My heart was loud. Deafening. I vaguely worried about the possibility of some sort of incident.

Like a heart attack.

Not only was my body so not used to that kind of physical exertion, the kind it has just been engaged in for about five orgasms—I wasn’t sure how to measure it in conventional time—but in no way, shape or form was my mind even vaguely prepared for everything that had just happened. It had happened once, or technically more than once, that night a year ago. But I’d had the help of tequila to distract me from my lack of cardiovascular fitness and the fact that I was having sex with Sam.

Well, during, I hadn’t thought much beyond our bodies. The same was true this time. I thought a lot before and I was thinking a lot after. But during was blissed silence, where there was just the two of us, our bodies, and the rest of the bullshit ceased to exist. Like the eye of some epic and destructive storm, there was stillness that was somehow wholly natural and unnatural.

Not now, though. We were out of the eye and firmly in the middle of the storm. The storm that was inside of my body, laying waste to it. I was filled with a lot of doubt and worry. That he’d hear my rapid breathing and then notice that I was having a heart attack because I’d skipped cardio every day for the last ten years. That he’d not only notice that from my breathing but from the untoned skin of my belly where his sculpted arm was resting. That he’d notice the dimples on my thighs whenever I had to get up.

That he’d notice that we were so not suited and he’d been in a Shallow Hal-type situation, and he’d run for the hills when I came into true and real focus.

So I was thinking about that and all of my other undesirable body parts when he looked at me.

My breath hitched the moment I’d finally gotten it back. His eyes were full, intense, ready for something to rival even the storm inside my mind.

This is it. This is where he realizes that he’s not in bed with a Victoria’s Secret model and that horrible foreign version of Sam comes back and breaks my heart all over again.

I cursed myself for being so stupid and began to plan all of the fried food and chocolate I’d be buying as Band-Aids for this particular bullet wound.

“What kind of food do you have in your refrigerator?” he asked, voice husky and almost as breathless as me.

That made me feel slightly better about my situation. If someone as fit as Sam was feeling a little winded, it made my breathing a little less embarrassing.

Then I realized what he said. I blinked. Once. Twice. Just to make sure I heard him right. I couldn’t have heard him right, the look on his face far too serious for such a casual and incredibly odd statement. Sam said odd things all the time, but usually they had some sort of connection to the conversation at hand. I must’ve imagined it, my mind protecting me from whatever he’d actually said.

“What?”

He went up on his elbow, resting his chin in his palm. The chocolate curtain of his hair fell in front of his face, making him look like he could be posing for a Calvin Klein commercial. No preparation or airbrushing necessary. Like Emma Stone said to Ryan Gosling in whatever movie that was: “Dude, it’s like you’re photoshopped.”

I didn’t channel Emma Stone at that moment because I didn’t look like Emma Stone at that moment, or any moment.

I was splotchy and red-faced and covered in a thin sheen of sweat. Where Sam could sell fancy underwear on a billboard in Times Square, I was the “before” picture in those weight loss advertisements that played at two in the morning.

His face was still blank as he stared at me.

I braced.

“Well, after a cum like that, I either need a cigarette or a big bowl of pasta. And considering I don’t smoke anymore, I’m gonna have to go with the pasta.” He paused. “But we can always order in if you don’t have any.”

It took me a long moment to register what he just said, and that it was not a comment about my thighs or stomach or extra jiggly bits at the bottom of my arms. Or about the fact that I could not, or would not ever be getting a pair of angel wings. Or about my lack of resemblance to Emma Stone. So when it did register, I didn’t plan my reaction. As everything was with Sam, what I did next was instinctual, uncontrollable.

I laughed.

And it was not a little attractive and feminine giggle. It was a real, side-splitting, tears running down your face and unattractive snorting kind of laugh. For a multitude of reasons, but namely because the statement was just so Sam. After everything that went down in the past few hours—days, really—and the way he’d made love to me mere moments ago, straight out of some romance novel or movie. Barely real. Then he went off script. The script that would’ve had him whispering sweet nothings to me, heartwarming words about my beauty, about the intensity of our coupling or how he’d never felt more at home when he was inside me, yada yada yada. That would’ve perfectly fit the romantic and storybook narrative.

