ourselves.
Love isn’t something we have to learn though. Love was a given from the moment we saw each other. Something in our very souls told us we were meant to be together. Without each other, we wouldn’t have survived what life had planned for us. Not back then when we were only children, and not today or even tomorrow.
I need him as much as he needs me. It’s the only thing I’m certain of.
“Thank you for staying with me,” he says easily as he walks across the kitchen and wraps his arms around my waist. I set the cup down on the counter and the ceramic clinks before I look back up to him. I notice how his hands tighten on me as I lift my hands to his shoulders and rise up on my tiptoes to kiss him on the lips. It’s short and chaste, but I want all the kisses from him. Every sort he has for me.
When I pull away and my heels hit the floor, his eyes are still closed. It’s the raw emotion and truth that drew him to me. And maybe me to him.
“Tell me what you remember?” he asks me in a whisper and my gaze falls, but I rest my cheek to his chest and nod my head, listening to the steady sound of his heartbeat.
Together we’ll get through it all. Together and always.
“I think you loved me when you saw me, didn’t you?” I ask him.
“Which side of me are you asking?” he lets out an uneasy sigh, avoiding my gaze and the question.
“Both, neither, it doesn’t matter really. I already know you did,” I speak with feigned confidence. I want to hear him say it. I need to, really. I need to know that he’s always felt this way. I know I have. I’ll never stop loving him and I’m terrified that one day, he’ll stop loving me.
“He showed me a picture,” he starts to say and then covers his face with his hands. “I… I,” John says. I bite my lip, hating how much pain it causes him when he tries to recall a memory and he reverts. But it’s normal. He has to learn that. He has to accept it.
“When I saw you, all those years ago, I knew I was to protect you. When I looked at your picture. When I knew I was going to take you and face this… this hell in order to be with you. I looked at your picture and I knew I was going to love you.” He nods his head, closing his eyes and I know it hurts, to merge the memories and meld the scene in his head. The medication helps the present, but the past is hard. Nothing’s going to change that.
“I love every part of you, the man who wants to forget and the man who suffered for his father’s sins.” I cup his face in my hand and kiss him on his jaw and then softly on his lips.
He stares back at me with nothing but pain in his eyes.
“I don’t know how you can love me,” he says in a whisper.
“I don’t know how you can think I ever didn’t love you. Even when I ran. I’ve always loved you.” A weak smile forces its way to my face as I struggle to use his name. He doesn’t want me to call him Jay, but he’s always been Jay to me. “My wolf.”
John stares back at me, confused for a moment. Sometimes it’s like this, when he doesn’t quite remember, but then it clicks.
“Wolf,” he huffs a sarcastic laugh and shakes his head. “You don’t need a wolf, little bird. You needed another, someone just like you. You needed Jay.”
I nod my head as my heart splinters. “I need all of you,” I whisper against his lips. I can feel it, the moment Jay comes to the surface, the moment the possessive man inside of him moves his hands to the back of my head and deepens the kiss.
I pull back and look into his eyes whispering, “Jay?”
A small smile tugs his lips up, only just and he says quietly, “You can call me whichever name you’d like.” He rests his forehead against mine and it’s then that I realize our past needs to stay where it belongs. “You can call me Jay if you want. I’ll be anyone for you. I’ll do anything for you. I only exist for you.”
I brush my nose against