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“A sad person knows what another sad person looks like,” I said. I dared to reach out, brushing my fingers along her cheek to tuck a stray lock of blonde hair behind her ear. Goosebumps prickled over her arms, and my eyes widened. “I hear it in your voice. I see it in your eyes. I feel it when I look at you. You deserve to be happy, but you’ll never find it with the people you’re choosing.”
God, I could destroy her. I wanted to. I needed to. I didn’t just crave her perfection, her unattainable beauty. I wanted her filth. I wanted the messy, disgusting, fucked up parts of her. I wanted to rip her open, pick her apart, find the things that made her tick.
I wanted to make her mine from the inside-out. Shatter her to pieces before I put her back together. These were dangerous thoughts and I was riding an edge I’d never dared to touch.
Most people didn’t consider being duct-taped and locked in a trunk to be a great start to their weekend. I wasn’t most people, though.
“Can you breathe, Jason?” I said, giggling softly as he hummed in the affirmative. “If I die, I die,” he said, before his mouth was on me again.
There was no clasping of hands and no prayer, but Stephan stood at the head of the table and said simply, “We are thankful now, as we always will be, for the blessing of our children, for the blessing of their love, and of course, for the blessing of new love.” He smiled at me, and Vera held my hand across the table. Then he sat and leaned over to kiss his wife on the cheek. “Thank you for all your work to create a beautiful meal for us, my dear.”
“Sometimes, it’s too much when I look at you,” he said, his voice so soft and close. “Your eyes see too much of me.”
“It’s about you. It’s…shit, Jess. I’d replace that engine a thousand times if it meant keeping you in my life.”
“This doesn’t depend on you saying anything. I love you. I’ve loved you. For so long. And I’ll love you, even if you don’t love me back. I’ll love you even if this is the last day I ever see you.”
“If you leave and spend your life with someone else, I’ll love you still. I want you to be happy, Jess, no matter who it’s with. And I’ll love you through all of it. Always. Forever.”
“Because you were my glimpse of heaven from hell,” he said. “You were the sun in my sky, and now you’re like a comet sent to earth. A wildfire I can touch…kiss…hold…”
“I love your mind; how clever you are. I love that you’re passionate. And you’re strong. You’ve changed your own deeply held convictions, and that’s not easy to do. You’re loyal. Tenacious. A force to be reckoned with. You surprise me every day.”
“I love every inch of you,” I said, growling it against her skin. “Inside and out, baby. I could spend years telling you all the ways I love you, all the little things you do that drive me fucking wild. So I think I will. I think I’d like to spend a very long time showing you how much I adore you.”
“You deserve to be loved, Lucas,” she said. She was close, and her voice was low, holding me like she was protecting me. “You deserve to be happy. You deserve to heal.”
We know marriage isn’t exactly an option for us, at least not in the legal sense. But that doesn’t change what this ring means to us — we want to be with you, loving you and supporting you. Our lives are intertwined like the stones in this ring. They may be brilliant alone, but each supports the other. If any of them were missing, the balance would be off.
