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I stared at him, my heart so full I hardly had space to work out what he’d just said.
“But . . . but you can’t change your name—you’re, like, almost famous,” I said.
Rhys burst into laughter. “I think people will figure it out,” he said finally.
Then his eyes turned intense, and he pulled me down on the bed so we were facing each other.
“Really, what do you think? Nyland-Argento? Argento-Nyland? Do you want to?”
I pictured mail arriving addressed to us. Pictured train tickets and credit cards and phone bills and junk mail. Every one a visual reminder of our connection. The hyphen holding us tightly together, telling everyone we had chosen each other, chosen to be a family.
I nodded and buried my face in Rhys’s neck before he could see me start crying. I was having a tearful fucking week, and it made me feel vulnerable and on edge.
“Yeah?”
I nodded into Rhys’s neck and wrapped my arms around him. Rhys held me tight. “I can’t wait to have the same name as you,” he said, low and rumbly. “We can do it on Monday, okay? First thing.” I nodded again. “Hmm, so which sounds better, Max Nyland-Argento or Max Argento-Nyland—”
I socked him in the shoulder, and he laughed. It was hard to punch someone while clinging to them for dear life, but I kinda managed it. And, okay, I cried for a little while, and Rhys hummed the new song he was working on and twined his fingers in my hair.
“Rhys,” I said after a while. I felt like a damp towel, so full up with emotion I’d been dripping for days. “I never thought it was possible to love someone as much as I love you. Like how your brain can’t imagine a color you’ve never seen. I just . . . I didn’t have the ability to even think of it. And every time I felt more for you, and more, and more, it . . . it was like I had to break apart the universe and remake it as one where I could love you more.”
Rhys’s hands tightened in my hair and on my back.
“I know I did a lot of damage. When I was breaking it apart. I know I hurt you. I was clumsy with it. But I wouldn’t ever want to go back there. To that other world where I didn’t know how to love you. I wouldn’t want to live there. I . . . I know you don’t like when I say this, but . . . you saved me. Not—” I said quickly, knowing he’d object. “Not like a superhero or anything. You made me want something. For myself. You made me want you and once I started wanting things I didn’t want to stop. You don’t . . .”
I took a shaky breath and wiped my tears on the pillow.
“You don’t know what it was like. When I wanted nothing. When I thought I would never have anything. It was like . . . going through every day as a zombie or a ghost. Now I feel . . . so fucking alive. I never thought I’d have a home or a family, and you . . .”
Rhys held me as I cried. There was something about even the feel of his body that communicated how much he loved me. How he never judged me for crying, or for when I couldn’t cry. How he’d happily keep me wrapped in his arms forever. It made me free.
It didn’t hurt that he was crying too, tears wetting my hair.
“I grew up with a great family,” he said slowly. “I knew what it felt like for people to have my back, to be proud of me, love me. I was really, really lucky because I never wondered what I wanted. I knew I wanted to have that. A family of my own, with someone who loved me that much.”
Rhys stroked my hair back and then stroked my cheek. I turned to look at him. We were both a mess.
“What I didn’t know,” he went on. “What I couldn’t have ever imagined, was what it would feel like to love someone as much as I love you. I knew what I wanted, but I didn’t have a clue of what I could give. Some mornings I wake up and you’re still asleep and this . . . this love inside me for you feels like it’s screaming. I think, ‘You’re mine,’ and it feels like—” He shook his head. “I can’t even explain. It feels like you’re part of my own body. The idea of something hurting you makes me—I would rip apart anyone who tried to hurt you.”
His eyes flashed but his fingers were so gentle on my face.
“I never thought it could feel this way either, Matty. I knew what being loved felt like, but it feels like a whole new thing the way I love you.”
