Page 154 of Everything Under the Sun

“I promise you, I will never leave you again”—he kissed my forehead, and then my mouth—“You gave yourself to me, and you’re mine. And you’ll always be mine. Until the day you put me in my grave, Thais Fenwick, you belong to me.”

I gasped as Atticus slowly pushed himself inside of me. And with every thrust, my heart threatened to burst with love for him, with absolute pleasure and lust for him. I had never known what sex and love and passion felt like until this moment.

Atticus filled my soul with every part of him, surrendered to me with every breath; he allowed the walls he’d so carefully constructed around his heart, to fall into a mountain of shattered bricks around us—and every breath we took, I thought felt like hallelujah…

ATTICUS

She cried out softly; her hands found the quilt beneath her head, and she gripped it and tore at it with her fingers. She cried out my name, and to hear her, to feel her tighten around me, it tore me apart. My chest ached; my heart was full and heavy. It took several moments to catch my breath, to gather the pieces of my mind scattered in all directions. After twenty-four years, many women, the collapse of society, death around every corner and no hope for life in sight, I, for the first time knew what it felt like to be in love.

I collapsed next to her.

I heard her sniffle.

“Why are you crying?” I asked, and I took her into my arms. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“No…no…no,” she said, shaking her head against the crook of my arm. “You didn’t hurt me at all…I just…”

“You just what? What is it?” I pressed my lips against her hair, traced the tip of my fingers across her arm.

Thais sniffled again, reached up and wiped away her tears.

“I’m just glad that you, of all the people left in the world, are the one who found me.” I drew her closer, tightening my arms around her. “I never dreamed that I would go through this life without my sister,” she went on. “But do you want to know something?”

“Tell me,” I said, my hand still stroking her arm.

She was quiet for a moment, the last of our words still hanging in the air between us.

“When my sister died, and you lifted me into your arms to take me away, for a split second, just long enough to make me hate myself for thinking something so selfish in the worst possible moment, I…” She paused; I stroked her hair. “…I asked God—not long after cursing Him—to give you to me. I didn’t care in what way, even if it was only for the sake of helping me, or ending my life for me, but I asked Him to give you to me—I just never imagined that He would…give me so much.”

I looked up at the ceiling.

“I should probably tell you something, too,” I said.

“What?” She laid on her side to face me; reached over and touched my cheek.

“First, I have to admit,” I said, “that I don’t believe in God. But that night when I begged you not to pull the trigger, for a split second, just long enough to make me hate myself for thinking something so selfish in the worst possible moment, I prayed to whoever or whatever was listening, to give you to me. I needed you and I didn’t know why. I wanted you, not just to help you, but I wanted you for myself. And like you”—my gaze swept over her eyes and her mouth—“I didn’t care what for, even if it was to see me to my end, be the one to take my life out of hatred for me because of your sister’s death. Or even just to be the one to bury me. I wanted and needed you, Thais, and I prayed to whoever was listening.”

I kissed her weeping mouth, tasted the salt of her tears.

I took a deep breath. “What have you done to me?” I said, smiling over at her.

“I’m a sorceress,” Thais joked, smiling back. “Didn’t you know?”

I touched my lips to the bone underneath one eye, and then the other. “That you are,” I said. “I’ve been bewitched by a sorceress.” My mouth found the side of her neck, her ear lobe; my tongue found the shell of her ear; Thais shivered.

I made love to her again. And when we were too tired to move anymore, too exhausted to speak, we lay together in the heat of the room listening to each other’s heartbeats, hearing a thousand unspoken words so powerful they did not need voices.

50

THAIS

It was Tuesday. Again. Atticus and I sat on the back porch sipping coffee, waiting for Jeffrey to come running through the woods any moment now.

“It breaks my heart to think about how he might’ve been treated by others,” I said angrily. “He’s so kind—I don’t know how anyone can be so cruel.”

“Cruelty is a human defect,” Atticus said. “Like racism and bigotry and homophobia and all that other shit that sometimes makes me ashamed to be human.”

Surprised by his confession, I decided against taking another drink, and I set the mug on the table between us.

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