Lift your hips for me, love.

Juliette ? ” A tentative voice . “ Are you okay? ” I lower the pillow . Blink up . Warner is wearing a towel . A towel . I want to roll under the bed .

I do know that I don't want to wake him.

We were up very late last night.

I love you, ” he says , his words harsh and soft all at once. “ I love you and it isn’t enough . I thought it would be enough and I was wrong. I thought I could fight for you and I was wrong. Because I can’t . I can’t even face you anymore — ” “ Aaron — ” “ Tell me it isn’t true , ” he says. “ Tell me I’m wrong . Tell me I’m blind. Tell me you love me.

His hands are holding my cheeks, and he pulls back just to look me in the eye and his chest is heaving and he says, "I think," he says, "my heart is going to explode," and I wish, more than ever, that I knew how to capture moments like these and revisit them forever.

Because this.

This is everything.

And he leans in, so carefully. Breathing
and not breathing and hearts beating
between us and he’s so close, he’s so close and I can’t feel my legs anymore. I can’t feel my fingers or the cold or the emptiness of this room because all I feel is him, everywhere,filling everything and he whispers
“Please.”
He says “Please don’t shoot me for this.”
And he kisses me.
His lips are softer than anything I've ever known, soft like a first snowfall, like biting into cotton candy, like melting and floating and being weightless in water. It’s sweet, it’s
so effortlessly sweet.
And then it changes.
“Oh God—”
He kisses me again, this time stronger,
desperate, like he has to have me, like he’s dying to memorize the feel of my lips against his own. The taste of him is making me crazy; he’s all heat and desire and peppermint and I want more. I've just begun reeling him in, pulling him into me when he breaks away.
He’s breathing like he’s lost his mind andhe’s looking at me like something has brokeninside of him, like he’s woken up to find that
his nightmares were just that, that they never existed, that it was all just a bad dream that felt far too real but now he’s awake and he’s safe and everything is going to be okay and
I’m falling.
I’m falling apart and into his heart and I’m a disaster.