And it might’ve just made me lose my mind. There was only so much of unreality a person could take. Even if it was beautiful unreality. Especially if it was beautiful unreality.

I was sure a lot of girls might have been annoyed or disappointed or whatever in such a statement. But for me, it was so perfectly imperfect, it carved us out of whatever cookie-cutter mold society had created for love and made me fall even harder for Sam.

The real Sam. Not the high school one I’d barely known, or the other one I’d constructed and nurtured the years after.

He smiled at me with a little uncertainty and a lot of self-consciousness, squeezing me enough to make me laugh harder.

Then he bit my neck. Hard. “What?” he snapped.

It was the faux ferocity in his voice that made me laugh harder, so stark in its difference to his real fury in my yard earlier in the day.

“It’s not funny,” he whined, so childlike and pouty it made me kiss his mouth, hard.

I hadn’t done that, kissed him of my own volition, yet today. He’d done all of that so far. I didn’t linger too long on that thought, just pulled back slightly so I could meet his eyes.

“It wasn’t supposed to be that funny,” he muttered.

“No, that’s precisely why it was,” I told him.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ruin the moment or whatever. My brain-to-mouth filter is kind of nonexistent,” he said, his voice still holding a thread of vulnerability that was almost unrecognizable when attached to someone so outwardly confident.

I grinned wide. “I know you have no filter. I’ve met you. And you didn’t ruin a single thing,” I said firmly. “You made the moment.”

He searched my eyes, for a lie presumably. I let him. I was sure the big and mighty rock star wasn’t used to feeling so self-conscious, especially when he was naked. I, on the other hand, was very used to it.

Once he’d taken his time to find the truth in my words, he rapidly moved us so he was pressing his entire body onto mine from atop me. He was grinning now, all traces of the uncertainty of before disappearing.

“Well, finally you find me hilarious, like the rest of the world,” he growled. “Though it was precisely at the moment I wasn’t actually meaning to be funny.”

I grinned back. “That’s why it was funny.”

He let out another growl and nuzzled my neck delightfully. I squirmed against the sensation of his stubble scratching at my skin, and at the other sensation that traveled down to my very sensitive downstairs area. I had been sure he’d tired that part of me out for at least a week, but it seemed a handful of minutes was all I needed to recover and want more of Sam.

I reasoned I’d always want more.

Then I decided to shelve that thought, and the bone-chilling fear of what I was doing, away for another moment, one where I wasn’t so happy and content.

Sam’s face left my neck to regard me once more. “So is that a yes or a no on the pasta?” he asked seriously.

I giggled, that one much girlier and feminine than before. “That’s a yes on the pasta,” I replied.

“Perfection.”

And it was. That moment. Him. Me, even. But perfection, just like fairy tales, didn’t exist.

You could live in a fairy tale, for a time.

But then, like always, the story would end.

And reality would hit.

* * *

“Wow,” Sam said through a mouthful of pasta.

The whole spectacle of him—Sam, walking around my house shirtless, wearing only jeans with the two top buttons undone and eating a bowl of fettuccine I’d whipped up—should’ve affected me in a multitude of ways.

It didn’t, because of the current direction of his stare. The intensity of it.

He even abandoned the pasta, setting the bowl down on my coffee table.

He regarded my pride and joy, my sanity with a focused gaze that made me feel incredibly self-conscious about something that had never embarrassed me before. Well, only once before.

Though that was because I never let people in who I thought would make me feel embarrassed or ashamed of being me. I wouldn’t let anyone make me ashamed of who I was.

It wasn’t a mantra I lived by through a monk-like ability to see oneself and be strong enough to control my own self-worth, not let other people control it. It was from the broken pieces of my previously shattered self-worth that I built my current mantra.

Sam’s eyes on my floor-to-ceiling bookshelf that took over a whole wall in my living room brought back a memory. An unpleasant one. Because that was always the way, wasn’t it? The brain never let us have new experiences without haunting us with the old broken nightmare.

