Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

Am I asleep?

I started typing out a response, then quickly deleted it and tossed my phone to the bed, breathing like I’d just run a marathon.

Space.

We need space.

A second later my phone vibrated again.

I know you’re awake. I saw you typing.

I put my mouth to my hand, fighting the urge to pick up my phone.

Though still in my bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved.

And with that, I crumbled.

“Beethoven,” I whispered, even though he couldn’t hear me. I picked up my phone, lids heavy, body heavy.

Exhausted.

I’d been fighting this invisible force inside me from the moment Grayson and I collided in the antique room. Every molecule wanted to go to him.

Just give in.

At night…it was easier to stop fighting. Ignore the reasons why I had to fight. So I sent him one of my favorites from Zelda Fitzgerald to F. Scott.

I love these velvet nights. I’ve never been able to decide … whether I love you most in the eternal classic half-lights where it blends with day or in the full religious fan-fare of mid-night or perhaps in the lux of noon.

I waited in the dark for his response. My phone vibrated.

I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defenses. And I don’t really resent it.

I knew the letter instantly, remembered the day I’d read it even. Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf. Remembered wondering if I’d ever find someone to love me that way. I held my phone with both hands to my chest, staring out at the inky star-speckled sky.

Love.

His poem had said love. It wasn’t like we were saying the words aloud. We hadn’t even written them ourselves. It was nothing more than showing a friend something someone else had read.

So why did it feel like we were expressing something that was deep?

Buried.

I typed my next words, bleeding, bleeding.

If only I were a clever woman, I would tell you that you are the greatest marvel of all ages, and I should only be speaking the simple truth…You are not only the solar spectrum with the seven luminous colors, but the sun himself, that illumines, warms, and revivifies! This is what you are, and I am the lowly woman that adores you.

Juliette Drouet to Victor Hugo.

My phone vibrated within seconds.

My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you.

Keats.

He said love again, or…Keats did. My heart pounded and pounded in my chest as I wrote out my response, but before I could, my phone vibrated.

I miss you in my sheets, Snitch. I miss you on the floor. I fucking miss you. The longer I spend without you, the more I wonder if you’ll really have to chain me to the fucking bed when you leave. Or maybe…I’ll follow. Would you like that?