Page 156 of Reckless
“Me too.”
“So did I.”Her mouth trembled once and then steadied as she corrected me.
This standing in the uncertainty with her, this letting love exist without forcing outcome, was the new language.The one I was only learning.The one she had asked for all along.So instead of reaching for a plan, I said, “Then let it be hard.”
Kelly found my face and very slowly, she smiled through the remaining tears.
That felt like the first truly right thing I had done since the restaurant.
She stepped the last inch into me then and rested her forehead against my chest.My hands stayed at my sides for one full second while I made sure this was what she wanted.
Then she took my wrist and pulled my arm around her.I put both arms around her carefully, like a man handling something precious and real and not remotely his by right.
We stood like that on the quiet sidewalk while the sun lowered and the ordinary world kept moving around us.
After a while, she pulled back enough to look up at me.“I’m not promising you anything tonight.”
“I understand.”
Her mouth softened.“That was almost annoying.”
“Almost.”
She held my gaze for one more second and then asked, “Can I kiss you?”
That one got me worse than anything else had.
I nodded once because words were briefly unavailable to me.Kelly kissed me softly.
Her mouth was warm and careful and full of feeling and the kind of tenderness that made me want to conquer the world if she chose me.
I kissed her back as softly.
When we parted, she stayed close enough that our foreheads almost touched.
Then she said, “I’m still making you prove you can speak my language.”
I smiled despite everything.“That seems fair.”
“Good.”
I laughed under my breath because she’d decided to steal that from me.Then she stepped back fully and looked up at her building.
“I should go inside before I change my mind and do something very irresponsible.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s a promise.”
I studied her.The sweater.The bare face.The woman I loved standing on a cracked sidewalk with her whole truth finally in my hands and none of it secured.
“I can live with that.”
Kelly looked back at me over her shoulder, smile small and precarious now.
“Can you?”
Probably not, but for the first time in days, that didn’t feel like the point.
