Delicate

by K. L. Cottrell

  “Was it the best day for Uncle Beck?”

  “I bet so, but we’ll have to ask him when he comes back!” I finish tucking her in, straighten up, and look over her. “Okay, now. Comfy?”

  She nods and crooks her arm around Fifi’s neck. “Mmhmm. I…. No, wait! Where’s Bee? He’s not here!” She looks around for the teddy bear Beckett gave her for Valentine’s Day.

  “Uh oh!” I look, too, but the soft cutie is nowhere in sight. Even when I back away from the bed and peer around on the floor, I don’t see him right off.

  She says, “I think we forgot him in the living room! He’s lonely!”

  “That’s terrible,” I groan sympathetically. “Poor Bee!”

  “I know!”

  It definitely makes sense for him to have been left behind. There were quite a few cuddly guests at our shadow games.

  I tell her, “Well, don’t worry. I’ll go get him and bring him in here where he won’t be lonely anymore.” I give one last look around my feet and the shadows at the edge of her bed. Then I turn to walk out of the room. “I’ll be—”

  My collision with something solid startles me.

  “Whoops,” Beckett rushes out as he steadies me by the elbows.

  I look up to apolo—

  —holy shit.

  My lips have almost, almost brushed against his because he’s closer than I realized—so close that his quick breath seems to pull the air out of my lungs.

  The fault lines in me judder to life more violently than ever. My pulse skyrockets and my eyes get stuck on his lips.

  The rest of me is frozen.

  As a torrent of jumbled emotions overtakes me, I know I should scramble away from him, but I can’t manage it. All I can do is stand here while he, seeming as dazed as I am, finally tips back enough for our eyes to meet and our mouths not to be close enough for an accidental graze of a kiss.

  A kiss.

  We’re mirrors for each other’s astonishment.

  My cheeks are on fire, and my lips aren’t far from it. How did I not register his proximity to me before I…?

  With his gaze caught on mine, his hands tighten what was an easy grip around my elbows. My traitorous nerve endings thank them for doing that instead of letting me go.

  And right before my eyes, tiny inches from my eyes, his expression changes from shock to something that puts butterflies in my stomach.

  Butterflies.

  Me.

  I didn’t think I would ever feel those again.

  But he glances at my mouth with those candidly wanting eyes and wets his own lips, and my inescapable liking of it swells up in me like countless butterflies taking wild flight—I couldn’t keep it at bay no matter how—

  “Oh, wait!” comes Theo’s voice.

  I jump and, Holy shit, jolts through me again. Theodora.

  “Bee isn’t in the living room!” she exclaims while Beckett hastily releases me. “He’s in the kitchen! I just remembered! I left him in my chair so he could read my practice writing!”

  I’m now in such a hurry to round him and get space between us that the doorframe seems to materialize out of nowhere—my shoulder slams into it almost hard enough to make me cuss.

  I wince, and he asks, “You okay?” and his voice may have simply gone dry, but it sounds husky to me. Maybe to him, too, since he clears his throat. Twice.

  Have mercy on me, Beck, I silently beg him.

  “I’m fine. I’m great,” is what I say out loud. “Gotta go get Bee from the…the….” I point in the direction of the other room.

  “The kitchen!” Theo repeats helpfully.

  I nod, and Beckett says, “Oh, yeah. Okay.”

  His tone hasn’t changed one damn bit, and neither has the look in his eyes.

  It’s another one that I find myself wanting like hell to live in.

  I didn’t know Beckett could look at someone like this. It’s like being gazed upon by a god in a normal guy’s body.

  “Be right back,” I breathe out before finally leaving the room in a rush.

  It takes me a surprisingly long time to realize I didn’t bring any kind of light with me. Luckily, I haven’t run into anything in the darkness; I slow down and carefully feel my way to the kitchen.

  It’s fine with me that I won’t be super quick, because I need a minute to catch my breath.

  When my patting hands locate Bee in Theo’s abandoned kitchen chair, I cuddle him to my chest, close my eyes, and work on calming my heartbeat.

  It’s not easy to do when thinking about an almost-kiss directly leads into thinking about a real one.

  My stomach swoops so hard it takes my breath away anew.

  I think about the way he touched me after we checked each other for injuries outside his car.

  And I’m brushed at by the golden ghosts of other moments that shook me in the most unexpectedly welcome ways. None of them stand out because there are so many and my brain has gone misty, but that doesn’t matter; the way they made me feel is something I could never forget. It has clung to me like a second skin.

  Like the way he looked at me just now.

  That will never be erased from my memory.

  My cheeks are still hot.

  Nevertheless, I try to shake all this off so I can get back to enjoying Theo time.