Which was why I was afraid to dream while I was awake. Why I trained myself not to. Against that terrible human instinct to hope. Despite all the proof to make us think the contrary, we did it. Hoped. We were stupid creatures, really. We just kept getting knocked down, and that stupid thing called hope made us get back up again.

Until one day we got back up and we were missing that one thing. And it made us emptier and made everything a little less vibrant and colorful, but at least we didn’t get knocked back down again.

I was sure I had nothing left of that feeble emotion left.

But the memory hit me nonetheless. Knocked me down.

“Thumbelina?” The questioning and pleasing voice yanked me out of that horrible memory.

I snapped my head up, only now realizing it had lolled downward to my chest as I lost myself in my own thoughts. As if the sheer weight of them was dragging it down.

Sam’s brows knitted together as he crossed the space between us to yank me into his bare skin.

My skin wasn’t bare. I didn’t have the six-pack that made it rather pleasing to walk around the room shirtless while consuming a huge bowl of carbs, cheese and butter.

No, I’d put on a floaty caftan that I’d bought on extreme sale at the one and only trendy boutique we had in town. Meredith was the quirky owner who was somewhere in her forties, though you couldn’t exactly tell where. She had that kind of “stop you in the street” ageless beauty that could’ve put her in her early thirties. I’d only known she was past that because of something she mentioned in passing about a disastrous fortieth. And her eyes. They were hardened and haunted with an age of suffering that retinols couldn’t combat.

She always called me when stuff came on sale in my size. She knew my financial situation didn’t accommodate me to buy at full price, and even if it did, she only had a small selection of items in “plus size.” Though I had a sneaking feeling she ordered specific things that magically looked good on me and then magically went on sale.

She was a good person. Good to me, despite not really knowing me that well, or really at all. She was kind and acted like we were friends even though I continued to gently turn down her multiple offers of margarita night.

“Sorry,” I said, blinking away the remnants of my bad decisions with Simon to bring my even worse decisions back into focus.

He grinned. “Daydreaming about me? You don’t need to do that, baby. I’m right here,” he joked.

I smiled, despite everything. “Something like that,” I replied dryly.

“You read all those?” He nodded to my bookshelves.

I didn’t have the space or the means to make myself the library I always dreamed of in my tiny cottage, so I made do.

With a lot of help from Garth, we managed to structure the shelves so they molded around my plush white sofa that was pushed against the same wall. All my books snaked around it, from the feet to far beyond the top.

Two mismatched armchairs cornered the sofa, framing it, with a coffee table in the middle and footstools at the end. Each sitting surface had a surplus of mismatched pillows and various throws, to invite someone—me, considering I was the only one who spent time in my house—to stay a while. I designed it to be my little sanctuary, scattered with candles, some scented, that I burned according to mood, and others that were there mainly for decoration. A slightly frayed but beautifully designed rug covered the whole area. That was a steal from a random antique shop in the middle of nowhere I’d stumbled onto on a road trip with Pria. Most things in here were like that. Unwanted, thrown away at garage sales and rummage racks, but somehow, all put together in my living room, they fit.

Maybe that was why I felt so comfortable here, around things that didn’t really have a place, since most of the time that was how I felt too.

Sam’s eyes on mine made me realize I’d lost myself in my own head again. Another reason why I didn’t make too many friends—most people tended to think you were weird when you lapsed into sudden long, unexplained silences.

It was the select few who just accepted it. Pria talked through it, not minding that I didn’t hear half of it. Lexie, the only other woman in my life close enough to call a girlfriend, smiled through those silences and lapsed into many herself.

That’s how we’d connected, and stayed connected over the years, despite our lifestyles being vastly different from one another’s. When you found someone who recognized, accepted, or understood something about yourself that you didn’t even quite get, you held on to that person.

I was beginning to understand that Sam got it too. The loudest, most hyper rock star on earth got my need for stillness and silence, and moreover, stood in it with me.

