my thumb down her pink lips. “I hate to see you hurting like this.”
She swallows. “I’m sorry.” She drops her face against my chest, wrapping her arms around her head. “I’m grieving. And I feel so…stupid…that I let them take advantage of me for so long. I gave everything, over and over again, as though anything would change. I begged for scraps of affection, approval, anything. I saidat least they don’t hit mein my mind constantly—as though the brutality of the spankings I received when I was little didn’t count. I once… I once thought the only reason they weren’t hitting me was because I was hanging my head, pleading for forgiveness, and promising to do better. But I…I can’t believe I was right. I’ve thought my life was full of arguments. I never realized I hadn’t had a single one until Saturday night. They treated me like a slave, used me for their power highs, made me responsible for the peace while wrecking mine. There is not a thing about myself that I like. The only consistentalmostcompliment my family hasevergiven me is about my chest, which hurts me every single day and has absolutely nothing to do withme. I feel like an object, and I don’t know how to grieve for a relationship that was only good when I acted like one.”
Placing her notebook at my side, I comb my fingers through her hair and have no idea what to say. Grief is a journey that each individual makes in their own way. I can’t feel the process with her. I can’t relate my own experience with losing my parents to hers. I can only be here, and hope that doesn’t make anything worse.
“Say something,” she whispers. “Please.”
“I love you. For you. Not what you can do for me. But if it is easier still to think about your worth in quantifiable actions, everything you do for me isperfect. It’s appreciated. It is treasured. You are not an object. You are beautiful in ways that need no correction to better the quality of your life. I can’t makethe hurt go away, sweetness, but I can hold you through it. I can give the power of your life and your choice back to you. I can tell you it does get easier, even if it never goes away. I can promise to fight at your side whenever the battle rears. Trauma is a lifelong war, but the seasons of peace, I’ve found, do get longer. Eventually.”
“I’m so tired.”
“I know, Clara.”
“I just want to sleep, so I won’t have to think.”
“Think about me when it’s too hard to sort through things about them. Keep your eyes on me when the rest of the world is too much.”
