Chapter Text
11.5 months together (January, Year 3)
I was just the smallest bit disoriented when I opened my eyes and let them adjust to the near-darkness so I could take in the barely familiar space. But, I looked across the pillow and found the very familiar nose, subtle freckles scattered across the bridge and gentle bump toward the top, the reddish beard with those flecks of gray he was just starting to have to come to terms with, the beautiful, dark eyelashes fanned across strong cheekbones. As was more true with every passing day, looking at that face grounded me, made me feel safe and solid and comfortable. The fact that he was there made it okay that I was waking up in a room I'd never woken up in before, in a bed that wasn't mine, or his, which I'd spent the past almost two weeks waking up in.
His arm lay heavy on my hip and I considered, seriously considered, scooting in closer and letting that arm curl around my back to hold me tight to his chest the way that I knew it would, even as he slept. But I could tell from the changing color coming in around the blinds that it was nearly dawn, which meant the alarm he'd set the night before would be going off soon.
A door opened and closed down the hall, one of the kids maybe, going to the bathroom, or his mom, getting up early to make sure she could see me off, even though I’d insisted she really didn’t have to. A couple days after Christmas, Chris had suggested staying at his mom’s the night before I had to head back to my place in Virginia. Her neighborhood was only about 20 minutes from the airport, whereas his house was on the other side of town. He’d pointed out that my flight was early as it was, and it would be nice to get an extra hour or so of sleep, though I hadn’t argued with him to begin with. Mrs. Evans had originally offered for us to stay with her on Christmas Eve night, and though she’d been understanding when Chris told her he wanted us to start Christmas morning just the two of us, just for a little while, before we joined the rest of the family, I could tell she was a little disappointed. I was pretty sure that was actually why he’d suggested staying with her, and it was why I hadn’t hesitated to agree. I couldn’t help but feel bad, though, that both she and the kids, who’d insisted on staying too, would be getting up much earlier than necessary just so they could see me off. Still, under the guilt was a healthy helping of gratitude and affection for all of them.
The display on the alarm clock on the nightstand by Chris’s side of the bed illuminated; it was five minutes until the time he’d set it to go off. I wished more than anything that I could freeze the time, stop those 300 seconds from ticking by. I was warm and comfortable, and not just in the physical sense. Each time I got to fall asleep with him wrapped around me and wake up to that beautiful face in front of me, I loved it a little more and found it a little harder to let it go when our always-too-short time together came to an end. And that morning, that morning I truly wanted nothing more than to stay exactly where I was. I didn’t even mind that he wasn’t awake at the moment, I was perfectly happy just lying there under the weight of his arm, watching his chest rise and fall with his steady, heavy breaths. I didn’t have much time left - I guessed I was probably down to around 200 seconds - but I gave in to my earlier impulse anyway. I inched closer, not wanting to wake him even a few seconds before the alarm, and tucked myself against his body, my head nestling under his chin. Just like I knew it would, his arm tightened around me until his hand wedged between my ribs and the mattress. A hundred fifty seconds, 170 if I was lucky, to lay there and soak it in, to breathe him in, before the alarm went off and the bubble was burst.
Far too soon, the alarm sounded, music pouring from the speakers and prompting a groan from deep in the back of his throat. Rather than wait for him to let go of me and roll over to turn it off himself, I pushed myself up onto my left elbow and reached across him with my other hand. I didn't turn it off completely, but I turned down the volume of the music until it was just background noise. I laid back onto my back and Chris rolled half onto his stomach, draping himself across me and burying his face in my neck. "Hey.” I loved his voice, especially in the mornings, even deeper than usual and husky with sleep. “Good morning."
"Morning." My arm was hooked under his chest and partially around his back, and I ran my fingertips lightly up and down his spine and stared up at the ceiling.
He pushed himself up onto his forearm just enough to look down at my face, his other hand gripping my hip. "Hey, what's up? You okay?"
I still refused to turn my head, unable to tear my eyes away from the subtle texture on his mom’s ceiling. "I have to tell you something."
"Okay, shoot.” He prodded at my hip a little, rocking my body side-to-side, when I didn’t respond. A few more seconds went by and when he still didn’t get the reaction he was looking for, or any reaction at all, he pushed himself up more to look down at me, his elbow digging into the mattress and his shoulder and bicep supporting the majority of his weight. His eyes sought mine, but I squeezed them closed, trying to hold back the tears pricking behind them. I was unsuccessful. “Hey, whoa whoa whoa.” He lifted his hand from my hip to collect the errant tears on his thumb, first the left side, then the right, cupping my jaw on that side in his palm when he was finished. “What's with the tears? No tears, sweet girl."
