He loves me. He said it.
I keep hearing the words in my head. Repeating them.
Maybe we’re both mad. Maybe we’re both crazy but there’s a part of me that believes we could actually get what we want. That my mother will go and me and Dominic will live together, be together, have our happy ending.
I sigh, leaning into him. He’s holding me still. I can hear his breathing, I can feel it on my skin.
My wrist hurts just enough to have woken me and I have no idea what time it is, I only know that it’s late, or early depending on how you look at it.
I turn to watch him for a moment.
My stepdad. A man twenty something years older than me. A man I should never have looked at and wanted and yet from the minute I glanced up and saw him watching me it was like something in me clicked. Some lost part of myself came back.
I can’t exist without him. I can’t be me without him.
He’s the other part of me, he understands me, he gets me, he makes me feel in a way nobody else has ever even realised existed.
He doesn’t look at me like I’m a child, like I’m an idiot. He doesn’t treat me like I’m anything less than him, he acts like I’m his equal. He listens to me, he laughs at my jokes, he’s interested in what I have to say and for the first time in my life I feel valued for who I am, not what I am.
He groans in his sleep and I stifle a giggle. He’s dreaming.
I could wake him up, I could make him entertain me while I’m here with my mind going into overdrive but I won’t. I sink into the pillows pulling Milton into my arms willing myself to sleep and I hope that while I am I dream of him.
Of Dominic.