[private] I couldn't utter my love when it counted; birthing

[adna]

one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing
one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling
one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide

Adna can only guess at what he thinks. Since the very beginning, from their very first moments together, she has only ever been able to guess at what he keeps locked away. He is carved from stone, and she can only feel along the granite walls of him. He gives no inch. Shows absolutely nothing but the patience and the stamina and the way that he can stand as though he has stood there a thousand years before.

Even when he had finally cracked, lashing out at her the way she had deserved—

Even then she had felt nothing of his inner workings.

She wishes she had. She wishes she could.

But he doesn’t give her such things and she lies to herself and says that she can make do with whatever he is willing to give on. She is willing to live with the silence and the radio static of his silences. She can live with the way that she doesn’t know him and maybe never will. That he will never let her.

She just smiles and leans against him, gives herself this lie.

“I am always right,” she counters with a sleepy smile, feeling him sigh against her. Their peace does not entirely depend on her daughter’s reluctance. Their peace depends on his ability to let his guard down.

Their peace relies on Adna’s ability to keep all of these secrets at bay.

Their peace is tenuous at best, and she knows it, but that does not stop her from cradling it close to her chest, from cherishing it, from hoping against hope that it will survive the first bump in the road.

“You should know this by now, Beth,” a laugh as she thinks about all she has done to prove this wrong.

ADNA