I breathed in deeply and tried to ignore the stinging behind my nose and in the back of my throat. He waited me out without saying anything, silently passing his thumb back and forth over my cheek. Once the tightness in my throat had loosened enough that I thought I could speak clearly, I kept my eyes closed and told him, "I made a deal with myself that I would tell you this after a year, because waiting any longer would feel dishonest and like I was potentially wasting your time.” I drew in another breath and it stuttered in my chest. “But telling you any sooner felt presumptuous, like, like I was assuming too much about the future, about what you want from me, from us. And I know we're not quite at a year yet, but the next time we'll be together is our actual anniversary, and I don't want to do that,” I felt the tears threatening to come back and rushed to say what I needed to say, the words spilling out on top of one another, “and then after that it'll be March, and I don't want to wait that long, but I don't want to tell you on the phone, and-"
"Baby.” He cut me off and his voice was tight. “Just tell me. Please."
I pulled my arm from under him and brought both arms to my stomach over the comforter, rubbing the soft fabric repetitively between the thumb and forefinger of one hand while the other hand wrapped around that same wrist. "I,” I trailed off and forced my eyes open, though I still couldn’t meet his, instead turning my head on the pillow to stare at the veins running along the inside of his bicep, making his hand fall from my cheek. It landed on my pillow, but he brought it to curl around the side of my neck. I spit out the words I'd tried, unsuccessfully, to find a graceful way to deliver. “I can't have kids.”
It was quiet for a second before he said, with surprisingly little emotion, “I don’t understand.”
“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” I turned my face back up to the ceiling and brought my hands up, covering everything except my mouth, “I probably, I know I should have told you earlier.” I couldn’t be still, shifting my arms yet again so that my hands were at my sides, gripping the bedding in tight fists. I knew the right thing to do, the strong thing to do, would be to look him in the eye and just be straightforward. But I wasn’t that strong; I never had been, and I certainly couldn’t be then, when I was quite sure the conversation had at least a 50/50 chance of ending with him telling me, respectfully but firmly, that he thought it was time for us to part ways. So, I continued to study the ceiling.
“But I just, I felt like telling you sooner would be like assuming that you want to have kids with me, and I don’t know if you do or not. I, I don’t know how much of a future you see with me beyond the next couple months, and, and so I didn’t want to freak you out by bringing up something that you hadn’t even thought about, or that you thought was irrelevant because you wouldn’t want that with me, or because I was thinking too far ahead.” I wished, not for the first time, that I didn’t have anxiety that forced me to talk well beyond when I knew I should, to second-guess everything I said and ramble in a poor attempt to ensure I got my point across. He still hadn’t said anything, but he slid his hand back up onto my cheek and gently turned my head until I was forced to either close my eyes or look at him. I truly wanted to do the former, but I forced myself to do the latter. Still, I couldn’t meet his eyes, so I stared at his mouth as I spoke. “But, I couldn’t wait any longer, because if that’s a deal breaker for you, I get it. And I want, I want you to be able to get out before I waste any more of your time. And a year is a long time to lose, but, you’ve still got time. If this is it for us, if it means we’re done, you’ve still got time to, to be happy. With someone else.”
He tucked my hair over my ear and slid his hand back until his fingers laced into my hair and he held the back of my head. “You were scared to tell me. That’s why you’re crying.” The words should have been a question, but he said them with such confidence that they were a simple statement of fact. He wasn’t asking me, he was telling. I hummed and nodded and he massaged my scalp with his fingertips before actually asking, “What are you scared of, baby girl?”
“I don’t, god,” I gave in and let the tears flow again, a single sob working up out of my chest. He turned a little to recline back into his pillow, against the headboard, and wrapped his hands carefully around the tops of my arms so he could pull me over onto him. My chest lay along his legs and my head landed on his stomach. Once I’d gotten settled there he brought his right hand to the center of my back and slid his left one down my right arm to lace our fingers together and bring them up to rest on his lap. After a couple more deep breaths I went on, staring at our connected hands. “I love you so much, and the past year, longer than that, even, it's been so good, and these last couple weeks, the holidays, it's just all so much better than I ever hoped to have again, after , and I just feel …” I shifted down a little and turned my face to press it into the cotton of the pajama pants he wouldn’t have been wearing if we’d been anywhere other than at his mom’s, with three unpredicable kids just down the hall. I let the soft flannel soak up the tears that leaked out of my eyes then turned my head so that it still rested high on his leg but my voice wouldn’t be completely muffled. “I don’t want to lose you, lose us .”
