And the second was that something beneath the brambles startled, its movement drawing her eye.
“Gravy!” she yelped.
“…What?”
“It’s Gravy! She’s over here.” Abbie shuffled on her knees, further to the right, and reached beneath the mass of thorns only to have Will catch her arm.
“You’ll hurt yourself.” He frowned, uncharacteristically stern, and then proceeded to shove his hand under the thorns like the two of them were made of entirely different organic materials. Or perhaps he was simply behaving like his coat was thicker than hers, which was true, so, fair enough.
He carefully lifted the bramble, and beneath it lay Gravy, who … appeared to be giving birth.
“Are you kidding me?” Will demanded. “Seriously? Seriously?” His voice was practically a growl. Abbie didn’t think she’d ever heard him so frustrated.
“It’s okay,” she said, unwinding the scarf from her neck. “We can help—”
“I’m not worried about the cat, Abbie,” he interrupted, which was also rather out of character. Will was very fond of cats, except for the part where they made him hack his lungs up after prolonged proximity. “I’m talking about the fact that you just told me you love me. You just told me that, and I want to kiss you until I die, and instead I have to hold a bush while you talk Gravy through contractions.” She’d been avoiding his gaze very carefully since her confession began—but he said all this with such desperate, disbelieving passion in his voice that Abbie’s gaze was drawn to him without permission. And when she looked at him, she found that same desperation in his eyes, frantic and achingly tender, and it made her feel as if he’d touched every inch of her skin slowly and lovingly all at once.
The tight braid of nerves in her stomach unravelled, just a little. Enough for her to keep confessing, even as she tucked her scarf around an exhausted-looking Gravy and monitored the extremely gross but not unfamiliar miracle of life being squeezed out before their eyes.
“The thing is,” she told Will as she peered at the bubble-like amniotic sack, “I … I don’t think my loving you is as important as you might think—”
“Disagree,” Will said immediately.
She ignored him. “—Because I’m not very good at it. Love, I mean. I have some, erm, issues, you might have noticed, and I’m so scared, Will. I really am. I’m afraid all the fucking time. And sometimes—often—I let that fear control what I do, and that’s when I make mistakes and hurt people, and I really don’t want to hurt you.”
“This is why you’ve been pushing me away,” he said. “Not because you don’t feel the same.”
“I feel more.”
“You don’t,” he told her. “You don’t.”
It was alarming, the reckless way her heart leapt at that. But already, Abbie was getting used to the nervous thrill that came with hope. After all, she’d just told Will a secret so huge she’d spent years trying to keep it hidden from herself, and nothing terrible had happened. The earth hadn’t collapsed beneath them. Instead, he was looking at her like she was the sweetest thing he’d ever seen and saying things that lit her up inside, things like, “Abbie-girl, nothing you might do to me could hurt more than being without you.”
“That is ludicrous and excessively romantic and horribly unrealistic,” she told him, and her voice only wobbled a tiny bit.
“Get used to it,” Will told her, “because I have a lot of feelings for you and they’re all kind of unreasonable and I really don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me if you have things to work on. I told you last night, and I’ll tell you today, and I’ll tell you tomorrow: if you’re scared, Abbie, I just want to hold your hand.”
Oh dear. Oh God. She’d wanted to believe something like that, said by someone like him—no, only him, only him—for her entire life, and now she was determined to do so. To choose it. The very texture of his voice weaved between her ribs and held her tight, safe, secure. She was perilously close to sobbing, which made it imperative that she concentrate on something else.
Gravy was supposed to lick away the amniotic fluids surrounding her babies—Abbie had seen enough cat births to know that—but she must be too cold or too tired or both because it wasn’t happening. “I’m going to have to do this,” Abbie said out loud, and reached for the tiny new-born lump of fur and gunk, grateful for her gloves.
“Okay,” Will said. “I’m going to keep talking.”
“Yes,” she said softly, so softly the wind and the snow whipped her words away. “Please.” Because that ocean of affection she’d been so terrified of drowning in? His every word was a warm, gentle wave buoying her up. And suddenly she was floating.
“I messed things up this week, Abs,” he told her, leaning into the side of her body as she worked, letting his forehead rest against her temple. Protecting her from the worst of the cold, yes—and brushing his soft lips against her icy cheek, pressing his words into her skin like a secret. “I had this big plan—I was going to quit my job and move back home and work my way into your life, and then a year would pass and I’d be yours and you wouldn’t even know how it happened.”
She choked out a laugh as she gently wiped the tiny, mewling kitten semi-clean. “What?”
“Yeah. Because I could tell, even from miles away, that you were struggling, and I guess I thought I could sneak past all the walls you put up and be there for you, be with you, whether you liked it or not. But that was never going to work. You make choices, and they’re deliberate, and whether they keep me out or in, they’re yours. That’s one of the things I love about you. Ignoring that made no sense.”
Abbie’s pulse stuttered as she tucked the kitten close to its mother, as she turned to Will and unravelled the scarf from around his neck for another blanket. “Love,” she repeated carefully, swallowing hard, refusing to add any inflection. “Love.” Her lips shaped the word hungrily. And for the first time, leaning toward the most obvious interpretation of what he’d said felt less like hubris and more like hope.
“Yeah,” he told her, and she heard it in his voice, felt it in his gaze. Maybe it had always been there. Maybe the way he looked at her, like he could see every little thing—like he wanted to see every little thing, no matter how tough or awkward or difficult—had always been love.
And then he confirmed that possibility, with the same brilliant ease he did everything. “Yeah, I love you, Abs. It took me a while to figure out what it was—by the time I did, you were off to uni, and then you found someone else, and I felt like I’d never done anything so stupid as let you go, and it was too late. I just hope I’ve made up for it by loving you ever since.