Page 86 of Fight from the Heart

“I love you, angel, and I’ll fight for you, fight until the end to deserve your love in return.”

I swipe at my eyes with my free hand, still holding Jacob’s hand. My heart has just ridden a roller coaster of emotion, and I’m drained. I need rest. I need not to think, but I’m also so full of love.

“I love you, Jacob.” My free hand covers his head, swiping over his hair as his head lies on my belly.

“I meant what I said the other day. I want to find you in my bed every night and wake with you every morning. I want to take care of you, Lilac, like you always take care of me. Let me try. Or teach me.” He sits up straighter. “Just don’t quit on me.”

“I’m right here, Jacob.”

“Move in with me.”

“Jacob,” I drone. “We don’t need to jump ahead.”

“We can step back. We can go on dates that don’t lead to sex. We can go back to hand holding. Just be in my house. Tell me you’ll move in with me. Promise me you won’t leave.”

“It’s too much,” I tell him while laughter fills my voice. Can this really be happening?

+ + +

Within a day, I’m sent home—Jacob’s home—because he refuses to let me go anywhere else. True to his word, as my body heals, Jacob tends to me.

He gives me baths but doesn’t turn them sexual.

He massages my body, avoiding the bruised areas, but doesn’t attempt to make them sensual.

He holds me at night, kisses my shoulder or neck, but it’s nothing heated.

It’s pure torture.

He also does lots of hand holding.

A week passes like this, and he’s romantic. As it’s mid-May, lilacs are in bloom, and he brings me handfuls that I’m certain he stole from other people’s yards as he doesn’t have any bushes of his own.

“White, for innocence.” He’d hand me the flower and kiss my belly.

“Dark purple, for passion.” He wiggled his brows, and I’d groan as I’m desperate for him.

“And true lilac, for first love.” He swiped the flower at my nose before giving it to me.

I also find poems on his pillow if I wake alone. My favorite of them is “Romance” by Edgar Allen Poe, about a man who didn’t believe he’d care for love, didn’t think it could happen for him, but when it does, he can’t stop himself from falling into it. It’s rather appropriate for my dark writer.

Then one day, I wake from a nap with a poem titled “Evermore.”

Not a poet myself, by trade,

I’m taking a chance to persuade.

A man of words in many ways,

Yet I have not the ones to say,

All that I feel and need and want,

And so I cheat with words of yours.

Dedicated to my heart, I

Must now be true. The fact being