“Aaron?” I whisper.
The lights are out. We’re lying in bed. I’m stretched out across his body, my head pillowed on his chest. My eyes are on the ceiling.
He’s running his hand over my hair, his fingers occasionally combing through the strands. “Your hair is like water,” he whispers. “It’s so fluid. Like silk.”
“Aaron.”
He leaves a light kiss on top of my head. Rubs his hands down my arms. “Are you cold?” he asks.
“You can’t avoid this forever.”
“We don’t have to avoid it at all,” he says. “There’s nothing to avoid.” “I just want to know you’re okay,” I say. “I’m worried about you.” He
still hasn’t said a single thing to me about his mother. He never said a word the entire time we were in her room, and he hasn’t spoken about it since. Hasn’t even alluded to it. Not once.
Even now, he says nothing. “Aaron?”
“Yes, love.”
“You’re not going to talk about it?”
He’s silent again for so long I’m about to turn around to face him. But then.
“She’s no longer in pain,” he says softly. “This is a great consolation to me.”
I don’t push him to speak after that. “Juliette,” he says.
“Yes?”
I can hear him breathing.
“Thank you,” he whispers. “For being my friend.”
I turn around then. Press close to him, my nose grazing his neck. “I will always be here if you need me,” I say, the darkness catching and hushing my voice. “Please remember that. Always remember that.”
More seconds drown in the darkness. I feel myself drifting off to sleep. “Is this really happening?” I hear him whisper.
“What?” I blink, try to stay awake.
“You feel so real,” he says. “You sound so real. I want so badly for this to be real.”
“This is real,” I say. “And things are going to get better. Things are going to get so much better. I promise.”
He takes a tight breath. “The scariest part,” he says, so quietly, “is that for the first time in my life, I actually believe that.”
“Good,” I say softly, turning my face into his chest. I close my eyes.
Warner’s arms slip around me, pulling me closer. “Why are you wearing so many clothes?” he whispers.
“Mmm?”
“I don’t like these,” he says. He tugs on my pants.
I touch my lips to his neck, just barely. It’s a feather of a kiss. “Then take them off.”
He pulls back the covers.
I only have a second to bite back a shiver before he’s kneeling between my legs. He finds the waistband of my pants and tugs, pulling them off, over my hips, down my thighs. So slowly.
My heart is asking me all kinds of questions.
He bunches my pants in one fist and throws them across the room.
And then his arms slip behind my back, pulling me up and against his chest. His hands move under my shirt, up my spine.
Soon my shirt is gone.
Tossed in the same direction as my pants.
I shiver, just a little, and he eases me back onto the pillows, careful not to crush me under his weight. His body heat is so welcome, so warm. My head tilts backward. My eyes are still closed.
My lips part for no reason at all.
“I want to be able to feel you,” he whispers, his words at my ear. “I want your skin against mine.” His gentle hands move down my body. “God, you’re so soft,” he says, his voice husky with emotion.
He’s kissing my neck.
My head is spinning. Everything goes hot and cold and something is stirring to life inside of me and my hands reach for his chest, looking for something to hold on to and my eyes are trying and failing to stay open and I’m only just conscious enough to whisper his name.
“Yes, love?”
I try to say more but my mouth won’t listen. “Are you asleep now?” he asks.
Yes, I think. I don’t know. Yes. I nod.
“That’s good,” he says quietly. He lifts my head, pulls my hair away from my neck so my face falls more easily onto the pillow. He shifts so he’s beside me on the bed. “You need to sleep more,” he says.
I nod again, curling onto my side. He pulls the blankets up around my arms.
He kisses the curve of my shoulder. My shoulder blade. Five kisses down my spine, one softer than the next. “I will be here every night,” he whispers, his words so soft, so tortured, “to keep you warm. I will kiss you until I can’t keep my eyes open.”
My head is caught in a cloud.
Can you hear my heart? I want to ask him.
I want you to make a list of all of your favorite things, and I want to be on it.
But I’m falling asleep so fast I’ve lost my grasp on reality, and I don’t know how to move my mouth. Time has fallen all around me, wrapped me in this moment.
And Warner is still talking. So quietly, so softly. He thinks I’m asleep now. He thinks I can’t hear him.
“Did you know,” he’s whispering, “that I wake up, every morning, convinced you’ll be gone?”
Wake up, I keep telling myself. Wake up. Pay attention.
“That all of this,” he says, “these moments, will be confirmed as some kind of extraordinary dream? But then I hear you speak to me,” he says. “I see the way you look at me and I can feel how real it is. I can feel the truth in your emotions, and in the way you touch me,” he whispers, the back of his hand brushing my cheek.
My eyes flicker open. I blink once, twice. His lips are set in a soft smile.
“Aaron,” I whisper. “I love you,” he says.
My heart no longer fits in my chest.
“Everything looks so different to me now,” he says. “It feels different. It tastes different. You brought me back to life.” He’s quiet a moment. “I have never known this kind of peace. Never known this kind of comfort. And sometimes I am afraid,” he says, dropping his eyes, “that my love will terrify you.”
He looks up, so slowly, gold lashes lifting to reveal more sadness and beauty than I’ve ever seen in the same moment. I didn’t know a person could convey so much with just one look. There’s extraordinary pain in him. Extraordinary passion.
It takes my breath away.
I take his face in my hands and kiss him, so slowly.
His eyes fall closed. His mouth responds to mine. His hands reach up to pull me closer and I stop him.
“No,” I whisper. “Don’t move.” He drops his hands.
“Lie back,” I whisper. He does.
I kiss him everywhere. His cheeks. His chin. The tip of his nose and the space between his eyebrows. All across his forehead and along his jawline. Every inch of his face. Small, soft kisses that say so much more than I ever could. I want him to know how I feel. I want him to know it the way only he can, the way he can sense the depth of emotion behind my movements. I want him to know and never doubt.
And I want to take my time.
My mouth moves down to his neck and he gasps, and I breathe in the scent of his skin, take in the taste of him and I run my hands down his chest, kissing my way across and down the line of his torso. He keeps trying to reach for me, keeps trying to touch me, and I have to tell him to stop.
“Please,” he says, “I want to feel you—”
I gentle his arms back down. “Not yet. Not now.” My hands move to his pants. His eyes fly open. “Close your eyes,” I have to tell him.
“No.” He can hardly speak. “Close your eyes.”
He shakes his head. “Fine.”
I unbutton his pants. Unzip. “Juliette,” he breathes. “What—” I’m pulling off his pants.
He sits up.
“Lie down. Please.”
He’s staring at me, eyes wide. He finally falls back.
I tug his pants off all the way. Toss them to the floor. He’s in his underwear.
I trace the stitching on the soft cotton, following the lines on the overlapping pieces of his boxer-briefs as they intersect in the middle. He’s breathing so fast I can hear him, can see his chest moving. His eyes are squeezed shut. His head tilted back. His lips parted.
I touch him again, so gently.
He stifles a moan, turns his face into the pillows. His whole body is trembling, his hands clutching at the sheets. I run my hands down his legs, gripping them just above his knees and inching them apart to make room for the kisses I trail up the insides of his thighs. My nose skims his skin.
He looks like he’s in pain. So much pain.
I find the elastic waist of his underwear. Tug it down. Slowly.
Slowly.
The tattoo is sitting just below his hip bone.
h e l l i s e m p t y
a n d a l l t h e d e v i l s a r e h e r e
I kiss my way across the words. Kissing away the devils.
Kissing away the pain.
