Sully’s hands faltered amidst stroking my hair. “What?”
I didn’t want to say it again.
Luckily, Sully didn’t make me.
“Well, that’s…” My insides twisted as I watched his face and the evidence of his dream shattering, even while he was trying to hide it from me. “That’s okay. We can talk about it.”
“You want kids more than anything in the world,” I said, unable to let him lie to me. He didn’t need to lie to me. I knew it wasn’t okay. I’d been preparing for the fact that it wasn’t okay. “You have entire lists of name ideas. You created our future house in Sims. You constantly wonder if our kids will have my eyes or my hair. You have our entire future mapped out.”
I loved him so much, and nothing terrified me more than letting him down. Of not giving him the dream he’d always wanted. It felt like so much pressure for someone whose brain and body were not on the same page. For someone who was complicated. For someone who was high-risk.
I felt stuck.
But Sully didn’t have to be.
Sully didn’t have to have risks.
He swallowed. “Well, apparently things…change.”
He looked as devastated as I felt.
But was he holding on to me so tight because he wanted this with me? Or because this was the idea he’d had in his head since he was fifteen years old, and he hadn’t taken the time to imagine anything else?
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Sully shook his head. He turned his body to face me, giving his full attention. I could see all the crumbling lines in his face. “What happened? You’ve always wanted kids.”
“I…well, yes and…no,” I said honestly. “You’ve always assumed I wanted kids.”
Sully would paint pictures of our future, and I would lie on my back and listen to them. And I loved them. I loved the idea of them. I loved the dream.
But as I grew older, I wondered if that was all they were, when faced with reality.Myreality, where everyone told me I had to be careful, and that thought had wormed so deeply into my brain that I couldn’t shake it.
“I—” Sully’s jaw dropped, like he was just realizing that we’d neverexplicitlytalked about it. Clarified it. He’d never asked me the question, “Do you want kids one day?” and I answered, “Yes, of course I do.” There wasn’t any of that. Because when you meet at thirteen and fourteen, you think you want what’s around you. “You’ve never wanted kids?”
“I didn’t say that,” I replied carefully.
“But you don’t know?”
“I don’t know,” I confirmed.
“Why did you…never tell me?”
I sat with that for a second, not knowing how to respond. Because the truth was, there hadn’t ever been anything to tell. Not until recently. And I could tell him why, could explain what happened, but it was so much easier to say it was just something I wanted or didn’t want and not that it was something I was scared of.
Blaming it on a conscious decision than a fear I had no control over gave me just the tiniest bit of power back when I felt like I had none.
When I didn’t respond, Sully asked instead, “What do you want, then?”
“You,” I said. Because I couldn’t deny that was true. I had a feeling I’d always want him, and that was what was so painful about this. “That’s the only thing I really know.”
“I want you, too,” he said automatically.
“No, Sawyer,” I sighed.
“No?” His expression was incredulous.
“You want more than me,” I said softly.