His fingertips drew circles over my back, between my shoulder blades now. “Why would you lose me?”
“Because, if you stay with me, I, we can’t have kids.”
“Okay.”
“Chris.” I sighed and shook my head. I wished I could believe it was as simple as he made it sound with that one word. I knew better, though. “I’ve seen you with your niece and nephews. Hell, I’ve seen you with babies and kids you don’t even know, for that matter.” I knew at that point that I should turn, look up at him, even sit up a bit so we were eye-to-eye. I couldn’t though, because I was convinced I would see how right I was, how drastically everything had just changed. I did, at least, push myself up until my cheek rested on his rib cage on his right side. I pulled my hand from his and brought it up to trace over his ribs on the other side. “You, you were made to be a daddy. And I know you want that. I don- Who am I to take that away from you?”
“Who are you?” He sounded incredulous, almost angry. “Oh my god. You really don’t get it, do you?” He went quiet and I held my breath until he spoke again, his voice soft “Baby, look at me.” I didn’t move and he reached up with the hand I’d just let go of to tilt my chin up toward him. “Look at me.” I rested my chin on his stomach, just above his belly button, and looked up at him through wet lashes.
“Yeah, I love kids. And I’ve thought about having my own, for sure. But if the choice is between you,” he swiped his fingertips under one of my eyes to once again gather the moisture there, “and a hypothetical future baby? Come on.” He squinted and wrinkled his nose as he shook his head. “You said these past weeks were better than you expected to get? That goes both ways, you know.” He draped both arms around me, crossing them over my back and resting his hands on opposite sides. “From day one, and don’t forget,” he narrowed his eyes at me, “my day one is earlier than yours, I’ve been happier with you than I can put into words. And when I try, you don’t believe me anyway,” he rolled his eyes and shook his head, “but that’s a conversation for another day. Right now, I just need you to understand, I’m not willing to give you up over this.”
“But -”
“No.” His voice was sure, solid. He left no room for argument. “I’ve known you for a year and a half. We’ve been partners for, let’s go ahead and say a year. And I’ve been in love with you almost just as long. I know how happy I am because of that, because of you.” His hands tightened on my ribs. “And newsflash, sweetheart, I'm 40.” He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head as he looked down at me as if to emphasize his point. “ I'd already started to come to terms with the very real possibility that I might not become a dad, at least not biologically anyway, and maybe not at all. So you can’t have a baby.” He dragged his hands across my back and over my shoulders to hold my face in his hands, lifting it gently off his stomach, just enough that he could look at me more squarely. “We’ll deal with that. Together. I don’t,” he shrugged, “I don’t know exactly what that looks like right now. I don’t need to. Maybe, I don’t know,” one thumb drifted down to trace over my bottom lip before tucking under my chin to hold my head up so that I had no choice but to keep looking at him, “there are other options. Surrogates, and adoption, if that’s something you want. Foster care, even. Whatever. That’s also a conversation for another day. Right now all I need is for you to know that unless this is something you’re willing to push me away over, it’s not something I’m willing to give you up over.” I searched his face for any sign that he was being less than 100% honest. I looked for him to avoid my eyes, for a subtle frown to cross his lips, anything. I couldn’t find it. And so, of course, I reacted in the most irrational way possible, I cried. Again. “Shh, hey, c’mere.” He hooked both hands under my arms and pulled me up until I was sitting beside him. Then he bent at the waist to slide his left arm under my legs at the same time that he wrapped the right one around my ribs to pull me up most of the way onto his lap.
I finally gave in and allowed myself the comfort I’d been craving since the alarm woke him. My butt still rested on the mattress, but my legs were pulled up onto his, my knees practically at his chest, and he pulled my body against him so that, for all intents and purposes, I was curled almost into the fetal position on his lap. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my face into his shoulder. “God, I’m such a wreck.” I spoke directly into his skin; it was a wonder he could even hear me. “I don’t even know how you put up with me.”
He pulled back to look down at me and shook his head.“You better be joking.”
