A memory floods back to me, hazy, but the feeling is bloody clear.
“Last night,” I say gruffly, searching deep in her warm eyes, “I told you that I love you. Did that happen? Or was it a dream?”
A small smile lifts her the corner of her lips. “You told me you loved me.”
I grunt, looking away, nodding quickly. “Okay. What did you say?”
“You passed out before I could say anything,” she says.
I eye her, suddenly afraid for her to go on. “What would you have said?” I ask her, wishing my voice didn’t sound so thin and reedy.
She stares at me for so long that I’m almost lost to the fear, to the rejection, to the fact that I’ve been nothing but a sad, pathetic fool.
“You know what?” I say quickly, my breath hurting my lungs. “I don’t want to know, forget it, it doesn’t matter.”
She leans in quickly and kisses me flush on the lips. Soft, yielding, always beautiful. She rests her forehead against mine, our mouths inches away. “I would have told you that I love you too. That I’m desperately, foolishly in love with you.”
I close my eyes, trying to keep a sob from rising out of my chest. “And now?” I whisper. “In the light of day?”
“In the light of day I love you even more.”
I can’t even handle it. My whole system of being wants to break down.
“In the light of day,” she says to me, “I can see all your cracks and your darkness and your flaws and I fall in love with it all. And I hope you can fall in love with everything that I am, all that lurks in my dark, all that shines in my light. I want you to love every little piece of me, because it all belongs to you.”
At first her words hurt, they hurt, because I’m feeling them so deep down, like a knife plunged straight into my chest. But it’s not pain it’s joy so acute that I can’t even process it. And the knife, the knife is red-hot, then warm and it’s spreading across me, better than the sweetest, most merciless drug.
I want to cry. Yell. Shout. I’m not made for this and I’m a bottle rocket full of energy with nowhere to go.
I can only whisper, “I love you,” even though my voice is broken, even though I feel painfully whole. “I love you,” I tell her and kiss her simultaneously.
“I love you.”
I kiss her cheek.
“I love you.”
I kiss her neck.
“I love you.”
I kiss the swell of her breasts.
And then my hands are sliding down her body and I’m turning on top of her and I’m ravenous and starved for every bit of love I can possibly get.
We move in slow motion, through honey, and it’s slow and sweet. I pull down her underwear and push inside of her and she opens up to me like she’s letting me in for the first time. Her legs wrap around my waist like she’s never going to let go.
And I want to believe that she won’t let go.
That she’s not leaving me in two weeks.
I’m not sure the human heart is built to be so capable. How can it handle the joy of finally loving someone, the ecstasy of finally receiving love, while still being so fearful of the pain that’s yet to come?
Because that pain is coming.
How much longer can we ignore it?
“Stay with me,” I whisper to her as I thrust in deep.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she says breathlessly, neck arched, head back. Such a bloody goddess.
But that’s not what I mean.
It doesn’t take me long to come and when I do, our eyes are locked and I feel myself slipping more and more and more. Into the past. Into the future. I’m losing myself completely and I just don’t know which way I’ll end up, if I’ll even be whole in the end.
I rest my weight on my elbows, my head down against the pillow while she gently touches my back.
“Stay with me,” I say again, voice rough with exertion. “Don’t go home.”
She tenses up beside me, her hands stilling at my shoulders. “Don’t go home?”
“Quit your job. Move here. Be with me.”
I can’t believe I’m even saying this to her but it’s too late now. She wants all of me, she’ll have all of me.
“Lachlan,” she says warily. “I can’t just do that.”
I pull my head back to look at her. “Why not?”
She frowns. “Because! I…I worked hard for the job I have.”
“You hate your job.”
“But it’s still my job. What would I do here? I can’t get a job.”
“You can do whatever you want.”
“Yeah but that’s easy for you to say. I’ve spent my whole life working for what I have, aren’t I supposed to stick with it? It’s crazy to give that all up.”
“That’s not what’s crazy. Crazy is never branching out, crazy is never living up to your potential, never discovering what it is in life that makes your heart beat just a bit faster. Kayla, who you are and who you think you should be are two very different things.”
She looks at me pleadingly. “Then who am I?”
“You’re you, love. And you know what you want to do. Jessica said she would help you with the writing.”
“Yeah,” she says. “For free. Writing for free. How do I live until my portfolio or whatever gets big enough to even get me a job?”
“I could – ”
She pushes her finger against my mouth. “And don’t tell me that you could support me. I know you can and you would, but I wouldn’t accept it. That’s not how I’m built. I do things on my own.”
I shake my head at her stubbornness. “I could help you be employed. You could work at the shelter, like Amara.”
“Amara says that you can barely afford to pay her,” she tells me and that makes me grimace, because I know that’s true. “You couldn’t afford me, too.”
“I could,” I tell her. “My flat in London, I would sell it if I had to.”
“No, no way. No way would I let you do that for me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m…you barely know me. I’m not worth it.”
I sigh, my eyes pinching shut. “Please don’t say that. Don’t say that I don’t know you when all I do is feel like I’ve known you my whole bloody life. Don’t give me that and don’t tell me you’re not worth it. That’s up to me to decide, isn’t it?”
She looks away, blinking. “I don’t want you to do anything for me.”
“Well that’s tough luck ain’t it, love, because if you want to stay with me, I will do whatever I bloody can to make sure you can stay here. So just give me the word. Give me the damn word and you can stay here for as long as you like.”
“It would be crazy,” she says quietly.
“And love makes you do crazy things. Or so they say, but I’m starting to think every fucking cliché about it is true. So just own up to it. Embrace it. Be crazy and do those things that are just a little bit nuts.”
“I…I can’t, Lachlan.”
I groan, my hands gripping the pillow. I know I’m being completely fucking selfish asking her to give up everything to stay here with me. I know it.
“If I could move to San Francisco,” I say slowly.
“No way,” she says.
“You really don’t want to be around me do you?”
She grabs my chin and makes me look at her. “Listen to me,” she says, her eyes flashing. “You’re right in that I don’t have a lot to give up at home.”
“I never said that.”
“It’s true,” she says. “I do have a job I don’t like and that I fantasize about quitting. And while I do have my friends I would miss dearly, and my family who I love more than anything…I don’t know if the fear of being away from them is enough to keep me from leaving. But in no way, shape or form are you to even consider coming to California. You have your career here, an actual god damn career, and you have your dogs and your charity and you have so many good things lined up. If anything at all, I will be the one to find a way to stay here.”
My chest aches at the possibility. “Just say the words, please. Tell me that you want to stay, that you’ll try and I promise you, I promise you, I will make it work out.”