“And then you… you showed up at my party and despite all the promises that I made myself, all the good fucking intentions, I couldn’t stop myself from going after you. And God, you were so… innocent and pretty and so fucking gorgeous when you danced for me. I felt guilty. I felt so guilty for making you do that, for watching you like that, for wanting to kiss the fuck out of you when your brothers showed up just to make them understand that I wouldn’t stay away from you. I wouldn’t.”
His hands are clenched now, his voice tight and angry as if he’s reliving that moment back in the woods. And I want to go to him and tell him that…
I don’t know what I want to tell him except that I love him.
I love him so much and I didn’t expect this. I didn’t know and God, please can I just tell him?
I don’t care if he says it back to me or if he hasn’t realized it yet or if he never realizes it. I just want to love him and he looks so lonely and angry and defiant standing there with his fists clenched and I…
He swallows again and his eyes, wolfish and pretty, flash with something. “Anyway, you know everything that happened after that. Except… except the night you gave me that sweater. The one that I never wore — I couldn’t after what I did — but I keep it. I keep it close and I think that was the night that I felt something. I felt a pain, a longing. That was the night when, instead of bringing you back to your brothers, I wanted to take you away. I wanted to keep you for myself. My fairy. Who made such a beautiful gift for me. No one had ever given me anything before that. I didn’t know what to do with it… I… That was the night, yeah. That was the night I wanted to take you away and…”
“Roman?”
My voice brings him back to the moment. It makes him focus on me.
Even though he’s been looking at me all this time, I know he wasn’t really seeing me but now he does. He does see me and his features arrange themselves.
They arrange themselves in a look that’s even more determined than before and yet, there’s this openness in them. An openness like he’s exposing something.
His thoughts, yes.
But more than that. His soul maybe.
“I never tell you anything because I don’t know how,” he says thickly. “I’ve never really told things before. I’ve never really shared things with people. I never had anyone I could share things with. And that has been okay with me. Because I was always bogged down by other things. I was always too wrapped up in my own shit to… take a second. To stop and to take a breath, but I want you to know this. I want you to know the thoughts in my head, Fae. Because you have the right. Only you have the right to know.”
“Know what?”
“All my life I’ve felt suffocated and angry and hateful. I’ve felt like I had no choice but to do the things that I was doing. I had no choice but to hurt people and fight with people and lie and cheat and be the bad guy. But then every time I saw you, every time I see you, Fae, you destroy a piece of me. A dirty piece, you understand. This thing inside of me that makes me a villain, you destroy it, Fae. You kill it and you cleanse me. You make me better. You make me breathe. I can breathe with you and I’ve never been able to breathe so freely as I do with you.
“And every time you do that, every time you fill my lungs with sweet life, I want to destroy anything and everything that hurts you. I want to burn down the world so I can keep you safe. Every time you slay my dragons, I want to slay yours. I want to be your hero, Fae. I want that. I know you told me that I’m Halo’s hero and I am. I will be. For the rest of my life. I will love her and protect her and keep her safe. She’s mine. She’s ours. But I also want to be your hero. I also want to keep you safe. I want that job for myself. And so I want to give you something. Something that I never put much stock in. I laughed at people when they talked about it. I scoffed. I thought they were crazy. Until now.”
My eyes are wet. They sting but I don’t let my tears fall. I don’t let my vision become blurry because I want to see him. I want to see him clearly and vividly.
But it gets so difficult now when I whisper, “What?”
He clenches his jaw for a second before whispering back, “My heart.”
“Your heart.”
“Yes. I want to give it to you.”
“Why?”
He chuckles harshly, brokenly. “Because when you gave me yours, I broke it. I didn’t protect it like I should have. I hurt you and I’ll regret that for the rest of my life. So my heart is yours. It has been since I saw you on that playground. Something that I’ve only realized in the past few weeks. Because you made me realize it. You made me realize that my heart could be filled with something other than hate. Something like love.”
“L-love.”
He throws out an imperceptible nod. “Yeah. I love you, Fae. I’ve loved you for a very, very long time now. Ever since the playground, I think. The things I feel for you, I never knew they could be love. But they are love. I’m in fucking love with you. And so I want to tell you that you have my heart. I want you to do whatever you want with it. You can do with it what I did to yours. You can break it, Fae. You can break my heart. I want you to. I’m putting it in your hands. I’m putting it under your ballerina feet that you think are ugly but they’re the prettiest feet I’ve ever seen.”
His heart.
And then I have to look at it, his chest.
I have to look away from his gorgeous face even though it’s hard. Because I think… I think if I focused enough, I probably would be able to see his beating heart inside his chest.
That he wants me to have.
The chest I once thought was barren and infertile. That no flower could ever grow there. He proved me wrong when he said that he loved Halo but now I think I was wrong about that too.
He doesn’t just have a flower, he has a garden.
My Roman has a secret garden of daisies in his chest. For me, and then I can’t stop my tears at all, even though they make it hard for me to see him. But I shouldn’t have worried about not seeing him because one second, he’s standing all the way over there and the next, he’s touching me.
He’s putting his hands on my wet cheeks and tilting my face up. He’s wiping those tears off, kissing my forehead. “Don’t cry, Fae. I keep making you cry.”
“Y-you want me to break your heart?”
He kisses my forehead again. “If you want to.”
I shake my head, grasping his wrists. “But I already did that.”
“What?”
I move my hands to his cheeks then, his beautifully harsh jaw. “I already broke your heart. Two years ago. My tears, my pain. My heartbreak. They broke your heart, didn’t they?”
His jaw moves under my fingers. “Yeah.”
“Every time I cried in my bedroom, you were lying awake in yours, weren’t you?”
He throws out a short nod.
“And every time I felt all broken and hurt and alone in my town, you felt hopeless and miserable in your city.”