My heart is cracked into pieces in my chest, jagged edges stabbing me from the inside. Leaking. My heart is leaking—all the darkness and bitterness and anger and rage is leaking out. Her sweetness and tenderness is just…too much for it. All that she is…she’s like light blazing into the pit that is me, shining into the shadows.
“Mmmm.” Her voice, soft, sleepy, slow, thick.
I sift my fingers into her hair, just to remind myself that she’s real. Taking what I can get while she’s still here, still letting me touch her.
She smacks her mouth, her lips. Stirs. I feel her head twist, chin resting on my chest. “Hey, you.” That honey-sweet tone, all light and purity and affection, like I hung the fuckin’ moon and gave her the stars, instead of just taking what she’s giving like a selfish, greedy bastard.
“Hey,” I murmur back.
“Sleep okay?” She shifts higher, and there go her fingers, tracing the stubble on my jaw.
“Weirdly good.”
“Huh?” She’s still sleepy.
“Never sleep much, never sleep deep. Always wake up early, always wake up all the way, right away.” I touch her back, dragging my finger over her shoulder blades, along the S of her spine, to the adorable, hot-as-fuck little twin dimples at the top of her incredible, heart-shaped ass. “Some reason, last night, slept like the dead, and I’m havin’ trouble waking up.”
Her smile curves against my cheek. “You’re welcome,” she breathes.
I laugh—can’t help a laugh, because she just…pushes this weird, alien feeling into me. A lightness, a swelling of something wild and potent in my gut, in my chest. I think it may be happiness, but hell if I know.
I decide to share this. Or try to.
“You ever been happy?” I ask. “Like, down deep,happy. Not just, had a good day, accomplished something.”
“Well, yeah. With my family, all the time. We weren’t rich, but we were comfortable enough and we had each other. We went camping every spring, once the weather reliably was nice. Up in the mountains. Wake up in the tent, Dad would be brewing coffee, Mom would be making bacon on the skillet over the campfire. My brothers and sisters all waking up around me. We’d hike, canoe, swim.” She smiles against me again, and I get this feeling like I’d break my vow, I’d slaughter and pillage and do fuckin’anythingto put that smile on her face. “Summers on my grandpa’s ranch. Nothing but riding horses all summer long, all day, every day. Camping out under the stars, not even a tent. That’s happy.” A shrug. “So, yeah. I have. Why?”
“Trying to figure it out.”
“Figure out what, honey?”
Slice, deep. Flaying me open, cutting out the dark, cutting out the bitter.
“Wakin’ up, you still here. You still letting me hold you. Trusting me.” I have to push the words out, force them past my teeth—being vulnerable goes against everything I have ever been, ever known. “Makes me feel a certain way, and I don’t know what it is.”
“Are you…” she trails off. “Can you explain the feeling?”
I shrug a shoulder. “Can try. Ain’t too good with words, but I can try.” I slide both hands up and down her back, fill one hand with the sweet round weight of her beautiful ass, her shoulders with my other, bury my nose in her hair—and fill up with that feeling I can’t fathom. “Like light. Inside. In my chest—my heart. Not light, like from the sun. Lightness, like opposite of heavy. Like I’m…like I could lift up and fly away, but inside.” I pause, and she’s stone still, totally silent, barely breathing, but I can feel her attention like a knife to my throat, so sharp, so intense. “Feelin’ like…I could want something. Something big, something I know is out of reach, but maybe, for the first time ever,maybeit’s possible I could have that thing.” I suck in a breath. “Full. Not like I ate too much, but…full up, of…of life, maybe. Instead’a empty. Instead’a…bad, dark, pain. Full of the opposite of those things, whatever the fuck you want to call it.” I exhale hard. “I think that’s as close as I can come. Full to the brim and overflowing, with the opposite of bad, the opposite of pain, the opposite of dark.”
She shudders, a long trembling exhale that I feel wrack through her body, hair to toes. She snakes an arm around my neck and kisses my jaw, my throat. “Rev, my god Rev.” She sounds shaken to the core.
“What?” I’m worried I said something wrong. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
She speaks over me. “You’ve literally never known a moment of happiness. You don’t even know what itis. You’ve never known a gentle touch. Never been hugged. Never been loved.” She clings so tight it hurts, and god is she strong. “Yes, my darling. What you’re feeling is happiness. It’s more than happiness, though.”
“What’s more than happy?”
“It’s calledjoy, baby. Happy is…a good day. A victory. Sitting in the sun and everything’s okay for that moment.”
“Oh.” I can remember some times like that. “I was happy when Chance and me made the Recons. Had moments like you’re sayin’, here and there with my team. Good moments. Feelin’ okay.”
“Yeah.” She loosens her grip, but only some. She slides more of her body over me, not quite straddling me. As if to weigh me down so I don’t fly away from her. Or, maybe, grounding me with her presence. “Joy is different. It’s bigger. It’s…deeper. Happy is a feeling, joy is a state of being.”
“Didn’t even know that was a thing.”
“Oh god, Rev.” She shudders again. “Full of the opposite—that’s hope. The opposite of bad is, obviously, good. The opposite of pain is…not pleasure. Joy, I guess? The opposite of dark is light. Light, like the sun making the shadows go away, but light like you said, the opposite of heavy. All of those together—joy, goodness, and light…that’s hope.”
“Hope?” I shake my head. “Hope forwhat?”
