Page 56 of Under The Twilight Rainfall
So much fucking more.
It’s something so real it fills me to the brim and chokes me with the overabundance of it.
A casual fuck has nothing on the intimacy of sex with Valen.
Holding him, being held, after the way he gave me everything I never knew I needed?
Even my cracks have cracks.
There’s no coming back from this.
From letting him inside me. In every way.
Goddamn him.
Morningsarealwaysacalm sort of chaos in Lola’s home. Ma is gathering the laundry with Theo underfoot while Pa tries to show him how to put the train tracks together he got as an adoption present. Lola is taking care of the kitchen as always while Pop-Pop sits outside enjoying the sunshine.
It might not seem like much, but there’s a constant stream of conversation floating through the house: half interrupted ones, dropped and picked up ones. It can be overwhelming, but you get used to it.
Dex disappeared to clean up in the bathroom nearly twenty minutes ago, so I’ve just been moving between the members of my family and being useful wherever I can. Which is how I’ve wound up outside sitting cross-legged on the ground beside Pop-Pop’s chair and listening to the summer breeze rustle the flowers and trees through our garden.
“Nancy says that boy makes you happy.”
I look up as Pop-Pop leans forward with his bony elbows on his knees, a heavy sigh sinking my shoulders.
“Lola sure is chatty about my love life.”
Pop-Pop’s smile reminds me of my visits as a child and teenager. How I loved being dragged from market to market by the man who can now barely leave the house.
He smiles through an eye roll, squeezing my shoulder when I can tell he’d rather whack me on the back of the head.
“Be nice. Besides, I saw it with my own two eyes. The way he ran to you. The way you held him. Love is fickle and finds us at the most inopportune times. But it’s beautiful. And worth the fight.”
I trace over the chalk on the patio, right where it spells Dex’s name, knowing if I look up Pop-Pop will see the devastation I’ve been holding inside.
“It’s only temporary, Pops.”
He snorts so hard it sends him into a coughing fit, but he laughs and shoos me away when I sit on the bench beside him and try to help.
“It wasn’t temporary when you came that summer—your seventeenth, I think it was—and you told me you found the man you were going to marry.”
My hands fall back to my lap, heat flooding my face.
“I didn’t say that.”
Pop-Pop laughs, loud and boisterous. “Oh, you did. Coincidentally, the same summer your mama stayed home to take care of her new charge. Let’s not forget the quiet summer after he left.”
His eyes soften, and he reaches for my hand. “According to your Lola, I don’t know much about reading people. But even I could see the heartache written all over your soul,Apo. The same one I see now.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I squeeze his hand and drag my lip between my teeth.
“Love is a battle made of many wars,” he goes on. “Some you’ll lose. Some you’ll win. But it can’t be conquered unless you fight for it.”
“That’s the thing, Pop-Pop.” I sigh and stand, pacing the short length of the patio. “I don’t want to conquer him. I don’t want to hold him back or make him settle down. He loves what he does with his life. He loves—” I snap my mouth shut before I can blurt out anything about Dex’s job. It isn’t my information to share.
“I can imagine what else he loves,” Pop-Pop mumbles, side-eying me as my face turns blood red.
Did he hear us last night? Dex wasn’t as quiet as I wanted to make him be, but I was too wound up—too desperate to be a part of him—that I couldn’t think straight.
