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Time has slowed down.

Since we talked things over, since he started opening up about himself, about his problems communicating, since he held me like his last tether to sanity, life seems to be holding its breath as we plod through everyday tasks. Work, classes, assignments—breakfast with Griff, dinner with Griff, Griff’s arms around me, a movie playing on TV. His scent, his low rumbling voice, gray Winter light and warmth inside, where we are suspended.

We haven’t returned to the discussion of our past misunderstandings, our fights, or his time in the army and its repercussions.

The dust hasn’t settled yet, the storm hasn’t moved on, but we’re sitting in its quiet center, waiting. Holding on to each other and trying not to think of the gale wailing outside this protective circle.

Today I get up, shower, get dressed and ready to go to class, then I glance into the living room and find him in his favorite easy chair by the window, and I’m caught in a spell, looking at him.

The morning light falls through the glass, and he’s caught in its golden shafts, his hair falling in his eyes like black silk. His chin is almost resting on his chest, and I can’t see his face, except for an impression of sharp features—sharp nose, sharp cheekbones, with the exception of that soft, wide mouth. His blue polo shirt gapes at the throat, allowing a glimpse of his collarbone. The fabric stretches over his shoulders, broad and strong despite the gauntness left behind by sickness and the treatments.

He has a book fallen open in his lap, a book he always has with him these days, leaving it on his nightstand when he goes to bed, resting it beside him when he draws. I wonder what book has him so captivated, but he’s put a brown leather sleeve on it, so I can never see the cover.

My gaze returns to his face, the pale shadow of it, and his words come back to me.

“It’s not easy to talk.”

“I was scared.”

“Did I hurt you?”

“I just... can’t tell what people mean sometimes.”

The pieces are falling into place, and the more I see of him, of his mind and thoughts and feelings, the more my heart belongs to him, and him only. Such a complex, beautiful man. So strong. So kind. So hurt—and I want to soothe away those hurts and make him smile.

He’s my guy, my man, the one I want to spend my life with. And as we wait for the therapy to do its work, for the wound in his chest to heal, for the docs to say he’s doing well, that he’ll get well... this heart he owns is breaking all over again at the possibility of him not making it out alive.

He has to. For himself.

For me.

“Griff?” I call out softly, entering the room. I navigate between the table and the sofa to get to him. I brought him breakfast earlier and I see the tray on the floor. It looks untouched, the tea probably gone cold, the toast hard.

Why hasn’t he eaten? Is his nausea so bad today? A fist wraps around my heart. Worry starts eating at me, a familiar feeling after these past few months. Leaving him each morning is a splinter in my chest, and I have to tell myself over and over that he’ll be there when I get back.

But then I see the way his chest rises and falls evenly, and realize he’s fallen asleep.

Not a good sign, either. It means he’s so tired he barely dragged himself out of bed here, and then passed out again.

I’m so lost in thought, staring at him, that I stumble over a stack of books on the floor—his drawing books.

He jerks awake, and the book falls off his lap to the floor with a thump. That seems to alarm him more and he’s struggling to get up, face pale, arms trembling as he heaves himself to his feet. The legs of the easy chair screech on the tiles.

“Griff!” I take a step back, my pulse thundering in my ears, and try to keep my voice soft. “Sorry I startled you. It’s just me.”

It takes an endless moment for the cold terror to leave his dark eyes.

Then he drops back into the easy chair, and drags a shaky hand over his face.

“Are you...” I don’t even know what to ask. Okay? How could he be? “Will you be all right?”

He’s muttering something to himself, I realize, over and over, but I can’t make out the words.

“I’m going to work.” I kneel at his feet, put a hand on the thick, tense muscles of his thigh, feel them jerk under my palm. “Griff. Did you hear me? I’m going to work. Will you be okay?”

“Harshness vanished,” he whispers, his voice rasping over my skin, eliciting shivers. He lifts his eyes to my face as if really seeing me for the first time since I entered the room. He stops, swallows hard. “A sudden softness has replaced the meadows' wintry grey.”

I gape at him, my mind taking a long moment to catch up. “That’s Rilke’s poem.”

He’s quoting Rilke at me?

