Page 160 of Score
If there was uncertainty in her eyes before, it dissolves. Her hand lifts to my jaw, caressing, then cupping it. She strokes her thumb across my mouth, her gaze pinned there before she lifts it back to meet mine.
“I want to be with you more than anything.”
“Then what—”
“But as much as you like to deny it, you’re pretty conventional when it comes to family. You want the fairy tale. The fifty-year anniversary your parents never had. The picket fence. The kids and the dog.”
“Babe, I don’t even like dogs.”
“You monster,” she says, grinning. “My point is that you’re going to want marriage, and that terrifies me. The idea of someone chaining themselves to me, thinking they can handle all my shit, and then it gets bad and they realize it’s too much and they feel trapped, or leave. I can’t take that. Not from you.”
“I would never leave you.”
Her laugh is bitter, shattered into a thousand fragments. “So many partners said the same thing, only to end up in court fighting for shared custody with someone who doesn’t want them to have access to their own children anymore.”
“That would never be us.”
“That would never bethem, but it was.” She bites her lip and drops her eyes. “I don’t want to create that situation. We don’t need a piece of paper binding us to each other. When you want to go, you can go.”
“What if I never want to go? What if no one else has ever been in my heart the way you are? And never will be? What then?”
“Can we just take it day to day? And then tomorrow and the next day and not worry about forever right now?”
Can I do that? Discard the shape I thought commitment should take? What I want with Verity is not a construct. It’s a promise between our hearts, something soldered in our souls by the heat of devotion. She’s beenthrough a lot, through more than I knew or suspected. She wants space to figure out what she needs, and she deserves space to heal. It will take time for her, not only to trust me, but, with the complexity of her diagnosis and what she witnessed with her parents, to trustherself.
Love is patient. Love is kind… not self-seeking.
Snatches of the verse from my childhood sift into my memory and anchor my resolve to give her time; to not only consider what I want, but what my girl needs.
Love keeps no record of wrongs.
Love doesn’t keep score.
It can forgive and create second chances like the precious one in front of us. Verity is it for me, and I choose to believe this is only the beginning of our forever.
“I can take it day to day, yeah,” I agree. “But it’s just you and it’s just me? For as long as I have you, I only want you.”
“And I only want you.” She hesitates. “And if you start to want something different, you have to tell me. I know you want kids.”
“I don’t—”
“Iknowyou do. I’ve seen that look you get when you talk about your nieces and nephews.”
“What can I say? I’m a terrific uncle.”
“You’d be a terrific dad.” She swallows, her mouth moving with no sound, as if the words don’t want to come out. “With someone else.”
“I don’t want someone else, Vee.” I tilt her face so we’re looking into each other’s eyes. “I want you. I want a life withyou. And some imaginary kid doesn’t outweigh that.”
“It’s not some imaginary kid. It would be your kid.”
“Not if it’s not yours, too,” I say softly, surely.
She studies me, her frown deepening from whatever she sees. “You really mean that.”
“I do.”
“What happens when you change your mind? It’s been a dream for you since you were a kid. You can’t know—”
