“I should have told you.”
“I’m staying.”
She pushed me onto my back and she straddled me and she took her time, moving slowly against me, making me wait, making me understand through the physicality of her body that she was in control now, that this was her choosing me, not her surrendering to me. Her hands were on my chest, feeling the particular rhythm of my heart, understanding through touch what she was having trouble understanding with words.
When I tried to flip her over, she resisted.
She said, “No.Like this. I need to see your face. I need to know you’re here.”
So I let her control the pace.
I let her move above me, let her find the rhythm that worked, let her take what she needed from me. I watched her face as she moved, watched the moment her expression changed from tentative to certain, watched the moment when she started to let go of the anger and the hurt and the six days of separation that had stretched between them like a chasm. The particular set of her jaw softened. The line between her brows disappeared. She looked the way she had looked on Day 22 when she had watched the game from the stands.
I said, “I love you. I should have trusted you with the truth. I should have let you decide what to do with it instead of deciding for you. I was protecting myself by protecting you. I was trying to control the story instead of letting you be part of it. And I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
She came down and she kissed me, deep and slow, her hands in my hair, her body moving against my. The moment was building. I could feel it in the way her breath was starting to quicken, in the way her movements were becoming less careful and more urgent, in the way her skin was warming under my hands.
She broke the kiss and she whispered, “I know. I know you’re sorry. I can feel it. I can feel you.”
I moved my hands to her hips and I helped her, finding the angle that worked, moving with her instead of against her. I said her name like it was a sacred thing. “Maple. Sunshine. God, Maple.”
When she came, she came with my name on her lips, and I felt the moment like it was a kind of forgiveness, a kind ofreturn, a kind ofokay, I’m letting you back in, but you better understand what that means.
I held her close, my hands anchoring her to me, my face buried in her neck, breathing in the scent of her—cinnamon and something like home. She was still trembling. I understood that this was not just pleasure. This was her choosing to trust me again. This was her body saying yes when her words were still uncertain.
I came moments later, holding her like she was something precious, something fragile, something I had been given a second chance at and was not going to waste. My breathing was ragged. My hands were still shaking.
Afterward, they lay together without moving.
Her head was on my chest.
My hand was in her hair.
I could feel her heartbeat slowly returning to normal, could feel the moment when her breathing deepened, could feel her starting to relax against me in a way she had not relaxed in six days. The room was quiet except for the sounds of their breathing and the distant hum of the heating system.
She said, “Tell me about Caleb. All of it. The thing you’ve never said out loud.”
I was quiet for a long moment.
I understood that this was the moment. This was where I chose whether to keep protecting her or whether to let her in all the way.
So I told her.
I told her about the night I had driven us home from the tournament. I told her about Caleb taking the passenger seat because he was tired, about how I had told him to lay it back, about how I had said I would drive the rest of the way and he could sleep. I told her that he was asleep before we hit thehighway and that the road was empty and the snow was light and the headlights came around the curve in the wrong lane.
My voice was flat. I had rehearsed this story a thousand times in my head but had never said it out loud to another living person. My hands were shaking.
I told her about jerking the wheel and the truck still taking it on Caleb’s side. Head-on. I told her about coming to in the cab with the dash crushed in on me. I told her about the concussion, the airbag, the door folded in like paper. I told her about saying my name in the ambulance and me never saying anything back.
I told her that the other driver had walked away. Drunk. Walked away.
I told her that I had spent the last thirteen years knowing that I had been the one at the wheel and that my brother had been asleep in the seat I had told me to take.
I told her about the rosary I kept in my coat pocket. The one the priest had pressed into my hand at Caleb's funeral. The one I touched every time I felt the weight of my guilt becoming unbearable.
Maple did not say anything.
She just held me. Her arms were around me and her face was against my chest and her breathing was steady, and she let me talk, let me say the thing I had never said to anyone, let me finally, finally put down the weight I had been carrying for thirteen years.
