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What does scare me is that they aren’t on the front lines today. Instead, they’re somewhere in the background, lingering on the edges of my psyche while some other, more positive emotion takes the spotlight. Happiness. No, not just happiness. Joy.
The kind of joy that’s hard-won, mined out of caves of darkness and caverns of pain. The kind of joy that comes paired with peace, settling in your bones and encouraging other bright, rainbow-colored emotions to come out and play.
Home, for me, has always been him. The circle of his arms. The heat of his skin. The leather and earth scent of him that normally grounds me, but today sends my already unstable world careening over the side of a cliff.
I try, and it doesn’t work because I’m freaking out. Because I’m scared, and this was supposed to be simple, but it’s not. Because this morning, I woke up in the life I was supposed to have with the man I’ve always wanted. Because I’m happy, and I can’t trust it.
I’ve accepted that I’m having a full-blown panic attack and find myself wondering what being honest with Chris about why I want to run before I actually do it might look like. I stand just outside the kitchen, listening to the low pitch of his voice on the phone, and allow myself five seconds to picture it. The relief of standing in my truth, of trusting him completely.
"Make sure you lock up when you leave, okay? I love you.” The door slams, but I know I heard him correctly.
He’s gone, and it’s the first time he’s left, and I absolutely believed he was coming back, but I’m still here, in the silence of our home, and I hear my response loud and clear even if he doesn’t. “I love you too.”
He came back here to revive me, to breathe new life into our love, and I told him he couldn’t do it, but he did. He pulled me out of the grave his father dug for us and used the soil to plant a garden for our future.
<3
“It’s like a weighted blanket. Steady, gentle pressure.” “Secure,” Sloane says. “He makes you feel secure.” “Security doesn’t feel like this, Sloane.”
“Yes, it does, Mal. It feels exactly like this. But when you’re used to not having it, when you’ve gone so long without it, security feels like…” she trails off, and I turn to look at her. I can tell she felt it, too. When it became clear that she was in love with Nic, she must have felt this same panic, doubt, and fear. “It feels all wrong,” she finishes. “Like something you should run from instead of run to, but you can’t keep running, Mal.”
!!!!!!!!
My chest aches, the way it has been for weeks now, and I rub at it with fingers that are tired of trying to soothe a phantom pain they’ll never be able to fix. Because I’m bleeding out, hanging on the edge of this life, and only her fingers can heal me. Because I’m weak and broken, and only her hands can sustain me. Because I am past dying—every moment I spend without her takes me further away from the verb, from the act of ceasing to live—I am dead, and only her love can revive me.
If I’d had my way, she wouldn’t have. She would have been with me. We would have stayed up all night trading stories of her brother. Ones we both know, and ones we never heard. I would have held her as she grieved him all over again, and maybe we would have paid a visit to him too. Maybe, we would have met Nic and Sloane there and stood in a half circle around his headstone, infusing his final resting place with love and promises of sustained friendship and lifelong bonds.
“Then where should we do it, princess? Tell me, please. Name the time. The place. Give me the fucking longitude and latitude, and I’ll be there. Just please don’t keep running, don’t keep hiding from me.”
For some reason, I’ve always tried to keep my questions about Daddy to a minimum. I always figured it was too painful for Mama to talk about him, but now I know there’s comfort to be found in the act of sharing your lost loved one with someone who never got to know them like you did. Of passing along their essence through words and stories.
cheek. “I didn’t fall in love with your daddy, Mallory. I sunk into it. Slipped it on like a pair of my favorite jeans, like a threadbare t-shirt that’s softer than anything has ever had a right to be.”
“The first time I hugged him, he smelt like home. And that’s what he became for me, what our love became for us. A place we moved into with intention, that we sought out with purpose even though it surprised us.”
“You keep wanting certainty, baby,” Mama continues. “But certainty is a desire of the brain, not the heart. The only certainty we get in this life is death and the grief that comes with it. Everything else is ours to make, to hold in our hands and shape with our palms. To nurture or let die.”
The moment he reaches me, he sinks to his knees, both of his hands going to my waist, his tear soaked face buried in my stomach. But it’s the sobs that get me. The way he still manages to speak through them while I look down at him in shock, wondering if this is how it feels to fell a giant, to slay a dragon, to conquer a king.
