“You have always made me feel it. Always.” His eyes burn with intensity. “It’s how I can watch you smile at good-looking delivery drivers. No stranger is going to talk to you for two minutes and take you away from me. You wouldn’t allow it.”
He’s not indulging himself in male arrogant bullshit. He’s doing what he does best: He’s telling the truth.
He keeps going. “It’s why you’ve treated me all these years like protecting me is your job. And no one else has ever tried, by the way. Everyone else thinks I’m completely fine, but you’ve always known that I need you, in every way. You’ve felt it.”
I nod, my breath stuck in my throat.
“You’ve never dated anyone you could love, because you didn’t want anything to threaten how you feel for me. You were always alone at the Christmas table, looking at me and Megan, with eyes like you were waiting for me to get it together and realize. Sitting outside alone on the back stairs, looking up at the stars, waiting on me.”
He’s touching me now, slow and easy, like I’m an animal he could startle. “You’ve avoided me for years and traveled, because it was too much for you. You’re scared to death because a person like you only loves once. And it’s me.”
His words shock through me. His hands are on my waist and he squeezes to prompt an answer. “Am I right?”
“Of course you are. Now kiss me.” This one is a sweet, gentle thing, until I ruin it with the slide of my tongue. He grumbles a warning in the back of his throat. Mmm, I missed that alpha bass.
He breaks us apart. “I never told you how much I love you. How do you think I feel? Tell me.”
I have no experience with articulating feelings, let alone anything this alive and primal, but I have to try. This must be how Loretta felt when she turned over the first tarot card. Use your intuition, she’d instruct. Feel the truth. I press my palm against his heart and his fingers slide into my hair.
“You slept in a bunk bed in Jamie’s room. That’s one of the ways you’ve had to work hard for me. Putting up with my brother, just to sleep a wall away from me and put your toothbrush next to mine.”
He nods with a smile and a memory in his eyes.
“You sleep on the grass outside my window just to be close to me.”
“More.”
“When we hug at Christmastime you breathe me in, and you hold it in. Whatever it is you like on my skin, it’s deep in the caveman bit of your brain.”
I have no idea where this weird truth is coming from, but I’m right. He drops his head down and on my shoulder I feel the pull of air into his nostrils.
“Even more.” He says it as he exhales. Both of us are getting overheated. I don’t even have to search myself to know what to say. These words have been on the tip of my tongue for a lifetime.
“Another man’s diamond on my hand is your worst nightmare, and for years you’ve been jolting awake over it.” I feel a tremor run through his body. Now I have to say the really hard thing.
“Putting a diamond on another woman made you sick to your stomach. But like a nice guy you couldn’t admit it to yourself, let alone her, until the white lace started creeping in at the edges and you saw my insanely-in-love parents together.”
“Even more than that.”
“You’d kill for me. You’d dig a grave for me.”
He laughs. “Yeah. Now you’re getting close.” We are kissing when the door opens again.
“Alrighty,” Dr. Galdon says as he walks in, and then coughs when we break apart. “Let’s take a look at you, Miss Barrett.” He shakes hands with Tom and introduces himself. Tom takes a seat next to Jamie. I’ve never seen anything more lovely; my two favorite human beings side by side, and they love me.
“Look at her,” Jamie remarks, jabbing an elbow at Tom. “Got your color back already, Darce.”
“I was just about to remark on that,” Dr. Galdon says with a laugh. He consults the monitor. “That’s the fastest-healing broken heart I’ve ever seen. One hundred percent improvement on how it was five minutes ago.” His smile fades as he writes something down on my chart. “But we do need to talk about your medication, and we need to do an ECG. There are irregularities here that I haven’t seen before.”
“It’s okay, just relax,” Tom tells me and Jamie when we both tighten up. It’s in that tone we can never resist. “We’ll get you fixed up, Darce. Good as new. We’ve got a cruise to go on when we’re eighty,” he explains to the doctor. “We need her there for it.”
“I think that can be arranged,” Dr. Galdon says with a laugh. “As long as she’s got someone looking after her until then.”
“She will,” Jamie and Tom say in unison. Just like twins.
I’m so lucky that the room fills with it. Pip-pip-pip, my heart beats like I’m going to live forever. I need it to.
Chapter 21
I am in my own place of Zen: My passport is in my hand and I am leaving the country.
I love this moment—standing adrift in a sea of strangers, mocking them in my mind for their pashminas and full-sized pillows. Do they think there are no pillows where they’re going? Some people travel like they honestly believe they’re leaving planet Earth.
Mars doesn’t sell socks or toothpaste.
I catch myself; I’m judging people and being nasty. That’s not the person I want to be. I make myself lose the big gray glare and the forehead wrinkle.
I lean on the pillar beside the floor-to-ceiling windows and try to block out the noise. Everywhere, more and more groups are finding each other, crowing with excitement, taking photos together before departure. A group of young guys, dressed in board shorts, straggle over to the window to look outside. One of them looks over at me and raises his eyebrows in a hey.
I check my watch. Soon it’ll be time to board.
“Hey,” Tom says, and when I look up at him my heart unfurls. There’s no better word for it. It’s like a time-lapse photo of a rose opening whenever I think about how he is mine. So, all the time. He’s got bottles of water for us. They’re cold against the small of my back as he wraps his arms around me, a knee nudging between my thighs. He gives the group of boys nearby a dark look, then laughs at himself.