Her concerns would have been valid if I were any other person, but there were two things she didn’t know that I needed to make her realize.
One, even if things didn’t work out between us, there was nothing on planet Earth that could make me treat her in any kind of way that she’d feel pressured to leave this job. I would protect her heart even if mine shattered.
Two, she was mine now. And I fully intended on making that a permanent thing. There was nothing and no one that could take her away from me; not even her own doubts and fears.
I would fuck them out of her.
The last few weeks were like a dream come to life. It had become a normal thing that we had a coffee date before work each morning.Sometimes at my place, sometimes at hers. Always after a night that left us both in desperate need of store-bought energy the next morning.
She stretched out next to me in my bed, stirring from her few hours of sleep.
“What time is it?” she asked, in the most adorable sleepy voice.
I picked up my phone from the nightstand and made a show of checking. Her eyes were still closed so she had no idea it was a blatant lie when I said, “6:45.”
Curling against me, she settled back in, which was exactly what I’d wanted.
The room was still dark thanks to my blackout curtains, preventing her from realizing we’d both overslept and it was actually closer to 8 now.
She needed rest. I needed to hold her against me for just a little longer.
I was pretty certain I could talk to her boss about the fact that she’d be late for work today. Convince him it was for good reason. Somehow I knew he’d be okay with it.
An hour later her eyes fluttered open again and she smiled up at me. I stood by the bed fully dressed now with a coffee in each hand, and she dragged herself up to sit against the headboard as I handed her the one I’d made just the way she liked it.
With enough caffeine to kill a small herd of water buffalo.
It hit me at that moment that I knew so much about her: her passions—both past and present—what brought her to where she was now, how she liked her coffee, what pulled the sweetest sounds in existence from between her pouty lips, how every square inch of her body tasted…
And still so little. Nowhere near enough.
I wanted to know everything.
I settled in beside her and she leaned against me, taking a tentative sip of her drink.
“What makes you tick, Indigo Hart?”
She twisted her face toward mine, her hair an adorable mess on top of her head, and gave me a look that said she felt it was too early in the morning for talking.
The answer to that question was an easy one for me.
Because it was her.
Indie was what made me tick, what had made me tick for the last year. Thoughts of her consumed my mind every second of every day since the first night we met. Without reason. Without explanation. I had always known she was meant for me—madefor me.
It wouldn’t take much for me to admit those things to her, regardless of how she might react.
I’m like a cattail. If you prod me with just the right amount of pressure all my insides spill out.
And Indie could have whatever she wanted from me. All of my thoughts, feelings, desires.
Every part of me belonged to her and somehow always had.
I wondered how she’d react if I said those things out loud. If I told her I knew I loved her from the moment I laid eyes on her and had gotten off to nothing and no one since that day.
It happened too quickly, too obsessively. There was the shadow of a thought in mind that asked: what if all those things you don’t know about her yet are things you won’t be able to handle?
That was a concern with any budding relationship, I was sure. But, I would find a way to look past it… to look past any of her flaws, or mold them in my mind to something beautiful, because it was a part of her and every part of herwasbeautiful.
