with you. Not after keeping it all in for so long. I couldn’t break now. I pulled away and stepped to leave, but your hand snaked out and grabbed me and yanked me against your chest. You were so warm, solid.
“Let me go!” I said, wriggling to get free, desperate to flee before the tears came.
“No,” you said. “No.” You held me so close and so tight that I felt as if you were the stone walls, the tall fortress where Momma and I were once queens and warriors, and I didn’t need to keep my own walls up anymore, because I simply couldn’t. I collapsed against your chest, burying my face in your shirt, and the cries spilled out—loud, wet, and aching. I couldn’t stop.
You held me while I let the tears inside flood out and you kissed the very places that I had spent a lifetime keeping secret.
With each hiccupping breath, you just held me tighter and whispered, “I am here. I will always be here.”
I don’t know how long I cried in your arms. I don’t know when you pulled me into your lap, sitting on the ground. I don’t know the precise moment when you started to kiss me.
But you did. It was a soft, light brush of lips on my shoulder where my skin was ugly and ruined and yet you kissed me there anyway. My breathing was quieter, my cries gone. I was spent and tired and could feel a dull headache at my temples.
You kissed my shoulder and then looked at me.
Is this okay? your eyes asked—no expectation, no pressure.
My eyes must have said yes, because you kissed my shoulder again. Then brushed your lips up my neck, until your forehead was resting on mine and our breaths danced together in the dark. Your hand, your long artist’s fingers, grazed the skin at my waist. Your breath hitched as you kissed me. “Ellie, I love you…”
“I love you too.”
I felt you, the wanting in you, pressed up against me. Your head was cradled between my shoulder and neck, your lips brushing my skin there. My pulse was a riot and my skin was on fire and I wanted to implode.
Self-conscious about what you knew I could feel against my thigh, you angled your hips away from me, creating distance, but I didn’t want distance. I didn’t feel dirty, or used up, or like something was being taken from me. Every touch and kiss felt like something was being given back to me, between gasping breaths and arched backs, I felt like I could just be there, in your arms, loving you and you loving me and the stars and trees as our witnesses. I wanted them to witness it all.
I pulled you down among the flickering candles, I pulled you down on top of me, so that I felt your entire weight balanced above me. You were poised between my legs and propped up over me. We had jeans and T-shirts and buttons and zippers separating us, but this felt more intimate than anything I had seen in the movies.
You said my name again, looking into my eyes. I rocked my hips against you, wanting more, needing more, and you shivered, your breath unsteady. I kissed you, kissed you until you were gasping and moving on top of me until we were both breathless. My hand moved up under your shirt and I felt the strain of your back and shoulder blades and the skin slick with sweat. I licked you just to see what your skin tasted like. You made a low, rumbling, hungry sound. You kissed my jaw, then my temple, then my neck.
“Ellie, you make me feel like I am floating even when my feet are on the ground.” Your heart was floating on balloons too.
I looked into your eyes, your sweet, big, beautiful eyes. “You make me feel awake, alive, you chase the sad thoughts away. You draw me and I feel like I am whole. Like … I am beautiful.”
“Ellie, you are whole. These”—you brushed your fingers over my bruises, over my scars—“don’t make you less. I just want to keep you safe.”
You held me, and in your arms, I didn’t feel chipped away or like glass about to shatter. You were a man who didn’t have to ruin things to hold them. You held me and I felt stronger.
“I don’t want to have to be kept safe,” I said. “I just want to not be afraid.” I