Page 178 of Dream House
STELLA
I kiss Lark.And kiss him. And kiss him again.
Until the dread I’ve felt since I left him fighting for his life loosens its hold on me.
Everything has changed in the last six hours.
Before, when I soaked in my warm bath and sipped my wine, I had made peace with losing Lark.
Well, sort of.
Honestly, maybe all I had managed was to make peace with making peace with losing him.
But facing the prospect of losing him completely? Of living in a world without Lark Bienvenue? Peace doesn’t exist in that world. There’s nothing there but regret and agony. I know because I stared into that black hole, and I’ve never felt worse in my life.
I pull back to let just enough air in between our mouths to tell him how it is. “You made me feel things, Lark. You didn’t mean to do it, and I didn’t mean to fall in love with you, but I did, and I’m not going to stop just because it might not work out for us.”
“Stella—” For the second time in two minutes, he speaks my name like a question, but I’m not finished.
“If you don’t want that—if you don’t want to try, I understand. I—”
“I do.” His breath leaves him like he’s been struck hard a second time. “I do want to try. I just don’t want to let you down the way I—”
He shakes his head and rakes his fingers through his hair. “My whole life, I’ve been told I needed to change to fit in. In my family. In my faith.” He glances up to the shadowed ceiling. “This is the first place where I’ve felt accepted—where I feel like we’re all accepted to be who we are.”
He brings his gaze back to me. “That’s because of you. You make everyone feel safe, feel seen. Feel at home.” His eyes lock on me. “And then there’s how you make me feel.”
I swallow thickly. “H-How do I make you feel?”
Lark reaches down to my left hand, curls his finger around mine, and raises them to his lips. He kisses my knuckles.
“Like loving you is the most natural thing in the world.”
I suck in a breath. Did I just hear that right?
“R-r-really?”
Lark tips his forehead to mine, never breaking eye contact, the look in his blue eyes vulnerable and uncertain. “Ireallyfucked up with you this morning. And Saturday night.”
I can’t argue with that. I just want to understand how we got here.
Pulling back just enough so I can read his face, I lick my lips. “Tell me more.”
Lark lets out a weighted breath, and I’m not sure if he’s daunted or relieved. Maybe both. He squeezes my fingers again.
“I want to be with you.” The uncertainty he carried a moment ago is nowhere in these words. The conviction in his voice makes me feel more wanted than I ever have. “I should have told you that before Saturday. I should have told you a lot of things.”
“Like what?” I ask, squeezing his hand with encouragement.
Another weighted sigh. He shakes his head. “I don’t know if I can make this make sense to you.”
“Try me.”
Lark bites down on his bottom lip and frowns in concentration. “When you are raised a certain way—” His frown deepens and his focus goes somewhere else. Somewhere old. “It’s hard to picture the world being different from what you know—even if you hate what you know.”
I trip over a mirthless laugh. “I know all about that.”
“You do?” He blinks in surprise.
