“Do you dream about things with us that right up until now have seemed out of reach?”
I roll my lips inwards, holding my breath as I listen to the rasp in his voice.
“I have been so terrified of telling you the truth, and even now, I can only do it because you can’t hear me and won’t ever know, but I need to tell you I haven’t been pretending. It has never been fake. I have wanted this for so long, and now I have it, it’s with a time limit. This will end, and I’m desperate to keep hold of you, but you’ll slip through my fingers and we will go back to how we were. You’re my best friend, Sidney, but I want you to be so much more. How do I tell you this when I am so terrified of fucking up and losing you?”
I can feel my heart pounding in my throat and my eyes burn where tears are building along my waterline.
“How do I tell you that I am so deeply and irrevocably in love with you that the idea of losing you feels like I’m being held over a burning pyre? How do I tell you that my heart, body, and soul belong entirely to you?”
A tear slips out the corner of my eye as I turn onto my back and tilt my face toward him, seeing the shape of my heart in the shape of him.
“You just did.”
Chapter Twenty
For someone who just said a whole lot, I now have nothing to say. I feel the weight of her stare on the side of my face, my confession hanging in the air between us.
“Was that…” she trails off, “Was that for me?”
“Everything I do is for you,” I rasp. “I exist for you.”
“Noah,” she whispers, a hitch to her tone that suggests she’s on the verge of crying.
I turn and reach for her, terrified I’ve just gone and fucked this all up.
Fuck!
I thought she was sleeping! I thought I’d be able to say what I needed to say to get the damn weight off my chest. The words had been choking me, and it wasn’t until I finally spoke them that I realized they’d been trapped inside me damn near my entire life. The truth is meant to set us free, but I may have just ruined it all.
“How long?” She asks, turning to me so that we face each other in the dark.
“Since we met in high school.” I confess.
“All this time?” She croaks. “You’ve waited all this time to tell me this? Is this why you offered to do this for me?”
“I offered because there isn’t a single thing I wouldn’t give you,” Gently, I slide my hand toward her, seeking out her own. Our fingers bump, and she allows me to thread our fingers together, the connection easing some of the panic rising up inside my chest, threatening to choke me harder than stifling those words did.
“And yeah,” I whisper, “perhaps there was some selfishness to it. No, not perhaps, Iwasentirely selfish. I thought if this was the only way I could have you…fuck! It sounds insane.”
“Noah, you do understand there would have been a baby at the end of this?”
Would have been…
“I know,” I swallow thickly, “I just wanted to be close to you.”
“Are you sure this isn’t, you know, the sex talking?”
I chuckle without humor, “It isn’t the sex, though the sex is the best I’ve ever had.”
“Wait, really?” Sidney bolts up, her hand grasping my wrist.
“That’s what has you stumped?” I blink up at her, only able to see her shape and nothing more.
“Well, you’ve slept with a lot of women, Noah.”
“That what you think?” I shake my head, “Yes, there have been women, but not as many as you think there have been.”
“I’ve walked in on you before.”
