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Nuzzling into me, I feel her grin against my neck, her hand splaying out on my chest. “Promise?”
“Yeah, baby, I do.”
“Good.”
“How’s studying going?” I whisper against her hairline, flipping off the lamp on her nightstand.
She huffs. “Boring. I feel like a freshman plopped down in a five-hundred level class. My brain doesn’t even know what to do with the lecture materials at this point.”
I shift, pulling her higher up on my pec. “Why marine biology? You don’t even seem to like it that much.” In fact, the only things she seems to have an interest in are playing with her niece and nephew and spending her nights with me. Occasionally, I’ll catch her scrolling through her phone, reading local news articles under her breath, but any time I ask about her interest in journalism or politics, she clams up.
“I love science,” she says after a beat of silence, swirling her index finger around my nipple. It puckers, and she giggles, sucking in a deep breath. “Caroline had her thing growing up, I had mine. Only, Daddy—ahem,my father—insisted that it was a man’s world. He always used to say any company that hired a brain-dead bimbo like me would just toss me out and feed me to the sharks.” There’s a twinkle in her eyes as she drifts backward in time, her gaze distancing from me. I cup her chin, drawing her back; she blinks, a soft smile tugging at her lips. “I guess when I applied for college, I subconsciously chose marine life to fuck with him.”
The glint in her eyes has a confession dripping from the edge of my tongue, but I bite the tip, keeping myself in check. Now isnotthe time, but fuck if the spiteful vixen inside my little bird, my kitten, doesn’t make my dick throb and my chest tight with need. Withfeelings.
“What would he think of this?” I swipe my thumb over her cheekbone, mesmerized by the smoothness of her skin, the flawlessness of her existence. She’s a pure flower, sprung from the earth to bring color and joy, and I can’t help feeling like I’ve plucked her too soon. Clipped her at the petals, pulled her from the stem. “Of you and me?”
Leaning into my touch, she shakes her head. “The only opinions on us that matter are our own.”
“Oh?” I raise an eyebrow. “And how do you feel about us, kitten?”
“I feel like…” She trails off, staring up at the ceiling as she loses herself in thought. I inhale that rich vanilla scent that seeps from her pores, trying to commit every inch of her to memory in case any of this turns south. “Like you and I are gonna be okay.”
I laugh. “Beautiful lukewarm sentiment.”
She pushes up on her elbow, running a hand along my chest. “You’d be scared if I gave you the unabridged version.”
The breath whooshes from my lungs as our eyes lock, trapping us in a chokehold we don’t struggle against. There’s no point—we’re too far gone.
“I’m not really sure how to reconcile what you do for a living,” she admits, moving to lay her head in the crook of my neck. “But I think I’m starting to accept that there are some evils in this world that exist to protect the good. Some sights so ghastly, some buildings so haunted, like they’re trying to preserve what’s left inside. And sometimes, what’s left, is worth the bad shit.”
I gaze out the window, counting the stars dotting the night sky, feeling infinitesimal in comparison. I’m not sure how I can feel like the weight of the world rests on my shoulders, when it’s clear the stars carry most of the load. That’s why they’re scattered, displacing our troubles in the dark so we don’t have to face them in the light.
“I think you’re only evil because you choose to be,” she whispers, the sound so soft I have to strain to hear it. I roll toward her, twisting my legs with hers. “I think you’re scared.”
“Baby, sometimes people are just bad. There’s no rhyme or reason, they justare.”
“Maybe. But you’re not one of them.”
“Are we just conveniently forgetting all of the horrible things I’ve done to you?”
“I’m not forgetting them. I’m choosing to forgive you, because the good you’ve done for me matters more.” She presses a kiss to the column of my throat. “And before you say it, no, I’m not giving you an upper hand by letting those things go. Forgiveness is forme, not you. It’s my peace of mind, my sanity on the line. If it helps you sleep at night, that’s just a bonus.”
On a sigh, I trail my fingers through her hair, my heart beating so hard I’m sure she can feel it shake the bed. “You talking to your therapist more these days?”
“Maybe.” She snuggles into my side, trying to burrow into me. “I’m working on it. But mostly, it’s a battle withme. It’s like… playing a game of chess with yourself, right? You’ve got all the pieces for a good game, but your opponent knows all your moves and tricks.”
Her breathing evens out, the soft rise and fall of her chest causing a canyon to split wide open inside me, the feel of having her here against me, despite everything I’ve ever done, making me ache. “Maybe one day I’ll teach you how to play,” she murmurs, her last words before she falls back asleep.
I don’t know how she knows I can’t play, don’t know how she’s aware it’s something I’m even interested in, but it amplifies the electric fire inside me, singeing every nerve ending and sending searing pain up my spine. My heart pounds so hard I’m afraid it might crack a rib and burst straight from my chest.
I don’t deserve her. She’s springtime, rebirth and resurrection, a field flowering after months of endless slumber. The darkness I thought stains her soul is nothing more than a blanket, slowly being ripped away with each passing day. It’s not permanent, not set in stone.
Not yet, anyway.
And I fear the longer I keep her with me, the harder I fall, the more irreparable she becomes.
Now, I have no intentions of letting her go.