"I realize ten dates might have been too much to ask for, but don't ask me for less, princess. Don't tell me this is the end of the road for us. I'll do anything. Anything but let you go, so please don't ask me to do that because I can't."
Every apology Chris has given me since his return to New Haven has been real, true, genuine. I’ve always known that, but I’ve never let myself feel them. I’ve never allowed myself to sink into them, to perceive them as evidence of his love for me instead of a reminder of his guilt. But this apology? This is the apology. The one too raw to ignore, the one too guttural to dismiss. The one that sets everything in my world back to rights.
“I love you,” I whisper, so quiet it’s almost like I’m saying it to myself, but Chris hears. His eyes fall shut, relishing in the truth, allowing it to wash over him. “I love you,” I repeat, voice stronger, more sure. “And I want this. I want us. I want our forever.”
Awwwww FINALLY!!!!!!
“You love me,” he teases quietly. “I do.”
“Because Mama will disown us if we do what I want to be doing right now in her kitchen.” Chris’ brows raise, his eyes dancing with intrigue as he steps back and helps me off the counter. “What do you want to be doing right now, princess?” “Loving you,” I answer easily, happy that for once there’s no hesitance, no desire or need to hide what I truly feel.
I can’t bring myself to go. I want to be close to her. I need to be close to her, to hold her hand and kiss her face, to look into her eyes and remind myself that this is real.
When I came here, I thought I was walking into our ending, a one-man processional carrying the casket of our love into a church where Mallory was standing in a pulpit, prepared to read our eulogy. But she’d surprised me. Her sermon was one of life and not death, of futures dreamed of but unrealized, and if I hadn’t already been on my knees, I would have fallen to them.
She does as I say, spreading the wetness on her fingers on the nipple that’s been getting all my attention. I replace her fingers with my own, pulling and tugging gently while Mallory sighs, nuzzling her head into my lap, into my dick that’s hard for her, drops of precum soaking into the fabric of my briefs. I want more. I need more, but it won’t happen tonight. It can’t.
“Have you ever come like this, princess?” “No,” she whimpers. “I don’t know if I can.” “You can,” I assure her, confident in my ministrations, in my knowledge of her body. “Just relax. I’ve got you. Let me give you this one, and then I’ll stop. Then I’ll be good.”
“I love you,” I whisper, just because I can. “I love you, princess. Do you hear me? I love you with everything that I am, everything I could ever be.” Back to her nipple now, light touches that get harder, applying more pressure when I see her toes start to curl. “We’ll have to do this again when you’re sitting on my dick, and I can feel your walls pulsing around me. You’re so snug when I’m deep inside you, Mallory. You fit me like a fucking glove, do you know that? That greedy little pussy was made for me.”
“Christopher,” she pouts. “I think we both know that I need more than one orgasm. What is it you called my pussy?” She arches a brow. “Greedy?”
“It is, Chris. That’s exactly the word you used, and you’re right.” Her hips are moving again, winding in maddening, slow circles. “When it comes to you, to that beautiful dick you said was mine, I’m insatiable.”
It’s so quiet. We’re barely moving, barely breathing, and still it’s enough. The connection, the desire, the love. Even in the confines of this room, in the unyielding walls of the silence we must maintain, in the moans of pleasure we must restrain, it’s enough. To send us over the edge. To catapult us into the stars, into a sky lit up by fireworks before we float down happily, landing on a pillow-soft cloud with more than enough space for our sated sighs and tangled limbs.
What is there, though, is the knowledge of what goodbye looks like, what it feels like, and the appreciation of that knowledge. The awareness of it that ensures we’ll never find ourselves saying it in any permanent way until our souls leave this world. And even then, it’ll only be an ending for our mortal selves, for the bodies we’ve worshiped and the human forms we cherished, because our souls will rise up and meet again, wrapping around each other for eternity.
As I look in the mirror inside my closet at Chris’ house, I can’t help but smile at the woman looking back at me. Certainty looks good on her. Happiness and security too. Mama and Sloane said the same thing. Even Nic, who, to my knowledge, rarely involves himself in anything related to me and Chris, noticed, telling me at Sunday dinner that I looked happy, and he was glad to see it.
