Page 28 of Cruel As A Tree

It was everything I wanted to give her.

The reason I was so excited to go to the Order Academy, other than the chance to learn magic, was that I thought it was going to allow me to provide a better life for my family. My mother worked so hard to support me. She had help from my father's health insurance money, but that paid for the house. Itdidn't help us buy the tools we needed to repair the wall or build the kind of bedroom any child would be delighted to have. That didn't diminish the amount of work it took to support a teenager through a pregnancy and raise the baby for her. I wanted to learn something valuable, a skill that would help me go out and give my daughter the same deep level of focused support that my mother had given me so that she could live whatever kind of life she wanted.

I walked back over to Lorthion and my mom released him, wiping the corners of her eyes with a shaking hand.

"Mom," I said as I slipped my hand into Lorthion's. "We're going to head over to his place for a bit."

"Good, I need a minute to myself," my mom said.

"Love you," I told her as I pulled Lorthion towards the backdoor.

"Love you too," she said.

Then we were out the door.

"You didn't have to do that," I said as I dragged him to the tree that served as the portal back to his forest. "You didn't have to make everything better."

We stepped through the portal and out into the forest, and as always, it was the sound that struck me. Growing up, the sounds of the neighborhood were predominantly taken over by leaf blowers or trash trucks. It was a constant cacophony of industrialism, of machines clanking away as their stink and sound imposed on the quiet peace of the morning. Here in the forest was the sound of birds singing, of leaves crunching underfoot, of a stream running off in the distance. Waking up here was waking up to a silence that was filled with the song of life.

"I will always make everything better," Lorthion replied, his voice low and earnest. "Anything that is within my power to change, I will change it for the better."

I stopped and turned towards him, looking up at him to see him gazing back at me with a warmth that hurt, like the heat of a hot bath against skin chilled to the bone. "I know you will."

He searched my eyes, and something in them caused him to lean down as if he was going to kiss me. But he didn't. He stopped there, inches from my lips as he watched my face.

I closed the distance, throwing my arms up around his neck, pressing my lips against his like he was fresh rain after a drought, bringing new life to the parts of me that I thought had been charred for good. His lips parted, his breath exhaling into my lungs as his arms snaked around my lower back. He kissed me slowly, tasting me, nibbling on my lower lip, touching the edges of my tongue, his fingers massaging my lower back. He kissed me like I was someone to be savored, to be focused on with the entirety of his attention, to be explored until there was no part of me he couldn't see.

I kissed him back with fragile wonder, with a fluttering excitement in my heart that had let go of the last vestiges of fear and embraced the fall with an open heart. It was a certainty rooted in a feeling that had grown with every moment spent with him, with every moment I observed him with my family, with every detail I learned about him and his relationships with those around him. It was a feeling I couldn't deny anymore, one that I thought I had felt before for another, but that was now proven to be a pale imitation now that I experienced the full depth of it.

I pulled back from the kiss and he let me go. I didn't let him go. I held on to his shirt, clutching it in my fists as if it could give me strength to say the words I needed to say.

"I'm in love with you," I told him.

He brushed back a strand of hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear as his eyes crinkled with the weight of his smile. "I love you too," he said. "I love the way that flowers distract you, their colors pulling your attention like a bird looking for theperfect piece of fluff for the nest. I love your attention to others, the way you keep checking in on your familiar, even though she growls at you to go away. I love the way you try to take care of your matriarch even as she does the same to you. I love the way you treat your young, with a care and kindness that goes beyond your own desires for yourself. I love you because I see the woman that you are, full of the rich essence of life."

"Oh," I said, a sigh of a word carried straight from my heart and for the first time I fully understood that to be known was to be loved.

"I intend to spend every day of our existence showing you how I love you with my actions, with my attention to your needs, and supporting you and your family in any way that you need. I will protect you, care for you, and support the beauty you want to create in the world," he continued.

"I know you will," I said. His gaze was too intense, so I looked at my hands, where I gripped onto his shirt. I relaxed them, smoothing the shirt against his chest. "I know because you are willing to change for me."

I took a deep breath and he waited in the silence, giving me the space to bring my thoughts into the light of spoken word.

"I've always heard you can't expect other people to change for you," I said. "But I've never understood that. You don't have to change yourself, cutting off pieces of you to make yourself smaller so others will like you. But when you love someone, you want to change. Love brings change. It brings the desire to become someone more than you were before so that you are worthy of that feeling inside your heart. That is how I know you love me, because you have shown in every moment that you are willing to change for me."

"That is growth," he said. "Growth is change."

He lifted one of his hands from my back and put it on top of my hands on his chest. I looked up at him and there wasa softness to the intensity in his eyes, a kindness that could be found in the face of a person who was fully engaged in the moment. His next words were layered with meaning, with an ask for something I had been ready to give for some time now but didn't know how to offer after I had pushed him away. "Lillian, will you help me grow?"

"Yes," I said.

I lifted up on my toes, tilting my head to try to bring my lips to his. He leaned down and met me there, in that moment as the sunlight streamed down through the trees around us like a gossamer gold veil. The birds went silent around us, and I felt his shirt melt away under my hands, my palms pressing into his bare chest. The scent of flowers surrounded me, jasmine and sweet peas, roses and scents I didn't know the names for, but I had found when exploring the rich colors of this place.

He slid his hands to my hips as he kissed me, deeply, madly, devouring me with a kiss that was no longer soft and gentle, but demanding and promising all in the same. His hands moved back, sliding over the denim of my jeans as he reached down to cup my ass in both hands, squeezing gently as he pulled me against him, pressing my body against his as his teeth grazed my lips.

He kissed my jawline as he slid his fingers down in between the cleft of my legs, stroking against the fabric, rubbing against the heat that coiled there, my lower muscles clenching and lifting as my need for him shifted from a smoulder to an urgent burn. I let out a gasp as his lips found my neck and I tilted my head to the side as he followed the sensitive line of my skin, his kisses interspersed with the soft nibble of his teeth and the exploration of his fingers between my legs.

"I need you," I whispered.

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