After the Fall (The Fallen Men 4)
Page 86
Not his rare, closed-lipped expression of evil delight that was more like a bloody smear across his face than a smile, or the even more unusual faint tip of his lips to the side that marked genuine pleasure, but a teeth bared, fairly soft smile that made him look almost human.
“You’re smilin’,” I noted, in case he wasn’t aware.
The smile broke under the force of his frown as he glared at me. “Was, yeah.”
“King,” Cress hissed. “You ruined it!”
Priest looked at her, and the smile came back to his eyes. “No ruinin’ today, Cress. Don’t believe in marriage or much else besides, but today, I believe in you and King enough to join the two of you and be fuckin’ proud to do it.”
Cress’s lips trembled. “Thanks, honey.”
He nodded and began the more formal ceremony, but I tuned him out because Cress was lookin’ at me, and my heart was beatin’ too hard and too fast, and I felt sick and fuckin’ dizzy because never in my entire twenty-three years had I conceived of a happiness so big as this.
“You got somethin’ to say to each other, say it now,” Priest finally said.
And it was my turn.
My turn to somehow find the right words for the emotions in my chest that defied reasoning. I was a poet not because I wanted to be, but because it possessed me, compelled me, as if the words were magic, and I the wand that harboured them.
In the chaos of my over full, rioting heart, it was no wonder that poetry was the only way I could hope to express myself.
There was a desert in my mouth and a storm in my skull, a tossing sea in my gut and a strain on soul, but somehow, I found the words I wanted––no––needed to say to my woman before I made her mine.
“I found love when I was eight
Pressed petals the colour of blood
Hidden between the pages
Of a book I was too young to read
* * *
Again,
At that awkward time
When my voice lacked depth
Then suddenly
Fell to the bottom of a well
That signaled maturity and I thought
“Finally, I am old enough to love.”
* * *
But by fifteen, I had seen only wraiths,
Lust like brass when I would have gold
Infatuation thin as gauze and just as easily torn
* * *
At eighteen,
My half-formed soul felt fallow
My dreams withered to husks and tumble weeds
I was old enough for first love, they said
But my heart yearned for that and more
* * *
They couldn’t have known what would happen
That same year
When I saw you across a parking lot
How my heart would age a decade with each beat
And the hollow cage of my chest would be at once so filled
* * *
In a second, I was found.
Too young, too old, too every single thing at once
Because with you I was made and unmade
Everything was possible because of you
Yet nothing was necessary
Because my ten-year journey
For the other half of my soul
Was done.
And that was all I ever wanted.”
* * *
She was cryin’ great, big tears that rolled down her face like diamonds. I caught one on my thumb.
“I was hungry my whole life. Just ravenous. Voracious for somethin’ with a name I hadn’t yet found. It wasn’t until I met you that I knew I was famished for love of you, and it wasn’t until our first kiss that I knew what it was really like to be satisfied and at peace. Cress, babe, you are the bone of my bone, light of my fuckin’ life, and I won’t let one day for the rest of our long lives go by without tryin’ and probably failin’ to express to you just how much you mean to me.”
“King,” she sobbed, dropping the bouquet of nearly black red roses to our feet so she could press her hands to my chest. “How can I possibly hope to follow that?”
“You don’t have to say anythin’ if you don’t want to,” I soothed as I ran the edge of my fingers down her wet cheek. “Know you love me the same.”
“I do,” she promised as if pleadin’ with me to understand. “I need you to know that I would fall from grace again and again if it meant living in sin with you. Honestly, I never knew how much was enough to ask for in my life until I met you, and since then? I’ve never thought to ask for anything else.”
And then because I couldn’t stand it for one more fuckin’ second, and it was a biker wedding in a forest with a murderer as our officiant—so fuck the conventional—I dragged Cress into my arms and kissed her.
I kissed her like her mouth was the only possible way for me to assuage the wild hunger I felt for the taste of her flesh in my mouth, her body under my hands, her heart tied to mine through our chests by some invisible and unbreakable chain.