Page 69 of Wherever You Are

His eyes flit up to me, able to hear my quiet voice.

He’d tell me if he couldn’t.

Silence strains as he focuses on the text, flipping more pages. Snowflakes flutter peacefully outside, windowpanes frosted from the cold, and soothing crackling sounds emit from the fireplace. But nothing helps stop the tension that builds around us.

Garrison doesn’t look up from the book when he finally speaks. “Maybe you don’t realize how bad of a boyfriend I am because this has been your only relationship.”

It feels like he yanked out a sword and wedged the blade into my stomach. My face crinkles. So what if my firsts have come later in life?

He’s never taken my innocence as naïveté. I’mnotnaïve. I understand that Garrison is my first and only relationship, but I don’t need to date other people to know that this is a complicated relationship. Not a bad one.

I can’t pull words from my lips. They’re stuck in the back of my throat.

He looks up, meeting the hurt in my eyes, but he continues anyway. “I just want to make sure that you get what you’re saying—wanting to marry me somedaysoon-ish.”

“I obviously don’t want to marry you, if you don’t want to marry me,” I say, those words almost a whisper under my breath, but he’s close enough to hear them.

He shakes his head. “Of course, you’re all I want, Willow, but that doesn’t change things.”

“What things?” I ask, my chest on fire.

“I’m the only guy you’ve ever kissed,” Garrison says. “I’m the only guy you’ve ever slept with. And, fuck, there’s a part of me that feels like I’m stealing you from experiencing…from doing…from…” He can’t finish. Anguish lances his face.

My hands tremble, and I don’t have the book to hold onto, so I hug my arms around myself. Holding on.Hold on.

“You’d want me to kiss other guys? To have sex with them?” The thought brings nothing but sickness and a pressure that compounds on my chest.

“Jesus,no.The thought of you kissing another guy…” He grimaces. “…I can’t even…” His face twists more, and then he reaches for my hand.

I let him take it. He doesn’t mention the trembling. He just laces our fingers together. It calms me for a second.

Garrison inhales. “All I’m saying is that I know you think I’m special because I understood that you didn’t like to be touched, and I waited…and was patient. But there are other guys who’d do the same. I’m not special. I’m not the only guy who’d fall in love with you.”

“Do you honestly believeIcould fall in love with someone else?” My brows pinch, confused. So fucking confused. “You are special to me, Garrison. How can you not see that? It’s not just the touching. It’s who you are. Every part of you, even the parts you hate. I love those, too.”

He runs his thumb back and forth atop my hand. His eyes pin to mine, carrying more worries. “I can try to see it,” he tells me. “But I need to hear you say the other words, out loud. I just need to hear it, Willow.”

“Which ones?” I wonder.

“That you’re fineneverknowing what it’ll be like to kiss another man. To have him touch you here.” He slides his free hand up my thigh, my leggings feeling thin under his palm. I breathe in, welcoming his touch, only his touch. His fingers are millimeters from my heat, but he stops short. “You’ll never know what it’s like to have another man’s fingers in you. Another man’s dick.” He says those words without shying, without breaking my gaze.

“Good,” I say in response.

“I need to hear you say it,” Garrison says. “Please.”

“I don’t want to know what someone else’s lips feel like,” I tell him. “I’m happy never knowing what another dick feels like. Looks like. Smells like—”

His lips lift with mine.

I continue, “I don’t want someone else’s fingers in me. I don’t want another set of eyes on my naked body. It literally makes my skin crawl even imagining these things. I only want you, and you’re worthy of me. Do you understand that?”

A tear slips down out of his eye, but he brushes it away as quickly as it came. “I’m sor—”

“And you can’t be sorry because I’m glad you’re making me do this. I’m glad this is happening, okay? We need toremainhonest with each other. Always.”

His chest rises and falls heavily, and this is where we should reunite.

Kiss.