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But that’s not what he does. His brow furrowed, he takes the cap off the Sharpie and starts scrawling on my cast. I take in a deep breath, because I know he’s found his words, his message, at last.
I desperately want to read it.
I want it to be enough.
I want both of us to be safe, and together.
It feels like I’m standing there for an eternity, looking down at his bowed head as he scrawls on my cast.
The light flickers again, and without planning to, I weave my hand into his hair, feeling the heat of him under my fingers. He looks up at me for an instant, his lips lifting into a tentative smile, and I feel that almost smile everywhere—in my heart, expanding and hurting, in my chest. In my throat. Between my legs.
Then he bows his head back to his task, writing a damn essay, it looks like, filling up all the space that had been left empty.
“You’re writing like you’re getting paid by the word,” I comment.
He caps the Sharpie and tucks it into my purse, a thoughtful gesture that makes me feel on the verge of tears again—and I still haven’t read the essay he wrote on my cast. I expect him to get up, but he stays on his knees, as if he’s awaiting whatever fate I choose for him. I know without asking that he’ll accept whatever it is without question.
I glance down at the cast, but it’s hard to read it from this angle and the writing is tiny. All I can see is the headline—42 reasons I love you.
Emotion wants to strangle me, but I don’t plan on letting it.
“You could only think of forty-two?” I ask, my voice thick, a stranger’s voice.
His smile lights up his eyes. “I could think of more, but I liked the significance of the number.” He’s still there on his knees, looking up at me. “I think I fell a little bit in love with you the first time you called me a dick.”
Tears burn behind my eyes. “Get up here,” I say, “get up here and atone for your tiny handwriting by reading it to me. I…I want to hear you say them.”
He grabs the handle that runs around the middle of the elevator, as if it’s giving it a hug, and stands in front of me. “Can I touch you?” he asks. “It’s enough to drive a man mad, to be stuck in a box with the woman he wants more than anything in the world and to not be able to touch her.”
“Not yet.”
“You want me to read you the list?”
“I changed my mind. You can do that later. I want you to tell me why you left me the other night, and why it’s not going to happen again if I forgive you.”
His throat works, his eyes move over my face. His hands flex as if they want to touch me.
“I was worried about you getting caught up in my mess,” he says after a moment. “But it wasn’t just that. I was…ashamed. It makes me feel weak when I can’t do things that most people can. Like there’s something wrong with me, even if I know on some level that’s not true. I…I’ve decided that I’m going to go through the diagnostic process. I feel like if I know for sure, it might help me come to terms with it, you know? It’ll help me accept that there’s not something wrong with me. That I’m the way I am for a reason.”
“I’m glad, Danny. I think that’s great. But either way, there’s nothing wrong with you. Those things are part of what makes youyou. And I wouldn’t change you for anything.”
He gives me a wry look. “And here I thought I was going to be your Patrick Dempsey.”
“Iknewyou remembered his name.”
“And I know you were just trying to help me by putting me at that booth in the bar, the same way you did when you picked out those shirts, but I still wish I were the kind of person who didn’t need the help.”
I laugh, then worry he’ll think I’m laughing at him. I lift a hand, pressing it to his chest without thought, and I keep it there because his chest is exactly where my hand wants to be. “You thinkIlike letting other people help me?”
“I know you don’t,” he says with a slight smile. “You wouldn’t even let me help with your boxes when you were moving in. I had to sit at my desk like some kind of asshole.”
“You didn’t want to help. You didn’t want me there. Iknewyou didn’t. You’re not nearly as good at hiding your emotions as you think you are.”
He laughs, and I feel the rumble of it against my hand. I want to capture it in my fist. “I could barely look at you without getting hard. Of course I didn’t want you moving in.”
“Really?” I ask, intrigued by this.
“Really.”
