that one time, on new years eve, when trouble was overdue for a...

that one time, on new years eve, when trouble was overdue for a haircut and making bliss’ heart soar ♥♥

Love tangles tightly like roots through both of us and all of this.

We were made to love.

It’s the meantime that makes me uneasy.

As he shifts again, Thomas’ too long hair tickles the top of my bare chest. I can’t help my smile, and he loosens his arms from my middle in turn. Holding my sides, trouble nestles his nose and chin and lips over my skin, tickling me purposefully.

My laughter is hushed, but strong. Keeping our secret requires intentional effort on both our parts. Neither of us speak, but I hear this boy shush-laughing, too. My heart hears his, reveling in simple affection, and it’s mostly air—whisper-wrapped and breath-filled—but it’s one of my favorite sounds in the world.

We twist and push and pull, and I giggle so silently-hard that my cheeks hurt, and behind my squeezed-shut eyes and deep in the bottom of my chest, fluttering and thriving at the top of my stomach, I feel everything that makes me, me, pulling toward Dusty.

Between tangling and turning, pleading and swearing without a single word, he pins me on my side, letting me catch my breath before descending on me once more. Curved fingers tickle under my shirt while Thomas covers my neck with too soft nip-kisses that make my heart crazy. Pushing the smallest bit free, I gasp a fresh breath and look up. On his knees, sort of behind and kind of all around me, love smirks. He sniffs, and in the fractional leeway he’s granted, I turn to my back and take both his hands in mine, holding us still. His eyelids are tired-heavy, but his blues glint, very awake, and their light burns right through me.

With a slow blink, Dusty’s smirk grows into a smile, and love is so abundant, so prodigious with truth in his eyes, it’s staggering, because as good as this feels, love is also toilsome. It’s more than challenging. It’s awe-giving, but love is an uphill battle and a compulsory force, and as Thomas looks down at me with adoration, I know he’s feeling it too. My person every bit as strong as our deal, and in this moment, I feel like if he wanted to, he could eat me alive and love would swallow me whole.

He brushes his thumbs where he’s holding my hips, just feeling. Just like I was. 

“I love your heart,”  he tells me, making it beat. “ And your heart loves me.” 

“Thomas,”  I say softly. 

Leaning down so our noses and foreheads touch, the boy whose heart I love kisses me with devotion and regard. We kiss until I’m breathless and blushing, blissed-out like the miracle he makes me feel like I am. With my hesitation superseded, and overgrown blonde going every which way my fingers have brushed it, we turn onto our sides and Thomas brings me closer. He lays his palm where his ear was before, right over my pulse beat. 

“You were made to love me, Leigh,”  he says quietly, as if his touch leaves any room inside me for doubt. “It’s why you were born.”