I wanted to hold on to him more than anything.

“Yeah,” I whispered. “I’ve read all of them.” I failed to tell him I’d read most of them at least twice.

Even with the safety I felt being in his arms, the warmth of his eyes on mine and his unwavering, genuine smile that he used just for me, I braced for that emotional gut punch. I half expected it.

He kissed my head, gently and slowly, mind working as he did so. “This, them, they’re your stage,” he stated firmly, confusing me. Not just because the statement wasn’t designed to hurt but because it didn’t make sense.

I frowned up at him. “Say again?”

He regarded me. “For me, my place, my little slice of heaven I escape to, it’s the stage. It’s my drum set in front of me. The roaring crowd and the noise that shakes my bones and tells me I’m almost certainly going to go deaf before I’m fifty.” He grinned, then nodded to my shelves again. “That’s what this is for you. That’s your haven.”

There it was. The emotional gut punch. Only this one didn’t hurt. No, it took my breath away for sure, but not in a bad way. He stood there, looking completely and utterly out of place in my home and in my life, and he got it. In a handful of moments without a single word, he’d bundled up my life and simply packaged it for me. Like it made complete sense. Like it was natural. Like I was natural, not some kind of antisocial weirdo.

I swallowed roughly. “You don’t think I’m weird, or… naïve?” I asked, verbalizing my last thought and first worry.

He furrowed his brows, his hands flexing around me. “Why the fuck would I think you were weird?” he demanded. “And even if I did, why would you think being weird is a bad thing? Have you met me? I’m weird and awesome.”

I looked downward, suddenly shy even though I’d been writhing naked underneath him not an hour ago. Sometimes it was a lot more daunting showing someone your emotional stretch marks than it was showing them your physical ones.

He didn’t let me escape his gaze, his tattooed hand going to the bottom of my chin, tilting it so I looked up at him. And it was up. Despite being a little on the larger scale, I was short, petite. And Sam was not short. He’d been lanky since high school, and he hadn’t grown since then. He’d just filled out. Like a lot. He dwarfed me, made me feel small, but in the good way. Not in the Simon way.

“Gina,” he demanded. “Why would I think that?”

“Um, well, because it’s what… others have alluded to in the past,” I said quietly.

The warm and pleasing air in the room suddenly thinned, giving room for the rage that seeped out of Sam at my words. I didn’t think he realized his grip on my chin tightened, bordering on painful. “Others being that officer of the law who I’m going to make sure files for unemployment in the near future?” he asked flatly.

“Sam, you can’t do that,” I protested.

He narrowed his eyes at me and smiled, though not in the same way as he had before. “Oh but I can, my little beauty. I can and I will.”

“You’re not—”

“We’re not speaking about that right now. I’ve been meaning to have this conversation since I saw him on the doorstep, standing too close to you like he fucking belonged there. But the need to get inside you superseded poisoning our alone time by speaking of him. Now it’s time to speak of him. I’m guessing you two used to date?” He gritted the words out like they were physically uncomfortable to say.

I chewed at my lip like I did when I was nervous. Apparently it released some kind of anti-stress chemical in some people. And since I engaged in little else to relieve stress, it had become a habit.

“Yeah, we used to date,” I said, voice small.

“He hurt you,” he seethed. It wasn’t a question.

“How do you know that?” I asked, still on a whisper.

His anger melted away as he released the slightly violent grip on my chin to run a featherlight touch along my cheekbone. “You’ve got a bad poker face, Thumbelina. It’s one of the many, many things I find cute as fuck about you. You show every single thing on your face. It’s particularly pleasing when I’m fucking you because you show me exactly how much I’m affecting you. How utterly I’m satisfying you.”

The air thickened with desire instead of anger for a moment with his words and the memory behind him.

My thighs pulsed. I knew I should’ve been embarrassed at being so expressive during sex—God knew I didn’t need another thing to be self-conscious about in the bedroom—but I wasn’t. It made me feel warmer and more comfortable in… whatever this was.