“It just...” He blinks at me, then looks away, those ridiculously long lashes hiding his eyes. “It made me think of you.”

Casting about for something, anything, to say—to this revelation, to this boy who keeps knocking me over with his every gesture—I lift his book from where it’s fallen the floor.

It’s a copy of Rilke’s poems, twin to the one I always have by my side. “Since when do you read this? This poetry, and... and...”

I run out of words.

These are my favorite poems. He didn’t use to like poetry when I first met him. Didn’t read much, more interested in images, pictures, those watercolors and charcoal pencils that seem to be the only things he carries with him from place to place, the only piece of home he deems important.

“Since you,” he says simply, voice raw and clear. “To understand you. To feel you. I love the poems, though I...” His breathing is still ragged. “I still don’t understand everything, Soph, but fuck, I promise I’m trying.”

This guy... how could I ever think he was insensitive and that he didn’t care about me?

I turn away so he won’t see me cry.

***

“Hey.” I turn as he wanders into the kitchen, dark hair ruffled, dark scruff on his jaw. Achingly handsome in worn sweats and a ripped T-shirt. “Want some eggs today?”

Since the radiation therapy ended and the nausea eased, he got some of his appetite back. He’s cautious about what he eats, but he’s got some color back in his face, and his cheeks don’t look so sunken anymore.

He nods. “Thanks, that’d be great.”

I mean, he’s even ventured out of his easy chair and is now sitting at the kitchen table, looking at me, arms folded in front of him. Muscular arms, despite the thinness. Big bones, big hands, thick brows, and those piercing eyes. So masculine and rough, so sexy.

Heat creeps up my neck, and I turn back to the stove, grabbing more eggs from the basket. “Sunny side up?”

I don’t know why I’m asking. I know how he eats his eggs. I remember everything he’s ever told me, but I’m so frigging nervous, and I don’t know why. Maybe because we haven’t been together in the kitchen, in a normal situation like this, for ages.

“Yeah.” He pours himself some juice. My ears are attuned to every sound coming from him, the splash of liquid, the scrape of the glass on the wooden table, his quiet sigh.

I prepare his eggs next to my over easy ones, and sprinkle salt and pepper, then turn to place them on the table.

And find him frowning.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“I should be helping you. Scratch that, I should be making you breakfast. You’ve been taking care of me all this time, like... like...”

He’s already pushing back his chair, and I reach across the table to catch his hand.

“Stop. It’s not like that.” I meet his eyes and fight the blush scorching my cheeks. How can he make me blush after all the things we did together? It’s the force of that gaze, the weight and heat of it. “It’s my pleasure taking care of you. And soon you’ll be strong enough and won’t need me anymore.”

His hand turns, grasps mine. “I’ll always need you, Sophie,” he says, voice grave.

“You won’t need my cooking skills anymore, then,” I say, trying to keep it light.

His mouth curves into a reluctant smile, but he says nothing.

I think to joke about it, about suggesting he take some cooking lessons to cook for both of us, of other things we could learn and try together. About the future.

I sit down instead, and we are silent for a while, our clasped hands a bond between us, a promise.

We’re waiting for the results from his bloodwork and the meeting with his doctors. That’s in a few days, and I can feel the fear building inside him.

Inside me, too. It’s like a storm approaching, a hurricane coalescing, loading the air with static. It’s putting pressure on top of my skull, making my head ache. I can’t imagine how Griffin must be feeling.

He gave me a paper flower once, and I held on to it like a talisman. He gave me a drawing he made, and I framed it and look at it every day.

He gave me his attention, his energy, his care. Did his best with me.

Now here we are, and my chest is so heavy with fear I can’t breathe.

Time has started again, and now it’s running fast, way too fast when I want to smash the clocks and hold the moment in my hands, never letting go.

***

In the evening, I curl up with him on the sofa, and like every morning and every evening now, I feel the minutes and hours slipping between my fingers like sand. I hold on to him, clutch at him, and pray he doesn’t realize how terrified I am.

How close to full-on panic.

Tonight we’re supposed to be watching a documentary about seals. The images look like watercolors, washed out, and he seems engrossed in it. My arms are loosely looped around his waist, over hard muscle and bone, his arm heavy over my shoulders.

