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“Tell me, baby. Tell me what Will said,” Rex insists, holding my face in his hands.
“He said when you think someone’s leaving you slam the gate down,” I manage to get out through my tears, “and then you’re nice, and polite, and helpful, but you’re—” I sob. “You’re not there.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Rex says. He pulls me into his lap. I am a fucking mess of tears and snot and shame.
“Please, I can’t lose you,” I tell him.
It all comes out in a rush of pain and fear and sadness, and I cling to Rex, sobbing into his chest.
“Please,” I’m saying to him over and over until I hardly know what I’m begging for anymore, only that it’s the most important word I’ve ever said.
Rex holds me, cradles me in his arms, and rocks us back and forth, stroking up and down my back and running his fingers through my hair. When I’m finally calm enough that I can breathe without hiccupping, Rex pulls away just enough to look at me.
“This is about Temple?” he asks. “You think that I expect you to leave, so now I’ll pull away like I did with Will?”
I nod frantically. Rex smooths back my hair and nods too.
“Look, we don’t have to talk about that right now, okay? We have time to figure everything out.”
His thumbs smooth my tears away and everything about him is so gentle, from his fingers on my face to the way his strong arms are holding me. And his expression is soft and open in a way I’ve never exactly seen it before.
“Daniel,” he says, stroking my face. “I’m not going anywhere. Don’t you know? Don’t you know how crazy I am about you?”
My hands fist in his shirt and I stare into his eyes, blinking slowly. I guess I did know, but I never imagined he might say it.
He cradles my neck in his hand, thumb stroking my nape.
“I—I love you so much.”
He says it quietly, but it’s like a bomb going off.
I freeze. And yet, a warmth starts to bloom in my chest, melting the block of ice in my stomach. And apparently it melts it into tears, because I’m leaking again.
“You do?” I say, stupidly, which I know is not how this is supposed to go.
He shakes his head, like he can’t believe I don’t already know this.
“Yeah. Of course I do. How could I not?”
I throw my arms around his neck and cry into his hair. I have never cried like this in my life. Huge, surging gasps of tears that leave me feeling lighter instead of heavy, hopeful instead of desperate.
“I—I—” I start to say.
“Shh,” Rex says. “You don’t have to say it back. I know it’s hard for you and—”
What I was trying to say is that I know I’m messing this all up. But I don’t need to. Because Rex is holding me close and making the kind of promises that I could never have known how to believe before now.
He leans back, lying down slowly and taking me with him. He pulls the covers over us, enveloping us.
I feel like a washcloth that’s been wrung out, so drained I can hardly do anything except attempt to move every part of my body as close to Rex’s as possible.
“Oh god, I fucking love you,” I choke out into Rex’s neck, and I can feel his whole body electrify. “I do,” I mutter. Saying the words makes my world tilt to the side. Saying the words is the greatest jolt I’ve ever had. Rex’s arms come around me and pull me down so I’m lying on top of him and he holds me like he’s never going to let me go.
Chapter 16
December
THE NEXT morning, I wake up in Rex’s arms feeling like days have passed. I feel floaty and spacey from crying, a sensation I’d forgotten since I last had it after my mom died. My eyes feel swollen, lashes stuck together with salt and gunk, and my head is muddled. I feel like a soft, cringing snail whose shell has been pried off. But instead of getting out of bed to shower it all away, I force myself to close my eyes and not freak out.
I name the sounds I can hear. Birds. Are the birds in the winter different? I wish I knew something about birds. The wind blowing through the pine trees just beyond the house. A sound that might be snow, but I can’t tell. The hum of the generator. Rex’s breathing. Then I move on to smells. My nose is a little stuffed up from crying and sleeping, but everything smells like Rex’s house. Homey.
Before I make it to breaking down the individual smells, though, Rex stirs next to me and I have to open my eyes to look at him. He’s so beautiful I still can’t believe that I could just reach over and touch him if I wanted to.
