Page 149 of Unconditionally Yours

“I’m scared,” she whispers.

“I know,” I whisper back. “I’ve got you.”

A few seconds pass.

“I’m still scared.”

“Still got you.”

She lets out this half-sob laugh that breaks my whole goddamn chest open. “Benji?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m either about to cry or dry hump you in the shallow end. Both are equally likely.”

“Whichever you pick,” I say into her hair, “I’ll still be here after.”

She turns her head, leans up to kiss me, soft and desperate and full of something so real I almost forget we’re waist-deep in chlorinated childhood trauma.

Her lips are saltier than they should be. I don’t mention it.

She pulls back and says, “Okay.”

“That’s it?”

She nods. “That’s all I can do today.”

“It’s enough.”

And it is. Because she didn’t run. She let me hold her. She let herself be held.

That’s not nothing. That’s everything.

She shivers as I help her out of the water, goosebumps breaking across her shoulders like her body doesn’t know whether it’s fear or relief it’s processing.

“Sit,” I say, guiding her to a lounge chair with a big fluffy towel. I kneel and wrap her in it like she’s fragile glass fresh from the kiln, hot but still cooling, still crackable.

She lets me. Doesn’t joke. Doesn’t deflect.

I towel off her legs, her arms, the places she forgets to care for when she’s too busy pretending nothing can touch her. Then I sit beside her and hand her a bottle of water.

“You okay?” I ask.

She stares at the rippling surface of the pool like it just whispered her name in the voice of every fear she’s ever had.

“Not really,” she says, then takes a long drink. “But also, yeah?”

I smile. “That sounds right.”

“I got in,” she says softly.

“You did.”

“With you.”

“With me.”

“I didn’t scream.” She snorts and leans her head against my shoulder, her whole body melting like a marshmallow in a firepit. Sticky. Warm. A little wild.