Sam’s touch moved to the back of my neck, squeezing it roughly. “Don’t like it so much when I see the fucking footprint, the shadow, the ghost of whatever he did to you on that beautiful face. You healed from it, that much is evident. Not that I’m surprised because I know you’re strong. Plus, you threatened him with bodily violence. That’s always a good sign that a chick’s moved on from a guy.” He winked but the gesture was weak. “But I can see the scars he left, babe. The way you keep bracing for me to say something, do something. Like a dog that’s been beaten, you flinch even when someone’s trying to adore you. It’s not noticeable to the naked eye, but I’m hypersensitive when it comes to you. I am now, at least. That’s why I’m so fucking angry at myself for treating you the way I did last year. Now I know why it cut as deep as it did. I’m questioning why you didn’t shoot me on sight.”

“Don’t own a gun,” I said, trying to lighten the mood that was threatening to crush me with its utter truth.

“Lucky I didn’t bring mine with me. And knowledge of a firearm in the house might have made this afternoon go a whole lot differently,” he muttered, sounding far too serious.

I gaped at him. “Who let you own a gun?” I asked in shock. Not that I didn’t think Sam could actually handle himself with a gun, but he was a loose cannon without any kind of additional weapon.

He grinned but it didn’t meet his eyes. “State of California. Well kind of,” he said.

I raised a brow. “Kind of?”

He shrugged. “Not important,” he decided. “What did he do to you? I swear to Kurt Cobain, if he put a hand on you….” His stormy expression spoke for him.

“He didn’t,” I told him quickly. “Not physically.”

He glowered. “I do not like the sound of that.”

I stared at him, deciding whether I was actually going to tell him. Admit everything. Not lie and gloss over it like I had with everyone but Pria. And even she didn’t know it all.

Instead of contemplating and overthinking, I decided not to think. If this was real, if Sam actually wanted me, then he had to know me. Even the ugly parts.

I sucked in a long breath. “He tore me down, gently at first. Chiseling at my self-worth with the delicacy of a geologist exposing a new site. So I didn’t even feel it at the beginning. That was the trick—distract me with something he pretended he was, until he’d taken enough of me away and exposed the nerve, at the same time exposing himself. By then I was too far gone to properly realize what he’d done. Or even if I did, I didn’t have enough of me left to fight against it. At the start, I tried—oh did I try. But naturally I’m not much of a fighter, I’m more of a surrenderer. Easier and all that. But on some level, I must have realized how important the fight was. There was still some part of me left to see that. Then he took that away too. And I’m ashamed to admit I let him. I’m not going to put all the blame on myself and sink into self-hatred. I am annoyed at myself, and I recognize that I was in control. I also know it’s because he’s a sick and horrible son of a bitch that it even happened in the first place. And I hate him for it. I hated him for the last six months of our relationship. But hate and love are so darn connected and we don’t even know it. So it was hate masquerading as love, I think. Or whatever.”

I looked at Sam then, inspected the pain my words had etched on his face. The pain he was feeling on my behalf.

He cared about me. Really cared. Even blinded by the past and my insecurities, it was impossible not to see that now.

I decided it was time. Time to tell him the truth that I thought I’d been hiding so well from everyone. It would most likely drive him away and this time make sure he didn’t come back, but I had to tell him. I couldn’t breathe around it anymore.

“I was in love with you in high school,” I blurted.

And there it was. I’d spewed it out and I couldn’t take it back now. For better or for worse. I’d averted my eyes before I said it. I wasn’t on a complete emotional kamikaze mission. Watching his reaction, or witnessing the rejection—or worse, pity in his eyes—after I admitted that would’ve floored me, so I looked at his forehead. Concentrated on it. Decided to commit it to memory.

Then, my spot picked, I continued before he could speak.

