“Let’s get you home,” Henry says as he stands. Without thinking twice, I move closer to him as he tucks me underneath his shoulder.Home. The question is, for how much longer.
51
Henry
I heldher all night long. I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. I just traced numbers, letters, and lines along her back, and down her arms. I’m exhausted, physically and emotionally, but there are too many scenarios playing out in my mind about what could have happened if my brother hadn’t been there, or if I wasn’t right next door. I can’t lose her again.
She’s been awake for a little while, but I think we both just needed to lie here and absorb one another without words. The sun starts peeking through the drapes of her loft, and the muffled sounds of businesses opening on Main Street echo from outside.
“I can’t have children,” she whispers with her back to me. She doesn’t say anything else. Instead, she nuzzles into me, waiting for a response. I sit with that for a minute. Something I haven’t allowed myself to really think about for a long time. Kids. A future, with her. I’ve been so focused on the immediate next thing, that anything beyond that, doesn’t even register for me.
“If you’re telling me that because you don’t want to keep any more secrets from me, then I’m happy you told me.” I wait another few beats before saying more. “If you’re telling me, because you think that’s going to change how I feel about you, or what I want with you, then you haven’t been paying attention, Pixie.” I smile as I say it, because the truth is, she’s telling me for both reasons.
She turns over so that now we’re facing each other. So beautiful, even with a bandaged chin and bloodshot eyes. I swipe a tear that’s moving across the bridge of her nose.
She looks around my face before saying anything, but I know what’s coming. “What do you want with me, Henry?”
“This. Your trust. Mornings with you in my bed, wrapped around me. I want every minute that you’ll give me.”
She drags in a shaky breath, eyes watering. “I want that to be true.” She looks down at my mouth, then to my chest where she’s fidgeting with her fingers. “But you want a family. I know that you do.”
My stomach clenches, thinking this is why she’s held back. Why she’s been pushing me away the past week.
“I can’t give that to you. You don’t get that if you’re with me.”
She tilts her head back so she can look me in the eyes again, letting out a shaky breath before she continues.
“I don’t need you to be the good guy right now, baby. I need you to be brave enough to walk away from this if you need more. If you need that with someone, I want you to have it.”
“If I wanted someone else, Gia,” I pause and sit up, pulling her up with me. I wrap my hands along her jawline and rub my thumbs along her cheeks. “If I wanted any of that, I would have had it by now. If it was just about moving my life forward, then I would have. But the thing is, you’re the only one I’ve really ever wanted. And no matter where I’ve been or what I’ve done, you’re my anchor, Pixie. No matter what adventure I choose, I want you on it.”
She closes her eyes. Her expression relaxing in what seems like relief. “You said my old name again,” she whispers.
“I’ll call you whatever you want, Pixie. I love you. You have to know that by now. That I’m so in love with you.” Now I have to take a second. I look up, trying to keep the glassiness in my eyes from falling. “Being able to say that to you, hell, Pixie, that’s more than I thought I’d ever get.”
She lets out a cry and smiles so big, my chest warms. I know she feels it too.
“I’ll tell you every day. Every single day, Henry. I didn’t know how to say it, how to keep myself grounded, and still tell you that you’re everything to me. And then everything happened last night. I thought I was going to lose you. Lose us. And I would have never told you how seeing you every day kept me moving. The hard days, when I was missing my pops, or feeling lucky to be alive, you would show up somewhere and I’d feel relieved, safe. Just the idea of you close, even though we couldn’t be anything to each other, it’s made my life infinitely better.”
“Even when you were pissed off at me?” I laugh. “Trying to hate me?”
“Especially then.” She pinches my arm. “I never could hate you. I tried, but it wouldn’t stick. You made me so mad sometimes, but I mostly hated not being able to kiss you.” She smiles, leans in, and kisses me. As she moves her body closer, legs rubbing mine under the covers, I pull her tighter against me. I love kissing this woman.
She pulls her mouth back just a fraction from my lips and says, “I love you, and I’ll keep on loving you for as long as you’ll let me.”
I’ve never felt such a sense of joy in all of my life, as I do hearing those words from her lips.
She closes her eyes again, scrunching her nose. “That was really fucking scary to say.” Tears trickle down her cheeks and into her mouth, down her neck. I kiss her lips softly. “Ow.” She laughs. “My chin hurts so bad.” I kiss her forehead and she shifts up and over, just enough on the bed to get onto my lap, wrapping her arms and legs around me. We hold each other tight, breathing together, sharing this moment, and feeling lighter for it. I could have held her like that all day, but a loud knock on her door knocks us out of it.
“It’s Bea.” She wipes her face. “She’s going to want to do a full debrief and statement today. I need to figure out what the options are right now,” she says as she moves into the closet.
“I’m staying,” I say as I pull my jeans up my legs.
But just by the way she looks at me as she pulls her hair up into a knot on the top of her head, I know what she’s about to say. Every fiber of my being wants to fight her on it.
“You’re going,” she says. “I need to talk to her on my own. It’s going to be a while too. Please, go see Michael. He’s going to need someone to keep him company after the adrenaline of last night finally wears off.”
Before she starts to move down the stairs to get the door, I grab her elbow and pull her back to me. “I love you. You hear me?” She nods with a devilish grin dancing along her mouth. “I go where you go.”