Page 30 of Sting of Sin

But with her forehead against mine, with her breath unsteady and her hands holding my face, with her telling me she was coming the rest of the way, it rose out of me before I could stop it. Before I could be careful. Before I could talk myself out of being allowed to say it. The truest thing I owned. “I love you.”

She went still.

Not backward.

Not away.

Just still.

“God help me, Bee, I have loved you so long I forgot it was a thing that could ever be said out loud. Years. From across rooms. From the wrong side of glass. Loving you with my mouth shut because you weren’t mine to want, and I’d made my peace with dying that way.”

Her eyes filled.

I watched it happen.

Watched the shine gather and hold without falling.

“I couldn’t seem to ever stop loving you,” I said. “I loved you when you looked straight through me. I loved you every time you came apart and every time you put yourself back together before I could even reach you. I loved you when all I had was the privilege of being in the room.”

“Eli—”

“I know this doesn’t buy me anything.” My hands stayed flat on the bed, though every part of me wanted to touch her. “I’m not saying it to make you give me something back. I just need you to know. I need there to be one place in this world where the truth about you is spoken plain.”

Her hands trembled against my face.

“What truth?”

“That you are loved beyond reason.”

The first tear slipped free.

She looked furious at it.

I lifted one hand slowly, giving her every chance to stop me, and caught it with the side of my thumb before it reached her jaw.

She leaned into the touch.

Barely.

Enough.

Then she pulled back just far enough to look at me, eyes wet and steady at once, and gave me the thing she had been holding. The words she had kept locked behind the glass for weeks. Saving them, she had told me once, to give whole instead of letting some nightmare drag them out of her in the dark.

“I love you too,” she said.

The world narrowed to her mouth.

“I’ve loved you for so long. And I wanted to give it to you like this, with nothing chasing me into it. No fear making the choice. No pain speaking for me.” Her fingers slid back into my hair. “So here.” Her voice softened. “It’s yours. Whole.”

My eyes closed.

I couldn’t help it.

Then, quieter, the corner of her mouth lifting, she handed me back my own words from that first morning over the coffee.

“And the rest of it you’ll just have to find out.” Her lips nearly brushed mine. “Try it three ways.” A whisper now. “Pick the one you like.”

And it undid the last of me. A sound left me that I would have denied making to any living man.