“You normally fall in love with the most unexpected person at a time that is most inopportune. You fall in love with the wrong person at the right time or the right person at the wrong time.” I paused, still looking at his forehead. It wasn’t smooth anymore; it was scrunched up with whatever expression my words had created on his beautiful face. “You were the latter. I fell in love with you when you didn’t have the capacity to recognize love. To recognize me. You couldn’t love me because I couldn’t love me. I didn’t know that as a confused and insecure teenager. I just knew what I learned from my friends. From Cathy and Heathcliff, Tatiana and Alexander. I knew love, real great love, was exquisite pain. And it was for you. Painful. And juvenile. And a little empty. Because I loved you from afar and didn’t even give myself a chance to know you. For you to know me. Because I didn’t know how. You don’t find your one true love in high school. Unless you’re Lexie and Killian.”

I thought about the four years of absence between them. The empty girl she had been without him. The shattered and broken girl she was, presenting her heartbreak to the world in the form of chart-topping songs.

“And even then, that comes with a price. A heavy one.” I sighed. “So yeah, it was wrong. I wasn’t ready. To be loved. To properly love.” I paused and he let me. Let me journey into my own head and rifle through my shelves to figure out what to say. How to say it. I hadn’t ever spoken this much to anyone. I glanced back up at him, still focusing on his forehead. “And then there was the former. That was Simon. It was the ‘right time.’ I was comfortable in my skin. I had enough respect for myself to realize I wasn’t going to change, or at least not immediately, and I learned to accept that and not be filled with that terrible sense of inadequacy I was plagued with in high school. I might not have been as extraordinary as the people I read, but I wasn’t as invisible as I’d convinced myself I was. I was just ordinary and that’s okay,” I lied. Though it was only now that I realized it was a lie. Ordinary was okay when you lived an ordinary life, when you didn’t know any better.

And here was Sam in my living room, educating me on better. And I wished so hard that I was more than ordinary so I could figure out how to keep the past in his life. Be worthy of it.

“Not a word ever to be used in your proximity, babe,” Sam growled, the first sound he’d made since I spoke. “Know it’s story time, which means I need to shut the fuck up and listen. And trust me, I’m doing that. Listening even harder than I was when I heard Chris Cornell singing ‘Thank You’ live at the Esplanade. But I can’t let that shit slide by without me telling you that. Even in high school you were magnificent. You weren’t invisible. Everyone else was just blind. Including me.”

His words were strong. Weighted. Considered. And they sank into every part of me, anchored him to me in a way that terrified me. Especially considering the direction of this particular conversation.

I didn’t know what to say. What does one say to that? “You see me now,” I whispered.

His eyes glittered. “Oh fuck yeah, I see you, babe. I don’t see anyone else. No one else exists.”

I sucked in a breath, bracing for returning the naked honesty he was giving me despite the danger of doing so. “For me either. This, us, it makes me realize what I felt for you in high school was empty. Surface. And what I felt for Simon, well, I don’t even know how to put a label on that. When I met him, I was a strange combination of strong and vulnerable. I was strong because I’d come to terms with reality and the need to control my own. To get away from the town that held only ghosts and a family who cared about little but the surface. And to them, my surface was not satisfactory.” I laughed coldly at the bitter memory of my goodbye. “They didn’t even give me any sort of special farewell. Mom just said, ‘I’ll be in touch. Be well. Remember, carbs aren’t worth the calories.’ Like, who even says ‘be well’?”

I shook my head to bring me back to my original story. “Anyway, I was strong because I knew I wouldn’t have to deal with that anymore. Any of it. And I was weak because there was this huge gaping hole inside me. Of hope, or whatever it was at the time. Like blood in the water, a shark circled the moment I came to town.” I grinned at Sam at the memory of that certain analogy. “Simon was a police officer, attractive, older, self-assured and relentless in his pursuit of me. I politely declined his first few dates, but he was persistent. And sweet. He sent flowers, dropped coffee to me on my break, told me I was beautiful. So I relented. And he was sweet. Kind. And most importantly he saw me. So it distracted me. So I didn’t see him. Nor did I see the subtle changes in myself that he orchestrated. He didn’t like the music I listened to, so I found myself making sure all tracks were approved by him. He mentioned he didn’t like long hair on women, so I cut it. He didn’t like my friends, so I distanced myself from them all. Without even noticing I was doing it.”

