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“No. Clearly, my dad didn’t tell my uncles or my aunt. Otherwise, I would’ve been getting ribbed all day. But I wouldn’t mind.”

“You said you’ve never had a girlfriend before,” I say. “Not that I’m your girlfriend. ”

He nods slowly. “I haven’t. And that doesn’t quite sound like the right term for you, you’re right.”

I balance on the knife’s edge between being hurt and complimented by that. Because I could take it either way.

I decide to be complimented as I take a ladle and scoop a portion of noodles for him and for me into our respective bowls.

“Why not? Because you’re really very functional,” I say.

“I did kind of have a girlfriend in high school, but you know it was one of those things. Where it’s high school. And you know it’s not going to turn into anything.”

“That’s not never having a girlfriend,” I point out, jealousy nipping at my shoulders.

“It’s not in the sense that it… We both knew that we weren’t going to marry each other. We just wanted to have dates to prom. You know? We wanted to… lose our mutual virginity.”

I hold back a hiss, but I need to not be vile about him sharing the parts of his life I wasn’t around for. The truth is, so much of us is tangled up in all the trauma that’s happened to me before and since he came back into my life. I need to be able to listen when he talks about himself.

I flash back to something he said last night. That sleeping with me was the only time he felt safe.

I know that his mom lost custody of him, but I know very little about what his life was like before that.

He’s never really talked about it. It’s only just occurred to me.

I filled in all kinds of blanks in my head.

Because I know what happens to me. Because I know enough to make up decent stories about what might’ve been.

I take a bite of the stroganoff, and wrinkle my nose. “It’s a bit monotextural,” I say.

“What?”

“I find it a bit mushy.”

“Really? That’s why I like it. It, like, blew my mind the first time she made it for me.”

“Were you immediately happy to be with them?”

“I was… It’s complicated. I was. But I was also afraid that I was going to fuck it up by being myself.

Because at that point, I had just torpedoed every single relationship in my life.

At that point, I was a professional at making a mess of things, and I didn’t know if I could make something work just because I wanted to.

” He sighs. “I was pretty much a stereotype. I was… Angry and difficult because I didn’t want to go, but I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t, and I was afraid that if I acted too hungry for it, I would lose it.

I was afraid that if I admitted even to myself that I wanted this to be my permanent home, then it would be gone. Just like that.” He snaps his finger.

“I understand that,” I say.

It’s pretty much my whole life. What I know is how to alienate people.

Keep them at a distance. I even instinctively did it with him after the second time we had sex.

Because it started to feel real. Because I started to worry about the future.

Like I have been doing off and on ever since.

I realize, with no small amount of alarm, that I am basically teenage Dallas even still. At my big age.

Because it’s both, isn’t it? At twenty-one, you’re still young, but also, you are an adult, and you really should have some of your shit worked out.

“Well, and you must have been afraid of being abandoned, like your mom abandoned you.”

I’m trying, gently, to see if he wants to share that information.

He nods slowly. “She was never really around,” he says.

“But it’s amazing how awful it felt when she was gone forever.

I went back and forth for a little while.

Mainly, she would get charged with neglect, have to take some parenting classes, and do a clean drug test. For a while, she could pass those tests.

And then she couldn’t. And then she stopped trying.

Then she signed her rights away, which I think…

” He sighs. “I think that she was probably trying to do the best thing for me. Because I think she wasn’t able to care for me at the time.

But I didn’t realize that. I was an independent kid, because I had to take care of myself, but the thing I hated most was being at home at night by myself.

I would always imagine that someone was going to break in.

That there was a bad guy who was going to take me.

It was scary. When I went into care, there was family, there were always people home at night, but a lot of times the other kids were…

You know. When I went into my first home, I was the smallest kid there, and one of the older boys beat me up. Like a hazing, I guess.”

“Oh.”

“I was five. So after that, whenever I got moved into a new home I didn’t really feel safe either.

The first time I met you, it made me think of myself.

Being the smallest one in the home, being the one who was vulnerable.

I didn’t want you to be vulnerable. I wanted to take care of you.

Protect you. Because I didn’t have anyone to protect me, I had you to keep safe.

And it felt… good. But what I didn’t realize was how connected it made me feel.

How safe. Like I had a family. Like I had someone . For the first time in my life.”

“I never realized that I did that for you. I knew you did it for me, but I just thought… I want to take care of you, too,” I say.

“You do take care of me,” he says back.

“With my mushy dinner? ”

He laughs. “I like the mushy dinner. But yeah. And in more ways. He pushes his empty bowl aside, and stands up, walking over to me and capturing the back of my head, bending down and kissing me.

He lifts me up out of the chair, pulling me into his arms. “I think I want to have you for dessert,” he says.

