She blinked at me, hatred curling her lips like burning paper, but then she looked back at Nova, and her face softened, just briefly, but enough to show that maybe, in her own twisted way, she did have genuine feelings for him.
“You should control this piece of trash,” she dared to tell him.
And then, I wasn’t in her face anymore.
Nova was, his big body inflated further with quivering fury. When he spoke, his voice was pure smoke, black with carcinogenic hate. “You speak one more word against my girl… I don’t hurt women, Mere, but I might make an exception for you. Now get the fuck outta here.”
Him she listened to.
After one brief, lip trembling moment staring up into the gorgeous face she would never see again, she took off, walking back to one of the cop cars, brushing off an officer who tried to speak with her.
Suddenly, there was too much space between Nova and me. Echoing acres of it that seemed insurmountable. We stood inches apart, but I’d never felt so far from him, not even in the two years we’d struggled to get over my crush.
He sighed heavily and linked his fingers through the fence again, letting his head fall between his shoulders.
“She made it seem like nothin’,” he murmured. “Wasn’t nothin’. She was pregnant for nearly four months when she decided to end it. Didn’t tell me ’til it was done. Texted me to say she was pregnant, left enough of a pause for that to settle happily, then told me it was over.”
He rolled his head from side to side as if to work out the kinks in his spine, the trauma he wore under his skin. “Went out the next day and got my first tattoo.” His hand disengaged from the fence to clasp his bicep then dropped back down. “A heartbeat breakin’ down to nothin’ with the date underneath.”
I knew the tattoo. He’d shown up at the house with his sleeves rolled up, gauze and plastic taped over the hard swell of his arm, a sad, satisfied smile on his mouth.
He’d only been nineteen.
Nineteen, used and abused by his therapist, and a father for only as long as it took to receive the message that he would no longer be one.
I only hesitated for a moment before I went to him, pressing up against the long line of his back, fitting myself to him like tailored body armor. I hugged him like that, arms around his lean waist, cheek to his smooth cut. I hugged him so hard, I felt the bones in his spine creak, but I didn’t let up.
I needed him to feel the overwhelming amount of love I had for him in my heart. I needed him to know the words Meredith had planted inside him, the ones that had so obviously taken root and flourished in the darkest depths of his psyche, were wrong.
“What she did was wrong,” I murmured. “It was ultimately her choice, obviously, but that doesn’t mean she handled it with any heart or grace. I’m so sorry you lost your baby, but you have to know, that’s not ever going to be your only opportunity to have one. What she said about you not being worthy of a child is based on her baggage, her garbage personality, not anything about the quality of yours.”
He was silent still, so unmoving I felt I was hugging a statue.
“A pretty package with nothing inside the box is temporary. It’s not beauty, it’s a lie,” I said softly, fiercely. “You are not that, Nova. You are the most handsome man anyone in your life has ever known because every single inch of you on the inside is flawless. I’ve spent years learning you. Loving you. I’ve traced the path of your personality as you’ve grown and changed, mapped the roads of your spirit and the valley of your heart so well I would know them with my eyes closed. So trust me, please, when I tell you, the least important of all your many gifts is your pretty face. You could be scarred tomorrow, I could go blind the next day, and I would still think you are the most dazzling soul I’ve ever known.”
He turned so swiftly I gasped, hands under my pits to lift me up and press me against the fence, his body plastered to mine.
And then he kissed me.
He kissed me without warning, without doubt, without even a shred of regard to who might be watching. He kissed me like he couldn’t help himself, and he didn’t even want to try. Like the only option for him in that moment was me. Like I was the very air he needed to breathe, and he wouldn’t survive a moment more without my oxygen.
I angled my head for him, giving his tongue deeper access, and wrapped myself around his like vines, giving myself over to the totality of his need.