I’ve listened to the heart strongly beating in his chest that he desperately tries to silence to keep everyone from hearing.
“Why are you here?” Lorenzo asks, an edge of anger to his voice, his tone almost accusatory. “What do you want?”
“I don’t know,” I say, because it’s true... I don’t know. I could list off reasons all day long as to why I might be standing here, but I’ll never know which was the reason that put me in this room. Gratitude. Guilt. Regret. Longing. Maybe it’s all of those, or maybe it’s something more, something deeper. “I just... don’t know.”
He looks away from me, scrubbing his hands over his face as he starts to pace. “Why are you doing this to me? Huh? Why can’t you just stop? Why can’t you leave? Just go the fuck away?”
“Is that what you want?”
“Yes!”
He yells the word so loud that I cringe. Oh no, his hands won’t ever hit me, but his words might. It’s like a punch straight to the chest.
“I want you gone,” he says. “I want you out of my life. Out of my system. I don’t want to spend another goddamn second thinking about you, wondering about you, worrying about you. I don’t want to look at you, don’t want to see you or smell you or taste you or hear you. I don’t want this. Do you get that? I don’t want any of this. It’s driving me fucking insane. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t think. I hate this, whatever this is... whatever this bullshit is that I’m feeling because of you. Make it go away.”
I just stare at him, because I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know much of anything right now except what I’m feeling, and even that is hard to comprehend.
“You want the fairy tale,” he continues. “You want the happy ending. You want the little boy to be a fucking bird so he can fly away and make everything okay, but I can’t do it. I’ve told you that. It’s not me.”
“I know.”
“So why the fuck are you here?”
“Because I love you anyway.”
It’s like the world stops at that moment.
I wish I could say it was beautiful.
Wish I could say the sun shined and the flowers bloomed and the birds sang. Wish I could say there were fireworks, that there was happiness, that the stars aligned just right. But this isn’t Mary Poppins. I’m no goddamn Cinderella. The fairy tale I’m sitting in the middle of right now isn’t made by Disney.
There’s not a symphony playing in the background.
The word is meek when I say it, barely a whisper. I hadn’t meant for it to come out. It wasn’t something I planned to say to him. I’ve never said it to him before, struggled admitting it even to myself, but it’s true, the truest syllable I’ve ever spoken.
Love.
I love this dangerous, menacing asshole.
I can very easily stand on my own two feet, but the thought of losing him makes my knees go weak. The thought of not having him around makes my chest ache. I can breathe without him. I don’t need him. He’ll never complete me, because I’m already complete. But yet so much of me is now tangled up with so much of him that the thought of living the rest of my life without him around makes me feel cold inside, like he gives me my warmth.
“Don’t,” he says, or more like he growls, still not looking at me. “Don’t fucking say that.”
“It’s too late,” I whisper. “I already said it.”
“Don’t do this to me.” He shakes his head, still pacing. “Why are you doing this to me? Why couldn’t you just fuck off and go find your picket fence?”
“There’s one right outside.”
His head turns, his gaze shifting my way when I say that. “Not that one.”
“Well, I mean, you didn’t exactly specify...”
He doesn’t look amused by that. He looks like he wants to run outside right now and set the fence on fire before ripping it out of the ground.
“What do you want, Morgan?” he asks after a moment, his voice low. “Just... tell me what you want from me. I can’t stand here and do this with you.”
“You named me,” I say. That’s not the first time I’ve heard him call me by my real name. Morgan. “You only name what you keep, remember?”
He just stares at me.
“So I’ll go away, if that’s really what you want, if that’s what will make you happy. I’ll leave you alone, Lorenzo. You’ll never have to see me again, and you can forget I ever said what I just said. We can pretend I didn’t mean it and go our separate ways. But... you named me. And maybe it’s stupid of me to believe this, and I’m not trying to make shit weird, but it makes me think you might feel the same way. So if that’s true...”
I trail off, and he says nothing. His expression is blank, a mask of nothingness. I give him a moment to respond, to think about what I’m saying, but it gets to be too much eventually.
I’m bearing my heart to him, when so much of me is hardened not to, and he’s not reacting.
Maybe I’m wrong.
Maybe he’s trying to spare my feelings here.
Pushing away from the table, I turn to leave. If he wants me gone, I’ll go. I’m not going to push him. I make it a few steps before he reaches out, snatching ahold of my wrist.
I glance at his hand before looking at him.
The world stops yet again.
This time, it’s not quite so ugly.
He doesn’t say anything.
What, did you really expect him to?
Have you been paying attention at all?
He’s not a man of emotional declarations. He shows you he cares through his actions. And words... they’re just words, remember? Letters and syllables. Kassian told me he loved me so many times that those words don’t have half the meaning as Lorenzo clutching my wrist does as he stops me from walking out of his life.
He stares at me.
I wait for him to speak.
“The prequels are some of the worst movies ever made,” he says eventually, finding his voice. “You’ll never convince me otherwise.”
“Come on, they have General Grievous. He’s badass.”
“Yeah, but they also have Jar Jar Binks, who should’ve never been created.”
“I thought he was kind of funny.”
“He’s an abomination.”
“And what, like we’re not?”
His serious expression cracks for just a moment as he pulls me to him. He lets go of my wrist, instead cradling my face as he leans down, gently kissing my lips. It’s soft, and sweet, a few simple pecks, as I close my eyes and grasp his forearms, savoring the moment.
I’ve missed this. Missed him.
It’s only been a week since I’ve seen him, two weeks since I’ve kissed him, but a lifetime of hell passed within that time. I try to deepen the kiss, eager for more, groaning into his mouth, when a small voice calls out.
“Mommy?”
The sound startles me.
Lorenzo pulls away. Fast.
I turn, seeing Sasha in the doorway, her eyes bouncing between me and Lorenzo, alarmed. Leo’s behind her, just out in the hallway.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt,” Leo says. “It got quiet, so I figured it was safe, and she said she was thirsty, and I wasn’t sure what she was allowed to drink, and well, the kitchen is this way, so...”