Page 109 of Return To You

“The crush in a box… The stalker’s chest…”

“I’m not a stalker!”

“No? I think your therapist would differ.”

“I don’t have a therapist.” Liar.

He guffaws. “Ha! Therein lies the problem.” He plops me off him and scissors off the bed. “What do we have here?” He crouches next to the box, then grabs his underwear and throws it on top of his bag. “Don’t want that ending up in there,” he mumbles.

I can’t help but giggle.

“Seriously, Grace, should I be worried?” Damian walks up to him and watches him as if he’s just as worried as him.

“Why? I’m just… attached to souvenirs of my…” Love? (too much). Devotion? (too crazy). Crush? (Not deep enough). I settle for, “souvenirs of us.”

“Souvenirs of us, huh?” He takes apart all the bits and pieces of my life without him and lays them neatly in order of size.

Afraid he’s going to throw them away or destroy them somehow (he did call me a hoarder and a stalker, after all) I stand over him. “What are you doing?”

“Thinking about making something.”

I knew it. “Making what?” I try to sound sane and reasonable, but I’m ready to lose it. No one is touching my souvenirs, not even very present, very real, and very sexy Ethan right here almost naked in my bedroom.

Which, I get it, is a contradiction. You might think I don’t need all these things now that I have Ethan. But here’s the thing. I don’t have him. Not really. He’s going to come and go. I’ll have his love, always—I know that for a fact—but the tangible reality of him? I won’t.

That’s what this box is to me.

“Why did you take it down? The box,” he asks me suddenly.

Um… “I was going to add to it. I need to make space, or possibly get a new one.”

“For what?” He’s genuinely confused.

I cross my arms. He’s not talking me out of this one. “For the flowers. I’m going to dry them. And the chocolates—or the chocolate box. I’m eating the chocolates. I might keep one or t—”

Still crouching, he twists around to look at me. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You heard me.” I jut out my hip to show him I’m serious. My house, my rules.

He stands slowly until he towers over me. Holds my shoulders and stares me down. I pinch my lips. I am not giving into him.

“Listen to me, babe. This,” he says, pointing to my treasures laying on the ground, “is the past. You and I, we have a future together. The flowers, the chocolates? You’re going to get a lot of those. So many they won’t mean as much.”

I open my mouth to protest. But there’s no way he can understand. My eyes water.

“I’m going to get you so many flowers and chocolates you’ll beg me to stop. You’ll be nauseated. You’ll open a flower shop. You’ll be a Valentine’s pop-up store. Not only that, but jewelry, and clothes, and perfume, and whatever else I feel like sending over to you when I’m away.”

And that’s when my heart breaks. “You don’t understand, Ethan.”

“No?”

“I only want you.”

“Fuck,” he growls and pulls me into him. “Then why do you keep all this shit?”

“Because when you’re not here, I can touch it, and see it. It’s a piece of you.”

“Shit,” he whispers in my hair, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

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