Niall strokes my hair for a long time. Then he says, very clearly, “Your body did not suffocate our daughter. She died, because sometimes babies die before they’re born, and that’s all.” Then, once more, “I’ve missed you.” And I am done with the universe between us. It is so perilous, this love, but he’s right, I will have no cowardice in my life, not anymore, and I will be no small thing, and I will have no small life, and so I find his mouth with mine and we are awake at last, returned to a land long abandoned, the land of each other’s bodies. It feels an age since I’ve had him, and I am
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