Page 105 of Light Up The Night
Her cheek on my chest, she's already fading. "Forever. Need you forever."
"Then that's exactly what you've got."
A minute of silence, then five. "Riley Crowe, Three Rivers."
"Hey," I whisper. "You're home. You're safe. You're with me."
She startles, cranes her neck to look up at me. "Home."
"Yeah," I murmur, kissing her wet hair. "You're home in Three Rivers with me."
"No," she murmurs, tightening her grip on me in a full-body hug. "Home. With you." Again, she squeezes me with her arms and legs. "Youare home."
My throat goes hot and tight at this. "Fuck, baby."
She palms my cheek. "Eyes, please?” I look at her, blinking hard as hot salt burns behind my eyes. "Will you say it now, please?" She brushes a thumb under my eyes, one and then the other.
I wonder if she realizes what she's asking, that I've never spoken those words aloud to anyone, ever, except an occasional "love you, bro," to Felix over the years. Never to a woman.
The words feel like hot, thick, hard lumps in my esophagus, like partially-chewed bites of overcooked steak.
The shattered desperation in her eyes and her voice overcome the fear and hesitation. "I love you, Cadence Creswell."
She shudders, a soft sob escaping, and she buries her face in my neck. "Riley."
“I’m here," I whisper. "I've got you. You're okay, now."
I feel her fading back down into sleep. "I love you…Riley Crowe…of Three Rivers…"
The dam breaks, then, and I let the tears fall; there's no one to see them.
She cannot know what that means. How it feels to hear that.
The ferocity of my feelings for this woman in my arms stuns me, then, as if her half-asleep murmured declaration of love lit some kind of pilot light inside me.
I wake up;it's late afternoon. I'm stiff from being in one position for so long, and my right arm is asleep. Cadence is curled up against my side, more on top of me than not. I slither carefully out from beneath her, wait to make sure she stays asleep, and then relieve my screaming bladder.
I return to find her sitting up in bed, bleary-eyed, disoriented. "Hey," I whisper, climbing in beside her. "I'm here."
She clings to me once more. "I am going to need time, Riley."
"You have it. Long as you need."
She shakes her head, craning her neck to look up at me. "No, I mean…I…I am lucid and present, at the moment, for you. So I can…explain." A pause, a hard swallow. "I am going to be out of commission for a while. I may sleep, I may be awake, but I will not respond to anything. I will not even know you are there. Just please know that I am okay. You do not need to worry."
"One of those freeze things?"
A shrug of one shoulder. "Sort of. This is…deeper. I call it a healing trance. I just…there is too much inside me. I…it is the only way I know how to cope."
"What can I do?"
"Nothing. Just be there. I will need you when I come out of it." She nuzzles under my chin with her nose. "I meant it, you know." She pulls away to meet my eyes in a rare moment of prolonged eye contact. "When I said that I love you. I meant it."
"Me too."
"Oh, I know. " She goes back to nuzzling me. "You have proven it."
"Cadie, what—?"
