“Who knows the extent of the list of my crimes? Do you care if I did so long as you’re loved?”
My head shakes.
“Do you know that you’re loved? Really,reallyloved? Have I done at all a good job of making you feel how much I love you?”
“You haven’t touched me tonight.”
“I said I wouldn’t.”
“If I were a man…”
“You’d still be cute.”
I mellow, eyeing his smile. “…I’d be interested in things that I don’t know whether or not I’ll ever be able to do. Do you…not care about that?”
“Azalea,” he murmurs, sheathing his hand in the sheet to cup my cheek without touching it. “If you ever want to, we’ll get there, and if you don’t, we won’t.”
My voice strains. “What if I’m never even comfortable kissing you, crow?”
He sighs, and I flinch. Sweetly, he says, “It’s like you’ve immediately forgotten that I’m a train wreck. Poor, poor,horrible Malcolm can’t have kisses. Boo hoo. So what if you never get that comfortable? As if I deserve anything half so lovely.”
“If I love you, I don’t want to treat you in accordance with what you deserve. I want to—”
He cups the sheet to my mouth, silencing me. “Punish me? Could I be so lucky?”
His hand slips away, and I stare.
“I’m messed up,” he says. “Please tell me you got that part. Or else I’m going to start feeling mildly disquieted concerning all the evil plotting I’ve committed under the justification of proving to you that I’m worse. In truth, I could find anything to justify my behavior. That’s just how I am.”
“Mildly disquieted,” I echo.
“Verymildly. It’s part of beingworse. Guilt and I don’t spend much time together.”
I can’t stop myself. As my heart squeezes, I smile. “You love me.”
“So much, Azalea. It hit me like it just hit you. So, tell me, if I couldn’t give you anything more than what I already have, would you still love me? Could you even help yourself?”
“No, I don’t think I could.”
“That’s how it is. Tell your brain that. Lots. Over and over and over. Spiral with it until it’s the only thing left on repeat. If it were just this…” He lifts his covered hand, and I set my palm against the sheet, letting our fingers match. “…and nothing more…I would still love you. You would still be my wife. And I would always call you mine. Understood?”
With the peace of those words sinking into my flesh, I close my eyes, tangle our fingers together amid the sheet, and say, “I think…I’m starting to.”
Chapter Twenty-six
?
This is the part where he cooks for her.
Malcolm
“And now, now you wash your hands again.” At her usual island seat, Azalea—anxiety incarnate—turns her crystal heart over between her fingers and watches me like a frightened, just-hatched, baby hawk.
Conceding to her instructions, since we’re taking things one step at a time and the goal today is just getting her to eat food someone other than her has made, I wash my hands for the twelfth time. Never mind that I only started cooking for her roughly fifteen minutes ago. Far be it from me to complain.
After all.
I woke with my wife snuggled against my side, her fists in my shirt, and her lashes fluttering with a dream. Every single day, she grows more perfect and more precious. And now that the truth is out concerning my villainy, we have reached our perfect beginning. It’s the one I’ve wanted ever since I saw her for the first time.
