“Well yeah, I have,” I tell her. “But not for that. I mean, I’ve been in a lot of fights. It’s Edinburgh. It happens. And I’m a rugby player. Everyone wants to prove their worth against someone like me. And I’ve been in trouble in the past. On the streets. You know…back then. But I’ve never been arrested, I can promise you that.”
I sigh and prop myself up on my elbows, the blanket falling down to my waist. I look her dead in the eye. “When I first got Lionel, some wanker complained about him. For no reason at all. Lionel has always been nothing but sweet. But someone had it in for me and hate is a poison. Lionel was taken away from me briefly under the banned breed act. I didn’t see Lionel for weeks while they assessed his behaviour. Thankfully he passed all their supposed tests with flying colors. But they weren’t so sure about me. Somehow though, the judge gave me back Lionel and that was that. As long as he was muzzled, I was allowed to have him.” I pause. “But if I ever get in trouble with the police, I’m terrified they could link the two and Lionel might be taken away for good. Ultimately destroyed, as that’s what they do. I need to be on my best behaviour.”
“I’m sorry to say,” she says, “but last night was not your best behaviour.” She stares down at her hands, a strand of hair falling over her face. “And I hate to tell you this but…you scared me. A lot.”
Fuck. It’s like a bullet to the chest to hear that from her.
She goes on. “Not because I felt I was in jeopardy. I just didn’t know who you were. I didn’t know what you would do. You’re…please, just take it easy from now on. I don’t want to see you get hurt.” She finally looks at me, her eyes wet with tears and it pushes that bullet further in, breaking my fucking heart into a million pieces. “I…care so much about you, you don’t even know, Lachlan. You don’t even know.”
I reach for her, cupping her cheek, completely overwhelmed with every emotion possible. But on the forefront, racing first, is hope.
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.