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His grip tightens over my hand. “Tell me why you’re sitting up here.”
Or not.
I frown. “It’s stupid.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Sighing, I sit up, or try to. At first, he tightens his hold, but then reluctantly he lets me go.
Swallowing, I whip my bangs away from my forehead and whisper, “She was crying.” I blink my eyes, trying to clear out the flashes that my words have caused. “And I got so scared. She wouldn’t stop, Simon. And I thought she was like me. I used to cry like that. On my birthdays. No one could get me to calm down. My mom used to get so frustrated and angry and sad. And I was…”
“You were what?”
I look at his big, sprawled form. He looks so king-like, sitting like this. His shirt half open, his one leg stretched out and the other folded at the knee, his expression all alert and focused. He looks like he could do anything. Anything at all. He could protect me and her, all with his bare, healing hands.
“What if she’s like me?”
Anger flashes through that alert expression of his. “So what?”
“It’s going to be hard. So hard for her.”
His jaw clenches. “And?”
I wring my hands in my lap, an urgency taking over me. Ever since her, I get anxious very easily. Simon knows this. He helps me calm down. He helps me see reason, but when she cries, something comes loose inside my chest. My anxiety can’t be controlled even though I know I’m not being rational.
As a person suffering from depression, I know anxiety. I’ve lived with it all my life. The hopelessness sometimes takes a more dangerous form. It becomes sharp-edged, laced with fear and paranoia.
Paranoia that I might have made her like me.
“I’ll teach her everything,” I say, with my eyes on the man I love. “We’ll teach her everything. We’ll never let her feel less, Simon. She has to know that we love her, no matter what. She has to know that she’s strong. She can do this. She can fight. She has to…” I trail off, not knowing how to convey this to him, my fears.
“Baby.”
I focus on him. “Yeah?”
“Come here.”
His arms are open and I don’t wait for even a second before I crawl back to him. This time, he maneuvers my thighs to straddle his lap.
He takes my face in his hands and whispers, “Breathe with me, all right?”
I nod, my lips parting and grazing his. He parts his lips too and soon, we’re breathing as one. He’s giving me his air and I’m giving him mine.
He’s purging me like he always does. Curing me with his breaths, with his intense gray eyes and his touch.
It doesn’t take me long to calm down after that.
“I can’t watch her cry, Simon. It makes me feel so helpless,” I whisper into his mouth, lax in his arms.
“Me too,” he confesses, kissing the tattoo on my wrist. “You know what else makes me feel helpless?”
“What?”
“Seeing you like this. Hidden away.” He fists my hair and I feel a tug in my belly, a different kind of pull, a delicious kind. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“You were busy.”
“Willow –”
Pressing a finger on his soft lips, I stop him. I know it’s hard for him when I don’t tell him things. He doesn’t like it when I keep secrets. Especially secrets about my moods and thoughts. I hardly ever hide anything from him but still. He gets agitated, and I don’t blame him. How could I, after what he went through with his mom?
God, I love this man so much. Sometimes I just wanna squish him to my chest and keep him tucked away.
I kiss him softly. “I was going to tell you once you came back home, I promise. You know I’d never keep anything from you.”
His jaw is still clamped so I kiss him again, until he presses our mouths together and takes over.
As always, I let him. It’s his turn to be medicated. He needs this kiss, so he knows I’m okay. He needs to know that he owns me, possesses me. That he runs in my veins. He needs the reassurance that I won’t ever keep any part of myself hidden away from him.
Breaking our connection, he rasps in my mouth, “She’s a fighter just like you. Just like me. So yeah, if she needs it, we’ll teach her everything we know.”
I sigh.
The confidence in his words makes me feel even better. He’s right. If she is, in fact, like me, we’ll teach her everything. It will be hard but we’ll fight.
My hands trace his broad shoulders, the tendons of his neck, his hair and back again. “Hmm. I always knew you’d make the best dad.”
“Yeah, you did, didn’t you?” he murmurs, throwing me his lopsided smile.
“Uh-huh.” I bite his lower lip, feeling reckless and in love. “In fact, I think I wanna have more of your babies.”
