“Maybe . . .” he trails off and looks away.
“What?” I ask, even though I think I’m afraid to hear the answer.
“I don’t want to leave.”
I exhale and smile. “I don’t want you to leave either.”
“So what if I don’t?”
My smile falters. “I don’t understand.”
“What if I don’t go. What if I stay here.”
I nearly laugh. “Josh, you can’t. You have school.”
He pulls away briefly, and in the light of the moon I see him run his hand through his hair. “I know I do. I know. I just . . . Gemma. I can’t leave you. If I can think of a way to stay, to make this work, I will.”
I feel like there’s a brick lodged in my throat. He can’t stay here for me. I’m not worth it. He must know that, he must know the kind of person I am.
“Why would you do that?” I ask. “Why . . . I give you nothing. I’m just this girl . . . you deserve someone else, someone . . . better. Anyone.”
“Gemma.”
I manage to swallow. “What?”
“I’m in love with you.”
Those words. Those words still my heart. They reach into my chest and make a fist. I can’t breathe. I feel too much that it numbs me. The sharp stab of happiness sinks into me like a blade, but it’s the blood, the aftermath, that makes me so incredibly scared.
“Did you hear me?” he asks quietly. He comes over and slips a hand to the base of my neck, holding me gently. I can see the moon reflected in his eyes as he peers down at me, trying to see the parts I’m trying to hide. “I love you.” His voice is gruff and so heartfelt that it’s almost like he’s putting his heart in my hands. “I love you.”
It hangs between us, heavy and weighted, like a hook.
I don’t know what to do, how to handle it, absorb it.
I only know how to deflect.
I grab him and kiss him hard. Before he has a chance to react, I’m pulling his shirt over his head and tumbling into the soft sand with him. My shirt is nearly ripped off, the skirt I wore for the occasion is yanked down along with my underwear.
We’re both naked in no time and I’m under him and he’s in me and all I can think about is that this is what it’s like to be devoured. To be consumed. To be loved. It all feels like the same thing.
There could be nothing left of me when he’s through.
When we’ve both come, sated and breathing hard, we lie on the silky sand and watch the blackened waves roll in, their crests lit by moonlight.
It’s a lonely sight, all that black on the horizon, all that nothing.
He loves me.
He loves me.
How?
“How can you love me?” I’m surprised that’s what comes out of my mouth but it’s the truth and it’s out there, floating in the dark.
He’s surprised, too. He balks at the question, his head jerking back.
After a long moment, the silence filled by the lapping water on the shore, he asks, “Do you want the truth?” Of course I want the truth. Of course I need to hear it. But I steel myself against it all the same. “It’s not easy to love you, Gemma,” he says, his fingers sliding up through my hair, gently, affectionately, in contrast to his words. “You are not an easy person to love because you don’t seem to have any use for it. You don’t want it. But the more you push, the more I pull. I fell in love with you because it was like staring at the frozen sea. I only saw the surface but I knew there was more underneath, miles of depth that no one has had a chance to discover.”
“I thought it was because I’m a good lay,” I say, attempting to make a joke.
His eyes harden. “It’s a lot more than that. I fell in love with you because you made me crazy, and you were like this unattainable world that I’d never be able to get my hands on. And then I did get my hands on you. And you got your hands on me. And I saw into your depths and found what I was looking for.”
“What?”
“You,” he says, pushing the hair back from my face. “A funny, sweet, vulnerable little girl who hides from the world under a big sheet of ice. That’s who I found. That’s who I want. That’s who I have. The artist, the poet, the dreamer, the risk-taker. The lover.”
I feel like my lungs are being deprived of oxygen and my heart has too much blood to pump. I’m gaining and losing. I’m torn. I’m loved.
He plants a soft kiss on my forehead. “I know everything I’ve just said is scary. In fact, I think I’ve freaked myself out a bit. But it’s true. And you don’t have to do anything, you don’t have to say anything. Just let me love you. That’s all.”