me, holding me tight, so tight.
I sob into his coat, breathing in the smell of him, feeling my heart lift and lift and lift, right up into the sky, soaring away like a bird.
“I am so sorry,” he whispers, pressing his lips into the top of my head and now I hear him crying too. “I am so, so sorry.”
I hug him tighter, afraid that this is a dream that I can wake up from at any second, afraid that he’s not really here at all.
So I stand there holding him and he holds me and the rest of the world does its thing whenever the two of us are together.
It just dissolves.
Until it’s just us.
Eventually, though, the world comes into focus and I realize we’ve been hugging in the corner of this coffee shop in Philly and I’m not even sure how that’s actually possible, that he’s here.
I pull back and peer up at him, not letting go.
He gazes down at me through his long, wet lashes, tears at the corner of his eyes.
“Are you really here?” I ask.
“I am.”
“How?”
“I’ve come back for ye, Valerie,” he says, his voice a low murmur. He pauses. “If you’ll have me back.”
He’s come back for me.
“What changed?”
He gives me a small smile and brushes a strand of hair behind my ear. “Everything changed. Every single thing. I realized how horrible I’d been. Made the biggest mistake of my life by telling you to leave. And I understand if you want nothing to do with me. I won’t blame ye, not even a little. But … if I could somehow convince you to hold my heart again, it would mean the world, darlin’.”
“I’ve had your heart this whole time,” I tell him. “I held it with my own. I just didn’t know for how long. If I’d ever see you again …”
He winces. “I did an awful thing. I said things I didn’t mean. And I really didn’t mean them, you must understand that. I won’t blame my condition because it sounds like an excuse and I’m tired of excuses. I’ll own up to it. I’ll own it full so that I never make a mistake like that again.”
“It’s okay.”
“It isn’t. It isn’t okay what I did.” He shakes his heading, looking pained. “You don’t do that to someone ye love, especially not to you. You’re so special, my darlin’, ye don’t even understand. I think I already loved you the moment I first saw ye, even if it took me a bit to catch on.”
He pauses. “But that love … well, that love became infinite when you saw the darkest parts of me, like that sky above Shambles at night. Remember how deep and fathomless that was? Dark and cold. And instead of running away, you ran toward me. You threw yourself into my darkness and you showed me the stars that I never knew were there. You were never afraid of what was in me, you wanted to see it all, you wanted to be there for me in every way that you could.”
Another tear rolls down my cheek and he puts his hand against my face, wiping the tear away with the gentle caress of his thumb. “And that’s when the fear hit me,” he says. “That I could lose you, lose this, forever. I was so afraid that I pretty much cut off my nose to spite my face. I thought that maybe you wanted to leave, I thought maybe you would eventually. I was so bloody selfish, as I usually am, and I wanted to save myself. But it didn’t save me at all. You’re the only one who can do that. Without you, I’m drowning in that darkness, darlin’.”
I know Padraig means what he says. I know it because I know him. And I know the man in that hospital, that scared lonely boy who was scarred from loss, I know that wasn’t him. I just didn’t know when the real Padraig would ever come around. There was a chance I could have lost him to that darkness, just like he said.
And yet though he says I’m the one that saved him, he’s here, now. He’s the one standing in front of me.
“You’re the one who saved yourself,” I tell him softly. “And don’t you ever forget that. You’re so much stronger than you know, Padraig. You have that darkness within you, but we all do. You’re already one step ahead of the game by battling it,