I was 100% serious, but I didn’t want to argue with him over that. Instead, I nuzzled my cheek against his shoulder and breathed him in. I (and my anxiety) had honestly convinced myself that I wouldn’t have the chance to do that again. I still wasn’t entirely convinced that he was as okay with it as he said he was, but, selfishly, I wasn’t willing to keep questioning it. I was content to let him hold me close against his chest, alternating between pressing kisses to the top of my head and rubbing his cheek against my hair. I knew there was still a chance that once I was gone, on a plane back to Virginia while he had time to sit at home and think, surrounded by his own close-knit family, he would change his mind, realizing he actually cared about having kids a lot more than he’d thought he did while I was there in bed with him. But I pushed that thought down in favor of trusting him. I had no choice, really, unless I was willing to push him away, which I wasn’t. Besides, after a year and a half of having this man in my life, I had so far not been given any reason to doubt him, aside from my own irrational anxiety. And on top of everything else, there was the simple fact that it felt good to be there, in his arms, pressed against him. I’d done the ‘right thing’ enough for the day, I just wanted to do the thing that felt right.
“Hey,” his right arm was wrapped low around my back, and he brought his left hand up to trace a line, down then back up, between my right shoulder and my elbow, “I don’t want to make things worse, or upset you even more by bringing it back up, but I do want the air to be completely clear about something. When I said I didn’t understand, I meant because you’re on the pill. You take it religiously. You have an alarm for it.”
I sighed, and as I pulled back enough to speak clearly I saw goosebumps pop up on his skin where my breath washed over him. “Yeah, I can, I can get pregnant . I just can’t carry to term. Not safely, anyway. I had some, some trauma when I was younger, apparently, and-”
His head whipped around to look at me, eyes wide, frantic, “Tr-”
I pressed a hand into his chest to try to calm him as I cut him off. I should have known that was a bad choice of words, that he would react negatively to the word ‘trauma’ in relation to anything remotely related to sex. “Yes, just in the medical sense, not the psychological sense. Or the legal one.” I watched the tension release from his shoulders, watched his chin drop a little as he exhaled, felt his left hand come down to the small of my back. I wanted so, so badly to lean forward and press my lips to his jaw, but a significant part of me was still afraid, even as I tried so hard to trust him, and if he’d reacted poorly when I kissed him - flinched, or pulled away, even involuntarily - I don’t know that I would have been able to handle it. So instead I went on. “When I was a teenager, there was stuff happening inside my uterus that’s not great, the beginnings of a problem that the doctors maybe could have cut off at the head if something had been done about it at the time. But I didn’t know at the time. I didn’t find out until a few years ago, actually.”
His brows lowered and he looked back at me with obvious confusion, “How-”
I just shook my head. “We didn’t have health insurance most of the time when I was a kid. I knew that going to the doctor would mean a huge financial strain, so I didn’t go, didn’t tell my parents I needed to go, unless I felt like I was nearly dying.” I felt his arms tightening around me as I talked and he looked back at me with concern. I only shrugged. At the time, it had been normal to me. Looking back, I considered it just another part of my story. “I think I went to the doctor maybe five times my entire childhood. My mom used to seem so proud when she would tell people about my strong immune system, how I never got sick.” I didn’t think I needed to tell him that was just more reason for me to fake it. As a kid, there was nothing on earth that meant more to me than making my parents or grandparents proud. It hadn’t changed that much as an adult, the targets of the pride had just shifted. He was very aware of that about me. He even scolded me, sometimes, for putting so much pressure on myself to make everyone else happy.
“Then I hit puberty, and I’d learned, through my school’s less-than-fantastic reproductive education program, that it often took a long time for periods to become regular. So when mine weren’t, when they didn’t follow any particular pattern or calendar and they hurt like hell, I didn’t say anything about it. Turns out I should have.” I inhaled deeply through my nose and huffed the breath back out through my mouth. It was still frustrating to think about all the times I spent curled around a heating pad because I couldn’t force myself to stand, or the times my period surprised me, coming anywhere from two weeks to six months after my previous one. Or, worst of all, how the first time I’d gone a few months without a period when I actually had a boyfriend, who I most certainly was not having sex with, my father forced my mother to take me to the doctor to see if I was pregnant. I still wasn’t sure which was worse, the complete lack of trust in me when I said I couldn't possibly be pregnant, a distrust I’d done nothing to deserve, or the fact that he’d never cared about my issues until then.
