Page 77 of Unconditionally Yours

I watch her steal one of my sandwiches. Mine. She’s already got two on her plate, cut by me, placed gently, like offerings, and she still has to take my triangle. Looks me dead in the eye while she bites it. Slowly.

It’s a test. Everything’s a test with her.

Can I handle the push-pull of her chaos? The breaking and remaking she does with a look, a laugh, a tilt of her chin?

She stole my key. Let herself into my house and left a GPS tracker and candy.

I know what she’s doing.

She’s checking. Waiting. Watching me for signs I’ll recoil. That I’ll leave when she gets too weird. Too raw. When the cracks show and the reasons she’s court-ordered to therapy start spilling out.

She wants to know I’ll still be here.

When she spirals. When she bites. When she’s treading water in the shallow end and needs someone who knows how to float both of us without asking her to explain why her lungs are always half-full of history.

I will be here.

She can test me with a thousand sandwiches, break into every inch of my life, brand her chaos into every second and I’ll still be here.

When she lifts the rest of the triangle toward me, offering it back like a communion wafer made of lust and sex crimes, I lean in and let her feed me. Off her fingertips.

And then she leans closer.

Licks the corner of my mouth.

She pulls back just enough to look at me. Her lips still parted. Like she might say something. Like she might not.

And I can’t breathe. I can’t think. My hands twitch in my lap, useless and too big. I want them on her. Want to see my palm span her stomach, to wrap a hand around the back of her neck and hold her there while she unravels for me again. If I touch her now, I won’t stop until she’s crying on my cock and calling it love. Not until I’ve said all the things I’m not supposed to feel yet. Not until she’s shaking in my arms and laughing against my mouth and Mr. Wriggles files for emotional damages.

“You’re thinking really loud,” she says, popping a chip into her mouth. “Everything okay in there, big guy?”

I clear my throat. Try to swallow around the heat. “I like you. I know you’re, well, you. But I really like you. I want this to be something.”

She looks at me like I gave her the stars. Then she steals another triangle. “I don’t know how to do this, this way. Open and honest and Rhys didn’t tell me because I was too busy flirting with him. I feel like I should warn you. I’m also stalking Rhys, my therapist. Emotionally. Not in like a restraining order way. Yet.”

I laugh but it burns a little.

“And there’s this guy from group who I think I might’ve ruined already with a motorcycle orgasm. Jett. Frowny. I wanna ruin him more.” She stops and watches me for a reaction.

“But that doesn’t mean I don’t like this. I just… don’t know what I’m allowed to like. This isn’t just about who gets to make me scream in public, Benji. This is... I don’t know. You boughtme a worm. That’s commitment.” She says it like a joke. Like she’s half expecting me to laugh.

I don’t. I watch her lips, her eyes, the way she fiddles with a cookie like it’s a grenade. And I know if I don’t say this right, I’ll lose her to her own doubt.

“Okay. Um. I guess I figured there were... people. You don’t have to, like, pick. I don’t need to be the only one. I just, when I see you, I want to see all of you. Not a piece.”

“I think about you when I touch myself now. I feel like that counts for something,” she says.

“I like being yours,” I say, quiet and honest, afraid it might scare her if I say it too loud. “Even when you steal my food and break into my house.”

Her smile twitches. “I didn’t break in. I stole your key.”

There’s a second, half a heartbeat, where I see the fear. The fragile thing under all that chaos. She’s not sure I’ll stay. Not when I know more. Not when it gets hard. Not when she pushes too far.

“You scare the shit out of me,” I tell her. “But not in a bad way. Just… I’ve never wanted someone this much. Never met anyone who could make me laugh, and cry, and come in the same hour.”

“You mean it?” she asks. Like it costs her something.

“I mean it so much I’d fight a raccoon for you.”