Page 71 of Brave

Meeting her approval-seeking smile with a nod of his own, he watched her plunk down the deposit required to hold it until she got paid and that was it. The last tie that bound them was severed. She now had a job. She had a place of her own. She just didn’t need him anymore.

Standing in the middle of her tiny bedroom, furnished with a lamp on a dresser, a narrow twin bed, and an adjacent bathroom that was even smaller than her closet, she hugged herself. “I have my own place now.”

She looked happy, but in a wide-eyed and scared sort of way.

“I’m proud of you,” he said softly. He was, too. Even if it did make him sad.

“I’m independent now.” He heard her swallow, but she held onto her desperate smile.

“Yes, you are,” he agreed, his heart hurting.

“I’m not a mooch anymore.”

He almost gave himself whiplash he looked to her so hard. “What do you mean, mooch?”

“That’s why you’ve been upset with me these last few days, right?” She worried her hands, watching him uncertainly. “Now you know I’m not using you, so we can go back to normal. Right?”

“I never once thought of you as a mooch,” he said, harder than perhaps he should have. “Why didn’t you tell me that’s what you were thinking?”

Her smile died. Her hands continued rubbing nervously together. “Why didn’t you tell me why you were mad?”

Point taken.

“I wasn’t mad, I was upset. There’s a… very small but important distinction there.” Softening, somewhat sheepishly, he admitted, “I thought now that you don’t need me anymore, you might be looking for a reason to leave.”

“Leave you,” she echoed.

“That was hard enough to say the first time,” he grumbled, embarrassment mounting. “Don’t make me repeat it.”

She shook her head. “But I don’t need you,” she said, as if that ought to be obvious.

Knowing it privately in his own head had hurt enough. Hearing her actually say it… God, the knife pushed even deeper.

Stepping in close to him, she looked up with those soft brown eyes of her begging for understanding. “Sir, I don’t need you. I want you. I”—she bit her bottom lip—“I love you.”

The knife vanished, but not before twisting first, ripping a line of shock right through the middle of his chest. He gaped at her, caught somewhere between relief, joy, exasperation, irritation, and not a small amount of humility. “Honey, why didn’t you say so?”

“I didn’t want to be a burden.”

Exasperation immediately won.

“I am going to beat your ass,” he promised, but not before pulling her into his tight embrace. “Love is not a burden.”

Her hands slipped in around him, very tentatively hugging him back. “It is if you don’t feel the same,” she said, soft and sad.

“God, I’m an idiot.” Closing his eyes, he held her fiercely tight. “Baby,” he whispered in her hair, “these are the arms of a man who loves you so much that he just spent the last few days cutting himself to ribbons on his own fear of losing you. If you want a place of your own, that’s fine. But you’re not staying here tonight.” He pulled back far enough to cup her face. “I am taking you home with me, where you belong and, honey, I’m going to fuck you, have sex with you—”

“Make love with me?” she interjected already smiling.

“—until we both are bow-legged,” he promised.

It was a promise he meant to keep.

For the rest of his life.

The End