one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling
one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
And maybe that is the crux of the matter.
Because he will always see her rage as evidence of how she could never think him wonderful while she will always see it as a sign that she does. She will always think of how he brings her to ruin and she lets him. She will always think of his strength and his stoicism in the face of her whipping emotions. She will always consider all of the different ways that a person can come apart and be put back together again.
She will always think of it as a strange kind of wonderful.
His kind of wonderful.
As bruising as it may be.
But they do not ruin each other now. They are calm and sweet and his mouth is on her shoulder. She wants to cry with relief—wants to ask him if it can be like this forever. She wants to tell him that she has dreamt of moments like this with him. Has ached to know what it’s like to see him at his most tender, when the walls do not seem so insurmountable, when the future looks just a little brighter.
When she can look at him and not see all the secrets swirling around them.
He looks her in the eye and there is so much there that she can hardly unpack it. Eye contact with him is like a punch in the gut and she wishes that he didn’t have the kind of eyes that told stories. The kind of soulful eyes that let her know just how much lived underneath the surface of him. Maybe it would be easier if he didn’t. Maybe she could even pretend that he was callous, that he was cruel.
But she knows these things are lies when she looks him in the eye.
She becomes helpless when she looks him in the eye.
And all of the things she would rather guard come tumbling out instead.
“When I tell you that I think I could fall in love with you,” she softens it, adds the ‘could’ instead of the ‘am’ and then sweeps her eyelashes down. “I’m sorry. I told myself I wouldn’t push you.”