“The doctor explained the details to me when I was diagnosed a few years ago, but I don’t remember them now. Honestly, I’m not sure I understood them then. All that I really needed to know was that I can get pregnant, it’s not likely but it is possible, but my uterus is a ‘hostile environment’.” I pushed off his chest to sit up straight and made air quotes with my fingers, “And if I did get pregnant, there would be a lot of complications as the fetus grows. Most likely the fetus wouldn’t make it past the middle of the second trimester, at most, but if it did, it would get really dangerous for me. Either my body would reject the fetus early on, or it would basically start attacking it later. It almost certainly wouldn’t end well for the fetus, and there’s a good chance it wouldn’t end well for me, either.” I brought my hands down to rest on his ribs, a few inches below his chest, and I watched my left thumb trace over the words of his tattoo as I finished. “That’s why I’m so religious about the pill. It’s not just about having a baby I maybe wouldn’t be ready for.”
He pulled his arms from where they still wrapped loosely around me and closed his hands around mine. He lifted them and brought them to his chest so that our forearms ran up his torso and I was pulled back in a little closer. Then he leaned his head in until his forehead rested against mine, “I need you to know that what I’m about to ask is because I love you and I can’t imagine a world without you in it, not because I think I have any right to tell you what to do with your body,” he pulled back a few inches to watch me as he spoke, serious and concerned, “but, why haven’t you just had something done to eliminate the risk? Get your tubes tied, or a partial hysterectomy?”
I nodded to let him know that he wasn’t saying anything that hadn’t already occurred to me. “I thought about it, but I was married.” I shrugged, gently enough that my hands and arms didn’t pull away from him, “I only had one partner who would potentially be getting me pregnant. He was good with not having kids anyway, even before we found out about my issues, and as much as the idea makes men squirm, vasectomies are so much easier.” I knew he didn’t mean to, but he flinched just a little. “They’re so much less invasive,” I insisted gently. “I mean jeez, they’re outpatient procedures. So it just made more sense for him to do that. It was easy, quick, and effective. But then,” I chewed on the inside of my bottom lip for a second, “well, you know what then.” I dropped my eyes to look down to where our hands rested in the center of his chest.
He just nodded and rubbed his thumbs over my knuckles. “And I guess it makes sense that it wasn’t something you jumped to do once he was gone. You had a lot on your plate. ”
“Oh,” my head shot back up and I shook it emphatically, my eyes growing wide. “No. I tried.” I lifted my eyebrows and cocked my head a little to one side for emphasis. I really wanted him to understand that it hadn’t been my choice to not have something done about it. “I mean, I knew I wasn’t going to be in a position to get pregnant any time soon, but I just wanted to have it done. I think it was something I felt like I could have control over, and I really needed that.” His face showed his understanding, his empathy. It also showed, with the lowered brow and the tight jaw, that he was preparing himself to hear something he wouldn’t like. “Psychologically, I don’t know if that was the most well-adjusted approach, looking back on it now, but it also wasn’t a bad thing to do in its own right, so no harm, no foul. But, it didn’t matter anyway, because a week after his memorial I went back to my primary care provider on base, because I’m still on the insurance the military provides,” I explained, “either for the rest of my life or until I remarry, if I remarry.” I had a sudden moment of panic, worried again that he would think I was trying to pigeonhole him into a future that he didn’t necessarily see. It was short-lived though, because he didn’t even seem to react. I continued, “But he told me he couldn’t do anything to permanently prevent me from having children without the permission of my husband.”
“But,” the furrow in his brow deepened and he cocked his head so that he was looking at me out of the corner of his eye, “you don’t have a husband.”
“Right,” I nodded, big sweeping nods to show that he was starting to really pick up on the issue. “So then there shouldn’t be a problem. No husband, no need to worry about getting pregnant.”
“But, that’s … not … I mean,” he stopped, and the look on his face would have been comical under other circumstances. He looked truly baffled by what I’d just said, his eyebrows drawn together until deep wrinkles formed between them, his lips pursed, and his eyes drifting side-to-side, “you don’t have to be married to maybe get pregnant.”
“No, clearly, I’m very aware of that,” I didn’t even mean to do it, but I squeezed his hands in mine; there was no point pretending that we hadn’t been taking that risk (very, very carefully, but still, a risk nonetheless) for the past four months, and enjoying every second of it, “hence the religious birth control. Those were the doctor’s words, not mine. He told me that since I was no longer married, I didn’t need to worry about it anymore. But that if I ever got remarried, and my husband and I decided that it was something we both wanted, I should go back and speak to a physician at that time.”
