“Probably.”
“But why would I risk it? I’m growing rather attached to the idea of kissing you. Maybe once I’ve experienced that delight, I’ll return to my menacing nature…find a little salt…find a little wound…see if you’ll cry for me.”
“To be honest, you don’t really act like you’re attached to the idea of kissing me.”
“Don’t I?”
“Not even a little bit.” Lifting myself, I look down at him, trace the shape of his jaw with my eyes, bring shaking fingers to the trim hair shaping it. “Why?”
Dazed, he disintegrates for me, adoration violent in his mesmerized eyes. “Why what?”
“Why don’t you seem to care at all whether or not we kiss?”
“Oh.” He lifts a hand to my face, paints his thumb through the blush coating my cheeks. “It’s not that I don’t want to, but doesn’t this mean so much more? I like taking care of you. I like seeing you desperately fighting your instincts because you want to be closer to me. I like knowing you want me enough to do things that are painful and hard. I guess I get a little lost in all that and forget to care overmuch about the end goal.” Boyish and innocent, Malcolm laughs, eye sparkling. “I just love you. And I really like loving you. And what the—” He swears. “—does kissing have to do with it?”
He really likes loving me even though I’m…
No.
Heat rises, consuming me, and I crumple against him, desperate to fill my arms and lungs with as much of him as I can take.
He loves me for all that I am, not in spite of it. And no matter how twisted his reasoning for enjoying the cracks and fractures, I find that I don’t care. I don’t care because he sees beauty in my broken, potential in my problems, and worth in my worries.
He tips the scales on my damage and gives weight to who I am, with every struggle intact.
He’s monstrous. A huge red flag. But who cares?
He kneels for me. He runs for me. He waits for me. And helovesme.
Enough to listen. Enough to press.Enough.
“Two weeks,” I say.
“Two weeks until the most romantic holiday of the year,” he adds.
I sigh. “Why does Iverson keep saying that?”
Malcolm laughs. “Honestly, who knows? We support, and we don’t judge.”
We support, and we don’t judge, huh?
Sinking, I murmur, “What a thing to say.”
And what a way to live.
Epilogue
?
For the Sake of Us.
Azalea
Flag Day
Blue. I’m wearing blue. Ice blue.Notwhite. And I’ve driven myself to the younger Swallow brother’s estate. And I haven’t yet died.
I’ve spent weeks not dying, though, so maybe not dying now isn’t such an anomaly either.
