Page 131 of True Colors

Luther’s apartment in the Four Seasons is just what I need. Its clinical, hotel-like feel is both distant and comforting.

I sit on the couch, and my body gives out all at once. I curl in on myself, sinking down until my cheek rests on my folded hands.

“Tea?” Luther asks.

I nod.

“Chamomile?”

I nod again.

When he comes back, mug in hand, I’m crying. Not ugly sobs. I’m just…leaking. It’s how you cry when you’re exhausted, when something that has been holding you in a tight, nasty grip lets you loose.

He sets the mug down and sits beside me. He doesn’t say anything, just pulls me into him, fits me to him on his lap. I fold into him.

He understands this isn’t about him fixing anything. Just like Finn, he knows what I need.

His hand moves up and down my back, steady, patient, letting me fall apart without trying to stop it.

“I said goodbye, didn’t I?” I whisper at some point.

“You did.”

“I…don’t know who I said goodbye to,” I admit.

His chin rests against my hair. “It’s okay not to know.”

“Maybe it’s to the mother I never had,” I muse.

“Maybe.” He kisses the side of my temple. “Maybe…you said goodbye to the idea of how it could’ve been different if she’d been different.”

That! That’s when I know he gets it. Gets me.

“I don’t feel relief. Just…finality.”

“That’s allowed,” he assures me.

I cry harder then.

For the childhood I survived. For the woman she never was. For the fact that even now, part of me still wishes it could have ended another way.

Luther doesn’t let go.

When the tears finally slow, he carries me into the bedroom. He helps me undress and gets into bed with me.

He wraps himself around me in bed and holds me. We lie skin to skin. I fall asleep with his arm around my waist, his heart beating steadily under my cheek.

At some point, I hear him on the phone.

“No, Mom, I don’t think she can eat soup when she’s sleeping.”

I smile at that and fall into darkness.

I sleep through the night—the times I wake up, he’s with me, and that reassurance helps me go back under.

The rays of the sun are peering through the curtains in his bedroom when his lips brush against my cheek. “I love you.”

“Luther?” I kiss his chest.