home, make love to her, and then sleep for ten days. You both need it.”
“We do.” I nodded. I leaned over and kissed her forehead. “I’m proud of you.”
She needed to hear it as much as I did. Her eyes filled with tears the same as mine, and she hit me in the arm for it.
“Ouch,” I said because she’d landed her soft punch right on the stitches.
She laughed. “Sorry.”
I smiled at her and headed to the door.
I swung Violet into my arms, honeymoon-style, grabbing for my phone at the same time. She giggled and yelled my name. “Sorry, Jers, we gotta go,” I said and hung up the phone.
I walked with Violet squirming in my embrace toward the door.
“What are you doing?” she laughed.
“Taking you to bed.”
Her squirms stopped.
“Yeah?”
I nodded. “I’m under strict instructions to not leave it for days,” I told her. “I think you should make sure I listen to those orders.”
She wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed my jaw.
“I think this is a very good idea.”
“Are you sure you’re up for the challenge?” I asked as we left the hospital behind and headed for my car.
“Question is, are you?”
My response was a hard and demanding kiss that she returned, life and love and joy filling us. I went to put her down, and she wrapped her legs around my waist, pushing her tongue into my mouth. I set her on the roof of the Aston Martin and lost myself to every stroke, every touch, every beautiful sensation that was Violet. To the champagne life that her belief in me―her love for me―promised.
Violet - Eighteen Months Later
NEVER BREAK
“It's bigger than you and me
It's one plus one equals three
When we talk about forever.”
Performed by John Legend
Written by Atweh / Wells / Legend / Mclldowie
Cesium is an extremely volatile alkali metal. When it comes into contact with water, it reacts to form cesium hydroxide and hydrogen gas. This reaction occurs so rapidly that a bubble forms around it, forcing it upward and exposing it to more water which ignites the hydrogen gas. This cycle repeats until all of the cesium disappears.
I’d once been water. Dawson had once been Cesium. Now, we were what remained. The cesium hydroxide after the dangerous gas had evaporated out into the universe. What was left of us could still burn. Could still raise havoc to those who touched us, but not to each other. Together we were a unit that stored energy. It zipped along us. Inside us.
I stared at the ceiling, writing the chemical reactions in a formula in my imagination, wondering what we would be if another chemical was added to our equation. I’d thought I was pregnant. Not that we’d been trying. Not that we weren’t being careful, but I’d been really late, and that never happened. Whereas Jersey’s female body parts had been anything but normal, mine had been the epitome of average.
But after worrying about it for a few days, I’d started my period. For the five days of my cycle, I’d shuffled through a range of emotions that came from knowing I didn’t have a baby growing in me. I hadn’t told anyone, not even Dawson, when I told him everything. Now, I just didn’t know if it was sadness, relief, or a weird mixture of the two that had settled over me.
Spooned up against my back with his arm around me, Dawson groaned, body tensing, squeezing me. “Vi!” he cried out, still asleep.
A nightmare. We both had them. Dawson’s were always of me in the car after we’d crashed off a cliff. Mine was always a park on a dark night with a bullet that hadn’t grazed an arm but had found purchase in his heart.
I rubbed his arm and pushed my rear end into him before littering every piece of skin I could reach with kisses. His breathing changed, getting shallower and shorter at first before slowing as he came awake. He buried his face in my neck, placing a kiss there.
“I’m here. I’m okay,” I said softly.
I turned in his arms, continuing to kiss his bare skin. Neck. Chest. Lips.
“What’s wrong?” I asked because he usually only had the nightmare when triggered by something in our lives.
He brushed the hair out of my face, tucking it behind my ear. “You tell me.”
“W-what?” I asked as my heart stuttered before picking up pace.
“I’ve been waiting for you to talk to me. Something has been circulating in that brain of yours for a few days