“Okay, first of all, what kind of dumbass doctor believes, in the 21st century, that a gorgeous, intelligent, independent, grown ass woman ,” I surprised myself by hicciping around a giggle and I looked down and bit both my lips between my teeth; it wasn’t an appropriate time to smile, because he was being so incredibly sincere and passionate in his defense of me, but I couldn’t help it when he used that phrase that he had so clearly picked up from me, “ can’t possibly be having sex without a husband? Is he that stupid, or that judgmental? And second of all, not that this matters, because it’s your fucking body and you should be able to do whatever the hell you want with it, husband or not, medical condition or not, but did he not understand the risks to you? Was it a different doctor than the one you’d seen before?”
I shook my head, all traces of my smile gone again. “Nope. Same doctor. He knew. But apparently that’s ‘standard procedure’.”
“And you couldn’t go to another doctor.” That was another statement that probably should have been a question, but he already knew the answer.
“With my insurance, I have to go to an on-base doctor before I can go anywhere else. And it’s not like they’re going to give me a referral for a procedure that goes against their procedures.”
He sighed. “Well, I don’t think you’re going to be on that insurance for the rest of your life,” he paused for a couple seconds, cleared his throat, looked down to watch his thumbs trace over the backs of my fingers, “but if you don’t want to wait for that, I can help. I’m sure between my family and me, we can find you a great doctor up here somewhere, and I’ll help financially too, if you need. It’s not a problem.”
I sucked in a breath, propping my legs up so that they tented over his thighs and drawing back from him a little more, enough that my arms pulled away from his chest and only my hands stayed in contact with him. I didn’t mean to, it was an involuntary movement. It was just that what he was offering was a lot, more than I was comfortable accepting. I loved him, and I really, really hoped that we had a long future ahead of us. But, as much as I’d managed, thanks to his tenderness and reassurances, to get past much of my fear that our relationship was going to end that morning, I still didn’t know exactly how much of a future he saw for us, beyond our next couple planned visits. The idea of him paying for a medical procedure, especially one of that nature, didn’t sit well with me, wouldn’t sit well with me unless and until I felt more confident that he wanted to keep me around as much as I wanted to stay around.
He pressed his eyes closed and shook his head. “No, right, I’m sorry. I don’t want to overstep or anything.” He turned my hands so my palms rested flat on his chest and slid his hands down my arms to my elbows. He pulled gently, urging me carefully back to him. I didn’t resist, letting him pull me against his chest until he could rest his chin on the top of my head as he spoke. “And I understand why you wouldn’t be comfortable getting some big financial support from me right now, I just, I just want to be able to do something to help.” He sighed and moved his hands from my arms to my back, not stopping until they wrapped all the way around me; he held me so close it felt like he was holding his own elbows in his hands. He turned to nuzzle his cheek into my hair and left it there as he went on. “This whole thing is fucked up, all of it. So just, whatever you need, whatever you want , that you’re comfortable with me doing, you just have to tell me.”
I thought for a second and traced his collarbones with my fingertips. Finally, I asked him, “Are you sure you’re okay with this? Us, moving forward, knowing this?”
He scoffed and I felt my hair flutter a little. “Aside from being really pissed at that fucking doctor, and a healthcare system that allows that shit to happen, and really, really sorry that you’ve been carrying this around, scared to tell me,” he tightened his arms around me for a second and turned his head to kiss the top of mine before resting his cheek right back where his lips had just been, “I don’t feel any different now than I did when I woke up. And for the record, that feeling was so fucking happy to open my eyes and see you across my pillow .”
I leaned in even closer, tilting my chin forward to kiss the first skin I came to: the base of his throat. It wasn’t audible, but I could feel the vibration of a small hum. “Then there’s nothing else I need from you.”
He shifted his arms to keep me from moving from where I was, and I brought my legs back in the way they’d been before, leaving me curled in a ball mostly in his lap. I slid my hands from his chest to his ribs and around his back and wiggled until I fit just right against him. As always, he couldn’t keep his hands still, so one hand came up to the back of my head to play with my hair and the other fell low on my hip, where his thumb slipped under the hem of the top to the Christmas pajamas his mom had given me, the ones that coordinated with the pajamas everyone in the family had been given as our Christmas Eve gifts, and traced figure eights into my skin. We’d allowed for a fairly large buffer when we’d decided what time the alarm should wake us up; we’d known we would want some time, just the two of us, before we joined everyone else for me to say my goodbyes. I hated that we’d spent that time so far the way that we had, but I figured we had a few more minutes at least before we had to leave our cocoon. I planned to use every second just being with him, letting his warmth seep into me, willing him to feel how much I loved him, how much I wanted him, how terrified I still was, deep down, that he deserved, and wanted, what I couldn’t give him.