Chris joins in on the laughter, leaning over in his seat to kiss my stunned mouth, and I kiss him back, helplessly. Lovingly. And, if the way Nic clears his throat and rolls his eyes when we finally break apart is any indication, inappropriately. “Get a room,” he says. “It’s their house,” Jax chimes in, still eating. “Every room is a room for them.”
“Yeah, now we’re getting married.” Sloane leans into Nic, smiling up at him. I’m not sure when he pulled her chair over to him or when he draped his arm around the back of it, but their closeness just looks right.
“You’re here all the time, princess.” He starts to move toward me, eyes never leaving mine as he closes the distance between us. I step into his orbit happily, letting him cradle my face in his hands. “This is already your home, but I didn’t realize until tonight that you needed a formal ask, so here it is: Move. In. With. Me.”
I’ve never thought of the house as anything less than ours, but now, with Mallory’s clothes spilling out of her already huge closet and her shoe collection taking over a few shelves in mine, it feels real like waking up inside of your wildest dream every single day and finding that it’s not a dream at all. It’s your reality. Your new normal. The life you fought for but never truly believed you would have.
“Would you be willing to meet me at Twisted Sistas? I think it’s halfway between our offices.” She could have asked me to meet her on the moon, and I’d still be up out of my seat, grabbing my keys and heading out the door. I tell her as much, and she laughs, which makes me smile because it sounds like she’s having a great day.
Iktfr!
“Got you. So Michelle Carter-Richards is the takedown queen.” Mal laughs. “Basically.” “And you’re telling me this because?” I lift a brow, letting her know I’m on to her. She presses her lips together. “Because I thought that Michelle might be the answer to our Reese Johnson problem.”
“And I get that, Chris. Really, I do, but digging into people’s messed up stuff is literally Michelle’s job. She could probably do a story like this in her sleep, especially if we gave her the recording.” “No.”
“I know, baby, and I know what’s on that tape. I know that it scares you because somewhere, deep down inside, you think your father was right about you being like him. But I’m here to tell you, as the woman who loves you, who knows your flaws and your perfections better than anyone else, that even on your worst day you are a better man than he could ever be.”
It’s funny how being known works. How it comforts and distresses you at the same time. Mallory knows me inside and out. She sees my fear before I even register the sensation of being afraid, knows where I’m going to stumble before I even take a step. I love her for that, but right now, it also scares the shit out of me because her idea is simply a reflection of the threat I made to Reese four years ago.
My heart stutters to a stop, throbbing painfully before kicking into high gear. I knew this was where the conversation was leading, but it’s still scary as fuck to even consider it, revealing to the public what my father did to my mother and why, exposing the egregious history of our family to Teresa.
Both of us sigh at the same time, a collective output of breath that says everything about how we feel about the word home. A shared space where we belong to each other, four walls that house our love and history and act as a monument to the future we’re building together.
“Listen, I’ve got to go, but I just want you to remember that your sister is strong, okay? She’s not that same vulnerable little baby you felt like you were responsible for. She’s a grown woman, and she’s capable of dealing with hard truths.”
Exactly!!!
“Vegas isn’t outlandish, Sloane. Outlandish would be kidnapping you for the weekend, renting a house up in some remote location Nic has never heard of, and hiring an army of naked men to parade around the house, waiting on us hand and foot.”
I jump up, and the red wine in my glass sloshes around, just barely missing the cushions of Sloane’s couch. I hear her sharp intake of breath at my back, but I can’t find it in me to care because my man is here, and he brought food.
“Hi, princess.” “Hey, baby.” I’m blushing, probably because I’m a little wine drunk, and he’s looking at me with that soft and serious gaze that’s all for me. “How’d you know I was here?”
Awwwww where tf is my Chris???!
In the world we grew up in, perception is reality, and your dad has been operating in this space for so long because he’s spent years making people believe he’s a good man. If you can create even the smallest amount of doubt, shed even a sliver of light on the things he’s done, then do it. Lay his truths bare. Unmask him. Take everything from him, and be ruthless because God knows he’s already taken enough from you.”
In reality, Sloane is probably the only one who can understand the gravity of the choice I’m pushing Chris to make. I’m glad that everything is out in the open now because it means he has someone in his corner who understands the horror of the world he came from and appreciates the beauty of the one he’s stepped into.
