Page 90 of Unraveled

“So I’ll never read to you in bed again, or in the bath, or anywhere else. We won’t stay in bed, talking and talking and fucking talking, about everything and anything that comes to your mind. I’ll act like you don’t enjoy being quiet, and that you smile even when you’re sleeping. You don’t need to tell me shit about your mother and father, or your brother, and never mind even thinking about saying something when it comes to your dead sister. I’ll pretend like I don’t know shit about what you like, the things you do, or who you want to be when you graduate in a year. And—”

“I get it,” Cara interjected softly. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Be more specific.”

“I’m being difficult, Gian.”

“Clearly,” he responded dryly.

“Say it to me again.”

“Say what?”

“What you told me in the car earlier.”

“That I love you?”

“Yes, that,” Cara said.

Gian didn’t hesitate. “I love you, Cara.”

His inflection didn’t change a bit. Neither did his expression. He said those three little words so easily, as though it should be obvious to her, him, and the world that he felt for her in that way. He felt so deeply, so intensely, that he could tell her he loved her privately in a Mercedes, where no one could hear or in a liquor store, where a cashier waited for them to pay and customers milled around.

He said it.

He said it like he meant it.

He said words Cara didn’t understand.

Oh, she got the love bit—that she understood well. Too well, probably. She understood that he did love her, because she felt that way, too. She felt alone when he wasn’t there, she heard his voice in her dreams, and she felt him all around her when he was gone. She missed him constantly, she worried where he was when he wasn’t with her, and her best moments had been spent in comfortable silence and sweet whispers with this man.

Of course, she loved him.

It was all the hows that made her pause.

It was the how did this happen that stopped her from saying it back.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” Gian asked.

“Why don’t you ask me to say it back?”

“I don’t need you to.”

Cara glanced away from the honesty in his gaze. “But you want me to.”

“That’s not what you asked. You asked why. I don’t need to hear you say something that I already know, Cara. And do you know how I know?”

“I’m listening.”

“I know you love me because I can count on one hand the times you’ve asked me for something, or needed something from me, or wanted just me until tonight. I can count on one hand, but I’d only need one finger to do it. Just tonight—that’s the only time you’ve ever taken something from me that you wanted. You called, you wanted me with you, and that says more than anything else you ever say possibly could.”

“And why is that?”

She didn’t mean to be so goddamn defensive, but it was hard. Her walls were her go-to defense for anything that seemed like it might reach too far inside her emotions or cut her too deeply, when it was all said and done.

Gian was definitely one of those things for Cara.

On both accounts.