Page 110 of Just a Heartbeat Away

“Of what?” He paused. “I mean, me, too. God, me, too. But what is it that you’re scared of?”

“What if...” she sniffled “...what if I’m bad for you?”

A fresh bout of tears blossomed and Seb wiped them away with his rough thumbs.

“Jesus. There’s a whole cloud of fear in this kitchen right now. From both sides. Okay.” He paced away. “For the record,” he said, pointing out back toward the woodshop, “that is not how I thought that was going to go.”

She laughed again.

“Okay.” Seb was hitting a stride. Weirdly, it was Muriel’s words that were fortifying him. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. We gotta get the fears out into the open. We’ve gotta just say them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, fuck our fears. Let’s just air them out so we can realize how freaking stupid they are. Yeah? You said one. You’re scared you’re bad for me. Utterly ridiculous, by the way. You’re so good for me that I pretty much could only see you and Matty for the rest of my life and be straight-up thrilled. But yeah, you said one. So now it’s my turn.” He took a deep breath. “I’m scared that I’m too old for you.”

“What? The age difference doesn’t mean anything to me. I think we fit on so many levels.”

“Don’t. Just rapid-fire here, say your next fear.”

“Okay.” She needled her lip. “I’m scared that I’ve been lonely for so long that I won’t be able to shake it. I’ll infect you and Matty with it.”

“Good. Okay, I’m scared that when I’m fifty-eight and settling nicely into my beer gut, you’ll want someone your age. Hip and hot.” This rising feeling was somehow fierce and soft at the same time. He was basically telling her that in some fairly prominent corner of his mind, he was considering an extremely long-term future with her.

Her eyes grew and she opened her mouth to reply but clapped it back closed. She shook her head at him. “I’m scared you think of me as a child.”

“That’s ridiculous. You’re more competent than I am.” He pursed his lips at the look she quirked at him. “Right. Fears. Okay. Here’s a doozy. My biggest one. I’m scared that I’ll die before you do. And you’ll go through what I did when Cora died.”

She reeled back from him.

Well, any hope he may have had at playing this thing cool went right out the window with the birds. His heart pistoned in his chest, and his hands went clammy. He couldn’t tell if that look on her face was because he was basically handing her an invitation to be the person who laid him in the ground one day, or because he was saying he wanted to be with her until he died.

Her hand clapped over her mouth. But then her legs snaked out and wrapped around his waist, drawing him close. “I’m scared of that, too. Of you dying. I’m scared of me dying. Of Matty. Crabby. Fin. Shit, meeting Tyler and Mary made me so sad because I knew they were going to die someday. How fucked up is that?”

Finally, finally, her arms went around his waist. She was hugging him back. And still the words tripped off her tongue. “I’m scared that I’m too sad for you. I’m an orphan, Seb. I’m defined by grief. Sadness. Loss. Death. I’ve never been the same, it hit me at such a young age. You deserve happiness. You deserve to move on. I don’t want to drag you down.”

He landed his forehead against hers. “Via, you are not dragging me down. You’re elevating me. You push me toward the light. God, you’ve been doing that even when you don’t mean to.”

He stepped away from her.

“Wait here. Don’t move.” Seb ran to his bedroom, opened the nightstand beside his bed and jogged back to her, still on the counter, shakily sipping her tea. He slipped the paper into her hand.

She was confused as she peered down at the creased, stained paper. Then her eyes widened when she recognized it. The checklist she’d made for him two years ago.

“You kept it.”

“Via, I staked my life on it. You dragged me out of the muck. You took my hand. You were so kind.” He couldn’t help but kiss her. “So firm.” Another kiss. “So fucking painfully honest. You told me the truth and I saw it. I understood it. Through your eyes. And I decided I wanted to live. I was dying and taking my son down with me. You made me live, Violetta. And you didn’t even love me then. Now?” He cupped her face and kissed her again. “Now that we’re here, all fucked up over each other? Can you only imagine how good we’ll be for the other? Via, I’llbe here.”He pointed one finger down at the ground, as if to say this house, this earth, this life. “I don’t wear suspenders. I’m not hip. But I’m here. Every day. This house. Matty. I do my job, and I show up. That’s me. No matter if we’re together—if you’re lonely, you come to me. You come to me.”

She nodded her head, her eyes blurry with tears. “I haven’t had that in a really long time,” she whispered. “A place to go no matter what.”

“Well, now you have it. You’ve got me. And Matty. We’re not flashy or exciting, but—”

“You’re perfect,” she gasped out the words. “Exactly what I want.”

There were more words to say. Of course there were more words to say. But the air had gone all bright around them. His kitchen was no longer his kitchen; it melted away into one amorphous blob. In Seb’s mind, there were now three things: Matty, Via and everything else.

And it was Via here in front of him that kept his feet on Earth. Her legs were clamped around him, and her fingers were somewhere, everywhere, they were suddenly hugging so hard it hurt. There were the tears and gasps of two people who’d seen the worst there was and were now seconds away from the best.

He was vaguely aware of lifting her. “Kitchen or bed.”

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