Well, Actually

by Mazey Eddings

I want you contrarian and difficult and keeping me on my toes. I want your sour moods just as much as I want your sunny ones. I’m not asking you to change. You can call me any name you want, as long as I can call you mine.”

“You’re an enemy of the state,” he says against my mouth. “What state?” “The state of my mental health.” “Aw, baby girl, that was fucked long before I came around.”

“Listen here, you little demon,” he says, voice threaded with tenderness.

“If it isn’t painfully obvious, I’d gladly kiss the ground you walk on if it made you smile, I think you’re that wonderful.”

“Kitten,” he says, dragging a palm from my throat down my back. “Every part of me is yours if you want it.”

How does he do it? How does he make me feel like this, over and over again? Like he’s spent a lifetime looking at art but I’m the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen?

I’ve never been a particularly touchy person, but something about Rylie has me constantly reaching for him like I’m a plant and he’s the sun.

“Seriously, though. Feeling useless and directionless and like you aren’t keeping up is kind of the entire point of your twenties. Everything is ass all the time and all we can do is lean on each other through it, not compare ourselves moment to moment.”

“I love you, you little demon.”

Both of his hands come up to face, cradling my head in a gentle but firm grip. “I love you.”

“I love you, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me, so you might as well accept it.” “I refuse.”

“You are the sharpest, fiercest person I know. I have never been more off-kilter than when you let me into your life. I can’t even begin to predict what godless thing you’ll say or do next, and I have a very healthy fear of your bad side. And, fuck, I love you. I want to spend every day listening to you be an absolute shithead to me. If at the end of my life someone asked me what I’d do with one more hour, one more minute, I would fight with you. Argue with you. Kiss you and hug you and hold you. Anything for one more second with you. I’d choose this every single time. Because I know you love me too.”

“Eva, my love. I’ve had six years to let you go and decide you’re not worth it. Give me six hundred more and it still wouldn’t matter. I’m yours. It’s okay to be afraid. I’ll be brave for us both until you learn to trust it. Trust me.” He places a kiss to my temple. “Let me prove it to you.” Another on the tip of my sniffling nose. “Let me take care of you.” A hot, gentle brush across my lips. “Let me love you.”

“You never left me any choice but to fall in love with you, huh?”

“I love you so much,” I murmur against his skin as his lips create a hot trail along my throat and collarbone. “I have no idea how to do this, but I’m going to try with everything I have.”

“Okay. Sure. But you also can’t even raw-dog vision so I’m not particularly eager to take life advice from you.”

I am a woman in STEM only in the sexy, tenacious, emotionally malicious sense.

“Easy, Kitten. I’ll give you as many dates as you need. You just have to ask nicely.” “Nice isn’t really my style.”

“I wouldn’t have you any other way,” he whispers, then kisses me some more. The fucking end