I’m staring at the relief of Ishtar that started it all when I hear the footsteps. The quick, angry slap of boots on the wood flooring, and before I have a chance to look up, she’s excoriating me with her words.
“Just what thefuckdo you think you’re doing?” she hisses, stomping towards me. Her hair is down, making a halo of soft, curling gold around her face, and all her stomping has sent an appealing pink blooming under her freckles. And that lip—God, that lip. Even now, even broken, my body responds to that sinfully freckled mouth like she’s already promised it back to me.
She’s still striding towards me and berating me all the while, and all I can think about is how beautiful she is. How perfect. The hem of her sweater dress doesn’t quite reach the over-the-knee socks she’s wearing under her boots, and slivers of pale, freckled thighs tease me with every step. Her dress hugs her body, as if in worship, clinging to her breasts and hips, hanging down to cover her hands to keep them warm. I wish very suddenly that I could keep her hands warm, but I know if I reach out to wrap them in my own, she’ll leave, and I don’t want her to leave.
I want her to stay here in this dim museum twilight and keep abusing me in that sweet, angry voice of hers. If she wanted to scream at me forever, I would let her happily. With all the relief I could ever feel.
I’m still staring at her with a smile on my face when she reaches me and takes a big breath. She narrows her eyes. “Are you even listening to me?”
I shake my head, daring to reach out and tuck a wild curl behind her ear. “But keep talking, please. I deserve all of it.”
She huffs, very adorably, and crosses her arms over her chest. “Your reverse psychology won’t work on me.”
I just want to gather her in my arms and prop her on my lap and murmur every beautiful thing about her into her ear. I want to spend days memorizing the freckles on her shoulder. I want to spend the rest of my life with my nose buried in the curve of her neck. “Please,” I say. My voice is soft, but earnest enough that it makes her hesitate. “Keep going. I want to hear you.”
She glares at me a little like she still thinks it’s some kind of trick, but then she relents, too furious with me to bottle it inside any longer. “Fine,professor,” she seethes, sticking a finger against my chest. Warmth blooms from where she’s touching me to everywhere else in my body, sending something hotter than heat all the way to the whorls of my fingers and the soles of my feet. Happiness, I think. Joy.
Love.
I want to press my body to hers, my broken heart to her broken heart and just let the jagged edges stab and shred us all over again.
She’s still going. “You’re going to hear me, because what kind of self-destructive moron leaves the only job they’ve ever wanted, and I know you’re not a liar, and I know you said you weren’t trying to atone, so then what could possibly have motivated such a fucked-up decision—and how could you do that to your students and toyourself, you’re going to be so miserable, and do you want to be miserable? Because I don’t see any other way—”
I surrender to the need to touch her, and I take the hand currently against my chest and cradle it in my own. I bring it to my lips and simply touch them there. Her skin against mine. It’s heaven.
Her rant is brought to halt by this, and I can feel her pulse speed in her wrist at my touch. I can hear the hitch in her breath as I kiss her knuckle and then her palm and then her fingertip.
“You look like shit,” she grumbles, unable to keep scolding me but also unable to completely let it go.
“I know.” I say the words against her skin. “I know.”
“Church,” she whispers. “Why?”
That’s been this whole week between us—thewhys—although I know for her it’s been much longer. Four years ofwhy, and I’ll never be able to make that up to her. I need her to know that as much as I need to savor these last few seconds between us. She’ll leave and I’ll let her, and then I’ll let myself sink into the dark. Find some cottage somewhere and live out the rest of my days as the shattered man I am.
“It wasn’t to prove something to you,” I tell her, looking up to her face. Her eyes shine with angry tears, and my heart rips a little. “I swear, Charlotte, I swear on everything I’ve ever cared about. This wasn’t a grand gesture. I wasn’t trying to—”
I can’t finish the words. Because while I’m not trying to win her back, while I know I can never make up for what I’ve done, my instinct is still to pin her by the wrists to the nearest wall and kiss her breathless. My instinct is still to take her home, cage her with my body, and tell hermine, mine, mineuntil we both believe it again.
So it’s very hard to sayI wasn’t trying to get you back, not because it’s not true—it is—but because I’ll always want her back. Always, until I die, and then even in the realms past death. She is my own soul.
“I wasn’t trying to earn your forgiveness or your pity,” I say instead, straightening up. I don’t let go of her hand, however, and she doesn’t make me. “I need you to know that.”
“I do know that,asshole,” she fumes, tears spilling over. “I know that, and that makes it worse, because it means your only other motive was hurting yourself, and I hate it. I hate that you’ve cut yourself off from the thing you’ve dedicated your life to.”
My thumb can’t stop rubbing at the skin of her wrist. If I could stop time, I’d stop it right here—my thumb brushing against her very pulse, her face teary and gorgeous and lit by the carefully muted bulbs of the exhibit cases.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she sniffles, trying to duck her face away from me. It’s habit—and probably a bad one—when I don’t let her. I catch her face with my other hand and make it so our eyes meet.
“Looking at you like how?” I murmur. Even though I already know.
“You know how,” she mumbles, because she knows that I know. It’s why I knew she’d survive me when I first saw her—because she’s always seen straight through my games. And then chosen to play along anyway. “All puppy-dog-eyed. And...”
She reaches up and touches the edge of my mouth. I think I might expire in agony. I love her so fucking much.
“You’re smiling,” she says on an exhale, her voice and fingertips trembling. “This is asmile.”
“I have been known to smile, little one. Especially around you.”