He flinched like I’d hit him, but he didn’t look away.
“I was selfish,” he said. “I know that. I just kept thinking, if I tell her before, she’ll run, and I won’t even get to know what it feels like to stand at the altar with her, or dance our first dance, or hear her say my last name.”
Something inside me cracked open then, some old wound that had never healed right after Ryan.
“Do you really think I’m that weak?” I asked. “That I’m the kind of person who only signs up for the easy parts?”
He shook his head frantically.
“No,” he said. “I think you’re the strongest person I know. That’s why I’m so scared of breaking you.”
For a minute, we just sat there, jaws clenched, breathing in sync, the papers lying between us like a land mine.
I don’t know how long it was before I moved.
I slid off the bed and onto the floor and crawled the few feet between us and climbed into his lap like a child.
He held me so tight it almost hurt.
My tears soaked his shirt; his tears soaked my hair.
“You idiot,” I whispered into his chest. “You absolute idiot.”
He let out a shaky laugh.
“Fair,” he said. “Do you hate me?”
I pulled back and grabbed his face in my hands.
“No,” I said.
“I am so angry at you, but I don’t hate you.”
“I love you, and I’m terrified, and I wish you had told me sooner, but I’m here.”
I pressed my forehead to his.
“Do you understand,” I asked, “that you don’t get to decide for me what I’m capable of staying for?”
He nodded against me, shoulders shaking.
“I don’t want to die,” he said, and the words came out so raw I felt them in my bones.
“I know,” I answered. “But if you do, I’m not going to let you do it alone.”
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