Page 147 of Reckless
“I’m not asking you to forget this.”
“No, you’re asking me to trust a lesson learned like I’m always the teacher.”That hit him.
“I’m asking you not to end us in the same hour I understood what I did.”
I could have gone back from that line and I wished love worked like that.
I wished all the practical, unromantic realities of class and money and power and language would fall away because two people wanted each other hard enough and felt enough and had finally found the right body to come home to.
But that was not my life.My parents had died chasing presents and I’d not be so foolish.
I looked at him and said the hardest truth of the night.“I don’t want easy because I’m weak enough to take it.”
His expression moved.“I don’t think you’re weak.”
“No,” I said.“But I do.”
The words shocked him into silence.
“What are you afraid of?”he asked.
“That I love you enough to stay and keep taking less than what I need.”
“I would never want that.”
“I know.That’s the worst part.You wouldn’t even know it was happening.”
“You could tell me.”
“I could.But would you hear me?Or would you hear the problem and try to solve it before I finished the sentence?”
I met his eyes and forced myself not to soften.
“I could go back with you right now,” I said quietly.“That’s the truth.I could walk out of this restaurant, get in your car, let you take me back to your bed, and tell myself it means everything will work because we love each other enough and the rest will sort itself out.”
There, I had said it.
His face moved so sharply I knew I’d finally said the one thing he had not let himself think I might still want.
“I know,” he said.
He knew I still wanted him.
Knew that if he reached one inch farther emotionally, one inch farther physically, I might go with him because the body remembers comfort faster than the soul remembers consequence.
The two of us stood there with that knowledge between us, raw and awful and intimate.
I took a breath that hurt and made myself keep going.
“But I would hate myself later.”
The words came out rough.
Beautiful rooms.
My body in his bed.
And under all of it, the knowledge that when things got difficult, when the emotional center of us got scary or uncertain, he would still reach first for what could be bought, fixed, arranged, acquired.
