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“I don’t talk,” he countered.
“Stop being difficult. And you talk to me,” I said in a flirty voice, testing the waters.
“Stop trying to seduce me,” he said, surprising me.
“Do I really have to try? All I have to do is offer you my ass, and you take it.”
He shrugged. We both knew I had a point there.
“Come on, Riv. How long has it been since you’ve gotten to do something like this? Stop fighting any way you can to enjoy yourself or be happy. Just let go a little bit.”
“You say that like it’s easy. I don’t…” He waved his hands in the air. “Do this. Know how to do this. Everything always gets fucked up.”
Riven hadn’t really had a lot of good, had he? Outside of Betsy, most things in his life had been screwed up, and damn, did I want to be something different for him. His parents hadn’t wanted him, and his grandpa had died before Riven could even get to know him. My dad taught him to be a criminal from a young age, made him think he was loved, then used him to save his own son. I wanted to show him another way, when really, I didn’t know much about having any other kind of life either.
“I won’t let it, Riv.”
He rolled his eyes. “I don’t need someone to take care of me. You or anyone else can’t fix my life.”
“I don’t want to fix anything, but I do want to be here for you, to be a soft place for you to fall. Let me try to give you that.” I walked over to him, risked holding his hips and looking him in the eyes, and he let me. “Take a risk with me. Don’t make me fall alone.” Because I was falling for him. I liked Riven a lot. I wanted to be those things for him that he never had, for him to be able to depend on me, to lean on me, have someone who would always have his back and fight like hell so nothing would hurt him.
I waited for him to pull away, to tell me to fuck off, but he just sighed. “I don’t know how to do what you’re asking.”
“Neither do I. Not really. But we can figure it out together…if you stop fighting it so hard.”
I grinned, and for some reason, it must have been contagious because Riven caught it. His was smaller, but it was there.
“Let’s fucking do this, I guess,” he replied, as if he was just talking about sleeping outside, but I chose to believe he was talking about everything.
We finished carrying everything out to a spot where the trees broke above us and we could see the stars. We lay on our backs, hands beneath our heads, our elbows kissing.
“Was it hard?” I asked, which was a dumb question. Of course it was, and though I didn’t specify what I meant, Riven understood I meant prison.
“Could have been worse.”
“Does it have anything to do with why you don’t sleep well?”
“Maybe. Before it was easier, when I was coming down from all the shit I was pumping into my system. I just don’t know how to turn my thoughts off.”
How did I find that button inside him to give him some relief? To shut it down so he could find peace?
“Hmm…I’ll have to see what I can do about that.” I hesitated a moment, then scooted closer and set my head on his arm.
Riven didn’t move right away, but then he did, his arm stretching out, not to push me away, but to wrap around me. To let me rest on him and nuzzle in. “I don’t know how to do this,” he said again.
“Do what?”
“What we’re doing.”
“What are we doing?”
“Jesus, Parrish. You know what I mean.”
“I don’t expect you to do anything. It’s going just fine, if you ask me. There’s no set way on how to do anything. We just keep working together to find what’s best for us.” I didn’t need to use the words boyfriend or dating. I didn’t need a label or rules. Some people did, and that was fine, but this whole idea that life was one size fits all was a joke and needed to go. That if people didn’t date or screw or love or, hell, just exist the same way as someone else, that they were doing it wrong or that it wasn’t real. “The only thing that matters to me is that no one else fucking touches you. If they do, there will be a problem.”
I didn’t have to look to know he rolled his eyes.
“You think I’m yours? You own me?”
“Don’t worry, Riv. You own me too.”
Another sigh ghosted past his lips, but he didn’t argue. “Earlier you wanted to hear something good about me. Let me hear something good about you.”
