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I want to be used and devoured, kept near at all times, read over and over again until everything that’s in me is memorized and consumed, the pages are bent and worn with memories, and the marks he left on me can’t be erased.
Bastian could use me all he wanted and spit me back in mismatched pieces, because I’d do the same to him, and our broken pieces would learn to fit together.
That is love. It isn’t perfect. It’s finding a way to be imperfect together.
The sheets laid tattered around the bed from our second round of sex. Bastian and I stared at the ceiling, our hands close together but not touching.
I wore nothing but a sheen of post-sex sweat on my body as I waited for him to confide in me.
“Tell me you love me.”
It came out of nowhere.
He sounded half-desperate, so unlike any version of him I’d ever seen. I didn’t say anything. Just earlier, he’d told me not to.
I didn’t want this to be the circumstances in which I said those words for the first time, but there was no denying now how much I felt them.
I love you, Bastian.
I love your wit. I love how unapologetic you are. I love that you build walls around yourself—not because you’re cruel but because you love too hard.
I love that you love me.
I love that you’re mine.
I kept the words trapped in my mind, where they’d stay until he healed.
Grief is another name for love. It’s all the love he wants to give but no longer can.
For all the love trapped in his body, there’s an emptiness in places once full and a fullness in places once empty. A lump in his throat. A hole in his soul.
I want his love.
I want it so much my own throat feels that same lump, my own soul shares that same hole.
But I don’t want his love because he’s looking for some place to house his grief, and I was the first to tell him, “I love you.”
When he hears the words from me, they will be untarnished by grief.
Bastian waited a few minutes for me to say the words. When I didn’t, he replaced them. “Go to his funeral with me.”
“Okay.”
I knew the risks it’d bring. My half-brother would likely be there. Damiano De Luca scared me, but if Bastian was going to the funeral, there was nowhere I’d rather be.
I turned to look at his face, wondering what ran through his mind.
I cupped his cheek. “Tell me what you’re afraid of.”
He didn’t hesitate, and it struck me how fearless this man was. “Healing. Being okay and happy in a world without him.”
I hadn’t given him the three words he wanted to hear, but he gave me an answer to a question I wasn’t sure my dishonesty deserved.
Jupiter and Ganymede, Vince’s voice filled my head, and for once, I considered it.
Jupiter and Ganymede.
One spins. The other chases.
