Page 96 of On the Run
“Toby!” Beale looked at me severely, though it was clear he was close to laughing, too.
“You didn’t tell me it was a Hagatha letter! Sorry! Sorry, sorry.” I pressed apologetic kisses to his shoulder and neck, everywhere I could reach. “Go on. No more laughing,” I vowed, though laughter and shock and relief still bubbled in my chest.
Then he started reading, and suddenly I was closer to tears than laughter.
“My whole life, I’ve been waiting to find my soul mate. My other half. I imagined he’d like a lot of the things I liked, and believe mostly what I believed, and that he’d be my refuge from a world that constantly asked me to explain and justify myself. I was sure that once I met him, I’d never feel like I wasn’t good enough again, because he’d love me despite all my imperfections. He’d make me feel valued and safe and loved.”
I pressed my forehead to Beale’s shoulder. I wasn’t his soul mate, then. But…
“Instead,” he went on, “I met a man who challenged me from the first minute we met. He annoys me. He exasperates me. He makes me nervous. He lights me up. And he’s not perfect, just like I’m not perfect, but that just means we fit perfectly. We make each other better.”
“Stronger,” I whispered against his skin, thinking of fucking Aron, and how good it had felt to stick up for myself.
“Happier,” Beale whispered back. “Not just content, but really, honestly happy, Toby, for the first time I can remember. I’ve stopped waiting for good things to come to me, and I’ve realized I have the power to make them happen.”
“Yeah?” I sniffled in a way that would have been horrifically embarrassing with anyone but Beale. “Well, I’ve stopped waiting for bad things to come to me, because I realized I have the power tonotlet them happen. And I know I’m not your soul mate, Beale, but—”
“But youare.” Beale turned toward me. “That’s exactly what I was trying to say, and maybe it didn’t come out right, but youare. You’re the only one I want because—”
“I love you,” we both said together.
Beale’s slow smile was like sunrise in the middle of the night, and I was pretty sure I was smiling just as brightly.
I was such a sap.
But so was Beale, so I was okay with that.
I sniffled again, because that was a thing I did now. “I was going to come to Florida and tell you that I was keeping you, whether you liked it or not, and your soul mate could fight me for you whenever he came along. I decided you needed someone who loved you epically, and I am a very epic sort of person—”
“You are, baby,” he agreed solemnly.
“And that you deserved someone who’d fight for you. And I haven’t been that person, but I want to be. For you.Withyou.”
“Ah, shit.” Beale’s hand at my neck pulled me forward so he could kiss me, hot and openmouthed. “I love you, Toby,” he whispered against my lips. Then he tipped me back against the pillows to straddle me.
“I love you, too.” I tilted my head to give him better access as he sucked and nibbled at the skin of my neck. My restless legs rubbed against his, and my hips rolled against him, trying to get friction on my hardening cock. “God. It’s absurd. It’s… it’s… it’s—fuck, yeah, right there—preposterous, really. It’s too fast, and we don’t have enough in common, and I don’t care.”
Beale paused with his nose nuzzled into my armpit, then lifted his face to smile at me. “That was the end of my letter.”
“Huh?” I blinked at him. “The what?”
“That was the end of my Dear Hagatha letter.” He patted around the mattress and found the world’s most precious—and now most wrinkled—vomit bag. “It’s too fast, and we don’t have enough in common, and I don’t care. How can I convince him to take a chance on me? Signed, Not-So-Virgo-Somewhere-Over-West-Virginia-I-Think.” Beale threw the bag aside and shrugged. “I kinda lost my creativity at the end there.”
He stared down at me expectantly, and my brain was so thoroughly fogged by love and lust andreliefthat it took me a whole second to realize he was waiting for an answer.
For Hagatha’s answer.
“Beale, precious? I already told you I don’t require convincing, right?”
“Well, yeah…”
“Because I love you and want to be with you?”
“Yeah,” he said softly, wonderingly.
“And you love me and want to be with me?”
“Fuck, yes. So much.” But he still watched me steadily.