On screen, the seals dive and frolic and chase after fish and penguins, and I just listen to his heartbeat and fret, drawing in his sexy scent, fingers twisting in the soft cotton of his T-shirt.

His head turns and he drops a kiss on top of my head. “Okay?” he asks quietly.

No, it’s not. It’s not okay. I want the doctors to walk into my apartment right now, with streamers and banners and confetti and champagne, and tell us he’s well, that he’ll be well from now on. Healed, safe from harm.

Here, with me.

My hand clenches harder, bunching up the fabric. He shifts, lifts a hand to cradle my head, dips his head and kisses me.

It catches me by surprise, and I gasp only to have him deepen the kiss, his tongue tangling with mine. Pleasure zings through me, pooling in my belly, a ball of fire. It feels so good, to have him kiss me like this, to feel his body tensing, to feel how much he wants me. For weeks he was a ghost, uninterested in food, or sex. In me.

It wakes me up, pulls me back from the precipice, the dark cliff I’ve been dangling over for the past days and weeks. When did I stop believing he’ll make it? When did I accept that his fatalistic comments were the truth?

When did I decide to stop fighting for him?

Pushing my hand under his T-shirt, I ghost my fingers up his chest.

He grabs my hand, pulls it away, and breaks the kiss.

“Don’t.” He’s breathing hard, eyes dark as night, pupils blown to hell. With his cheeks flushed, he’s so handsome, but he winces as he leans back.

The scar. “Does is hurt?”

He licks his lips. “No. Sophie—”

“Then let me see.”

“No.”

“Please,” I whisper.

He closes his eyes. “No way, Soph. It’s fucking ugly.”

“It’s not. Nothing about you can be ugly. Please, Griff.”

I need to see. I have to see the proof of everything that marked him, the source of his pain and the evidence that he can be saved. The proof that he’s real, that he’s really here, that we can beat this.

“Hell.” He stops. “Soph...”

“Please.”

Jaw tightening, he grabs his thermal and carefully, gingerly pulls it off.

“Why,” he whispers, glancing down at himself, grimacing and looking away. “Why can’t I ever deny you?”

I don’t know what to say. My eyes burn at his admission. I can’t deny him, either.

Wouldn’t want to deny him.

His bare chest is lean and finely muscled. He used to be so muscular when he first came back, and the potential is there, in his wide ribcage, the wide shoulders, the beauty in the lines of his body.

Then of course, there’s the scar. I trail my fingertips down the long, angry red line, over the points where the staples were removed. I’ve caught glimpses of the wound before, of course. I was with him at the hospital, though he’s gone to his more recent appointments on his own.

Finally, he catches my wrist, stops my hand from wandering any longer. “Seen enough?” he growls. “Is it as ugly as you remembered?”

He’s hiding behind anger, but I know him now. I get it.

And I won’t let him do this. I kiss him, place a hand on his firm pec, over the beat of his heart, and pull back just enough to whisper, “No, it’s not enough. Show me more.”

He gives a startled huff of laughter, and I smile against his lips. “Sophie...”

“I’m not letting you go,” I tell him. “It’s final.”

He opens his mouth to speak and I place my fingertips over his lips to stop him.

But he speaks against my fingers, his breath tickling them. “Whatever happens,” he says quietly. “Whatever they tell me. I want to thank you.”

I swallow a moan of distress. “Don’t. Don’t say these things.”

“It’s the truth, Soph. nobody in my life has ever fought for me like you have. Came back for me, looked after me, tried to understand me. With you, I’m myself. And... you’re the only girl I’ve ever really wanted. So thank you.”

“Whatever happens,” I choke out, “thank you, too.”

I can’t say more. Can’t think beyond his warmth by my side, his face, his presence. Can’t think of him leaving me.

How can I go from one extreme to the other like that—from the dark pit of despair to the resolution to fight, the belief he’ll be okay, only to roll back into the darkness?

We lie in quiet, bodies flush against each other, our hearts beating in rhythm.

I’ll never love another, I think. Not like I love him. Maybe I loved him in previous lives. Who knows?

I know I’ll love him in the next one, too.