Page 155 of Reckless
I waited.
Finally she spoke, and asked, “Why now.”
It had been felt like a lifetime since last night.
“Because I should have said it before I ever put anything else on the table.”I looked directly at her.“And because if I let you go without hearing it from me plainly, then I would still be trying to control the loss instead of respecting it.”
I saw it.She looked down once.Just briefly.Then back up.
“You are okay if I still say no.”
I’d be wrecked, but that was for me when I was alone in a dark room where no one would see, but that wasn’t what she meant.
“Yes.”
Her breath left her slowly.
I watched it.Then she did something that nearly tore me open where I stood.She stepped closer.
That alone felt like too much hope, so I kept myself still.
Kelly looked up at me and said, voice soft now, “I wanted you to say it like that.”
I closed my eyes for one brief second because hearing that and not touching her felt like an internal war.
When I opened them again, she was still there.Still close.Still looking at me with all that impossible honesty she kept trying to hide and failing at when it mattered most.
“I don’t always know what to do right away,” I said.
She laughed softly through tears that had finally started to spill and said, “No, you didn’t.That was the whole issue.”
That got me.
“No,” I admitted.“I didn’t.”
Kelly wiped at her cheek with the heel of her hand and looked absurdly beautiful doing it.
I wanted to kiss her but I did not.I waited.
She looked at me for one more long second, then said the thing that finally let me breathe.“I’m still hurt.”
“Yes.”
“And I still don’t know if you can love me in the way I need.”
I held her gaze.“That’s fair.”
She looked down briefly, then back up.
“But I love you too.”The world stopped moving.
The sounds on the street.The breeze in the tree overhead.The distant car door slamming two blocks down.None of it reached me in the same way after that sentence.
She loved me too.
I looked at her and let the weight of it hit where it wanted.Her eyes filled a little more as she watched me take it in.
“I hate that this is complicated,” she whispered.