I shook my head at my own blind stupidity, thanking all that was holy that I had good friends and hair grew back. I focused again on the statue that was Sam. “And then he stopped being sweet. Just like that.” I snapped my fingers, the sound echoing through my small living room. “And I couldn’t put my finger on it. He didn’t hit me, or tell me I was ugly and useless. It was always calculated. He’d find little ways, little comments to chip away at my self-esteem, or just stop talking to me for no reason, belittle me and ignore me in front of his friends.

“At the start, when I was still strong, I called him out on it, upset, hurt and confused more than anything. And because he was so practiced, so well versed in whatever manipulation you could call our relationship, he found a way to make it my fault. He wasn’t talking to me because I’d said something hurtful, which I didn’t remember. Or he’d say he doted on me in front of his friends and I should think myself lucky because some of the ways his buddies treated their wives was abysmal. That’s what he said. That I was crazy. Making things up. Not seeing him for the amazing boyfriend he was.

“So I began to question myself. Because he was just so sure. So firm. Listing off every nice thing he’d done for me in a day and then challenging me to tell him how he was cruel. I began to believe him. Because I loved him. And it was much easier to believe lies from the person you loved, especially when the alternative was the realization that they never really loved you at all. And it got worse. The ‘lucky’ thing was brought up more. He was a trim, fit, handsome police officer. Every girl in town would’ve killed to be in my shoes. ‘You should see the offers I get,’ he’d tell me. And he’d do it in a way that he would allude that these offers were from someone better. Someone thinner. More successful. More suitable to be on his arm. Just more. So he made me less, until I was this unrecognizable shell that he used as his puppet, walking on eggshells, waiting for him to explode over the way I’d said something, done something.”

I paused, embarrassed over the dramatic monologue I’d turned it into. I had gotten lost in that naked honesty and didn’t realize I’d shared everything until it was out there, lingering in the air. I glanced at Sam’s forehead again.

“I realize it’s not a great tragedy, what he did to me. He didn’t physically hurt me, or abuse me—”

I was cut off because Sam was no longer across the couch, carved out of marble, watching me, listening to me. He was in my face, his hands at my neck and forehead on mine. “It was a fuckin’ tragedy, babe,” he rasped, voice thick, eyes hard. “Simple and shattering fucking tragedy. That fuckstick was handed the most beautiful thing in this world to take care of and he crushed it in his hands. Don’t know any worse tragedy. Because of the simplicity of it. All he had to do was take care of you, nurture the fuckin’ unicorn he somehow found himself possessing. Instead he tried to cut that horn off because he was rotten to the core and wanted to ruin the special in you because he knew you were too fucking good for him. Thing is, I know you’re too fucking good for me.” His eyes searched my own, and I got lost in everything that was in them. And what wasn’t. Not a trace of that pity or rejection I’d feared. It was like the universe was in those eyes. One a big bang created.

He was far from done. “But instead of bringing you down to try and counteract that, I’ll spend the rest of my fuckin’ days trying to measure up to that. Try and grow a fuckin’ unicorn horn of my own. And I’ll protect yours with my fucking life. You don’t belittle how he made you feel because it wasn’t outwardly shattering. The most tragic things in life are usually the most anticlimactic. Everyday type shit. I know that because the most fuckin’ glorious things in life are the same. Like moments when I’m sittin’ at a wedding and see a girl in a pink dress with flowers in her hair and she smiles at me. Might not have collapsed any buildings, Thumbelina, but it was a tremor that leveled everything in my universe. Broke my Richter scale. And every time you smile, it breaks all over again. And fuck if I’m going to make sure I live my life like that.”

Then he was done. With words, at least.

Then he set to making slow, torturous love to me on the sofa. Then on the floor. So that all those words I’d released into the air were swallowed up to make room for the delicious scent of sex and Sam.

All but the first sentence I’d uttered.

The one about loving him.

That stayed.

And it didn’t settle somewhere nice and warm.

No, it settled somewhere else. To grow, and cause havoc, later.