He turns me away from him, bends me over the table, moves his hands up to cup my breasts and I gasp.

We were just having a moment. Kind of an emotional one, and now he’s feral, but I wonder if this is one of those things.

If it’s the only way he knows how to deal with a nice moment.

And honestly, I don’t have a problem with it.

Because I don’t know how to deal with one either.

This feels… It feels good because I don’t have any more words, and I don’t know if he does either.

It feels good, because I can give him this, I can give him my body.

Even if I don’t know how to give him any more assurance.

Even if I don’t know how to make any promises to him.

He begins to gather up my skirts, growling as he does, and I feel validated, because somehow I knew he would enjoy this.

And then, the growl becomes fearsome.

“You don’t have any panties on,” he says.

Pleasure pulses through my center as I give thanks for that other feminine instinct I had.

“Somehow, I didn’t think I would need them.”

“You really didn’t,” he says.

I feel naughty. I feel feminine. Dirty, wild and wonderful. And it feels okay.

I feel healed in ways I would never have imagined were possible.

He moved his hand down between my thighs, stroking his fingers through my slick folds.

The white-hot lightning bolt of pleasure that ascends through me, making me gasp.

He pushes two fingers inside of me, working them in and out of my body, and I arched back against him as he presses his hand between my shoulder blades, forcing me to bend at the waist, my hands now braced on the top of the table.

“I’ll take my time over this later,” he says, a promise. Brave and real. “Right now, I just have to have you.”

I hear him tear a condom packet open, hear him messing with his belt buckle.

Then he positions himself behind me, and pushes himself deep inside me as I’m there, bent over the table.

He wraps his arm around my waist, and he begins to fuck me, hard and fast, claiming me over and over again.

It’s everything I’ve ever wanted. Everything I never knew to fantasize about.

His thrusts are sure, insistent. And perfect.

This should feel impersonal, with me facing away from him, but it doesn’t. Because I’ll always know when it’s Dallas touching me. When I was a child, he was the boy that I depended on, and now that I’m a woman, he’s the man that I need. Perfect for every facet of my life, for every facet of me.

It’s not just bodies. It never will be.

It’s us, and that matters. I’m scared of how deep it is. I’m scared of how this makes me feel. But I’m even more terrified of what my life would look like without it. Without him. And so I give in to the enormity of it, and I let my need swallow me whole.

I let him claim me, over and over again. Until we’re both shaking. Until I come hard around his cock, and he grips my hips and follows me over the edge.

He rests his head against my back. “Was that okay?”

“Everything you do is okay,” I whisper. I reach behind my back, grab his hand, then I turn around I kiss his knuckles. “More than okay.”

He looks at me, and I am undone. The past is there in those blue eyes, so is the present. I’m afraid to look at that glimmer of the future there.

Could we…

I let myself imagine it. Right there in the moment. A wedding ring on my finger. Wearing a white dress and walking down the aisle toward him. A little boy or girl with his blue eyes looking back at me.

That’s all so insane.

Something I would never have fantasized about before, ever. But he makes me want it. He makes me want this so much.

More than that, he makes me believe that maybe I can have it.

Even if we didn’t get married. Even if we didn’t have children, a lifetime of living together, watching movies, making popcorn, having sex, it’s a more beautiful future than I’ve ever imagined for myself. I want to believe that it’s possible. But something holds me back from asking for everything.

Maybe because I’m still figuring all this stuff out inside of myself. Maybe because it seems ridiculous that my feelings could be so intense after such a short amount of time.

A short amount of time? It’s a lifetime.

We very quietly clean up after dinner, and it’s so domestic, particularly given that he just screwed my brains out with me bent over the table a moment ago.

“So, how was work?”

In contrast with the absolute carnal wreckage we just created, his benign question makes me howl with laughter. “It was good,” I say .

“What’s so funny about that?”

“It’s very normal next to that.”

“That could be normal,” he says.

It’s the closest thing to a declaration that I think either of us can give right now. It’s right in line with my thinking.

The truth is, I know that I love Dallas more than anything. I know that I don’t want to let it go. But trying to think all that through, trying to battle all the razor wire in my soul makes me feel like I’m being gouged and torn from all angles.

Makes me feel like I might be destroyed.

I can feel what I have to do. Cast that ring into the fire. Let go of everything. Trust in him, trust in us.

But right now that just feels too damn dangerous, so I just let what he said stand. I let him take me to bed, and I let him kiss me all over. I let him lick me until I’m screaming his name, and then I take him in my mouth and let him pour all of himself down my throat, because he’s mine.

And I love everything about him.

It feels cowardly that I can’t tell him.

But I’ve always been afraid.

I wish so much that I weren’t always afraid.