Page 124 of Wreckage and Rain

"Colt."

"Yeah."

"I love you. I've loved you since I was sixteen and I never stopped. I tried to stop. The night I was tagged in those photos and every night after that, I tried to stop. I couldn't. The love isn't the part that's hard. The love is the easiest sentence in the book."

"What's the hard part."

"Trust. The hard part is trust."

"Then that's the part I'm going to spend the most time on."

"I'm going to give you mine back in pieces. You're going to earn each piece. We're going to fight about pieces I don't give you fast enough and pieces you think you've earned that I'm not ready to hand over. The fight's going to be the work."

"I'm ready to do the work."

"You're going to be ready some days and exhausted some days. Same as me."

"Same as you."

She puts her hands on either side of my face. Like she did when she kissed me on a sidewalk under a Vibes marquee. Her palms are warm.

"I'm going back to my room tonight. Not because I don't want to stay. Because tomorrow I want this to start clean. I want the first night of the rest of it to be its own night, not the back half of a hard conversation. Do you understand what I'm saying."

"You don't want our first real night to be the tail end of coming out of the ashes. You want to walk into it on purpose, choosing it in daylight. I can wait one more night for that. I've waited longer for less."

"Tell me what I'm saying."

"You're saying tomorrow."

"I'm saying tomorrow."

She leans down.

She kisses me.

It isn't the kiss from the night at her apartment in Chicago when she set the pace and dismantled me with anger. It isn't the kiss from the parking lot when we were kids. It isn't the comfortable married kiss. It's a kiss that holds our entire future between us. Her mouth warm. Her thumb against my jaw. The smell of her, the same shampoo she's always used, the small huff of breath when she leans into it.

I don't move my hands.

I made myself a promise about that when she walked into the room. I'm not going to be the one to reach. I'm going to let her reach. For as long as it takes.

She breaks the kiss. Stays close. Her forehead against mine. Eyes closed.

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow."

She steps back. Crosses to the door. At the door she stops. Doesn't turn around.

"Colt."

"Yeah."

"I'm proud of you."

"For what."

"For not picking up when your father called. For not flinching when Daddy shook your hand. For not following me when I went to your mother's. For not once making today about you."