  I give her teddy bear a squeeze and sigh, “Oh, Bee,” because it seems like the thing to do.

  Then I carefully start making my way out of the kitchen.

  —

  I think this is the most precious story time I’ve ever seen Beckett and Theo share.

  The candlelight can’t be super easy to read by, but it does cast a soothing glow through the otherwise dark room and over where he’s settled next to her snuggled-up self, his back against her pillows. He normally sits on the edge of the bed and just turns the book toward her when the story demands it, but this time, she asked for him to be closer.

  That was all she had to do: ask. And only once, at that.

  He would do anything for her.

  In fact, what really gets me is how he’s been reading one-handed almost this whole time, because shortly after he started up, she closed both of her hands around his closest one and leaned in to look at the book with him.

  She didn’t say a word, and he didn’t move a muscle.

  He just smiled a smile that matched the love he looked at her with in the kitchen, then held her hands right back the best he could, then set to his task.

  If he’s struggling with it, he’s not making it obvious.

  I almost want to take a picture of them, I adore the sight so much. But by the same token, I don’t want to leave the room for my phone or interrupt them to ask for Beckett’s. I don’t want to miss out on or ruin a single giggle or grin or moment of extra snuggling.

  So I sit here near the end of the bed, listening to Beckett’s warm voice wrap around each silly storybook word, watching Theo grow sleepier with each minute.

  Watching him glance at me every now and then.

  Most times have had something to do with Theo, but this current one doesn’t. It has to do with me. He somehow caught the motion of me pulling my hair back and over one shoulder, and his gaze flickered up to it, then down to my neck where that scrape is…and now he’s skipping it over all of me, it feels like.

  Including my lips.

  I notice it even though he doesn’t linger there. And the way he inhales makes me feel sure he’s thinking, just for these fleeting seconds, about what happened by the doorway.

  I know it’s what I’m thinking about.

  His eyes have already gone back to the book, but the memory is impossible to keep from humming between us.

  Two sentences get read aloud in a tone that doesn’t give him away. Theo laughs drowsily about them, clearly trying not to fall asleep.

  He and I have to grin about it, which means this new glance from him is full of amusement, not….

  I try to focus on that—on how sweet they are together and ho
w much fun they’re having—rather than on what’s happening to me because of him alone.

  I feel shaky. Feel like my body temperature has been sitting high all this time.

  So much of his attention is sincerely fixed on Theo, but no, he hasn’t forgotten about us.

  Still, I can think about that in a while. I want to soak up as much of this story time as possible before it’s over.

  I get back to listening to my tied-for-favorite person reading a story I love to my other tied-for-favorite person.

  It doesn’t last much longer. The book isn’t that long, and today wore Theo out, so she has drifted off by the time he’s done reading. I’m kind of surprised she didn’t fight it harder, since she so adores spending time with Beckett. Had she worked to keep being awake with him, it wouldn’t have been the first time.

  He closes the book, then looks over at her, then down at where her little hands have gone slack around his much bigger one.

  I look at all the same pieces of this heart-stealing picture.

  Neither of us speaks.

  Not even when we end up looking at each other.

  Not even when passing seconds turn into passing minutes and it starts to really settle on us that the time has come for us to be at the forefront of each other’s thoughts, because everything else is still and silent.

  It’s the first time in many hours that we have been free to think only of each other…and what a heavy freedom it is.

  Throughout the day, I’ve noticed him frequently slipping into distracted thought. Sometimes it was for just a few beats, sometimes for a whole minute or two. And I always wished I knew what he was thinking, though a lot of the time, I felt like he might’ve been thinking the same things I was. There were many moments that starkly stood out, that agitated the fault lines, that struck deeper than they should have—deeper than they used to, in such cases as us bumping hands for some unremarkable reason or catching each other’s eye in the middle of uncontrollable laughter.

  He's in thought now, and once again, I know he’s thinking about our almost-kiss. I know it.

  We still don’t say anything.

  Momentarily, he turns his head to look back down at Theo, and I decide it’s time to get up from her bed. He notices me doing it, so he gingerly extracts himself from her loosened hand-holding and slips free of her snuggling. While carefully adjusting her to his absence, he manages to stand.

  I step over and pick up the candle from her small nightstand. Then, after he appears to be ready, I lead the way out of her room.

  I can sense his eyes on me as I walk down the hall a few paces ahead of him, so much so that his attention may as well be a touch.

  The farther we get from Theo’s room, the more I feel like a live wire.

  In the kitchen, I set the candle on the dining table. Then my feet start carrying me all the way across the room, toward the most distant counter even though it sits mostly in darkness, because it’s as far from the other end of the house as I can get.

  “How’s your shoulder?” his low voice finally comes, still from those few paces behind me.

  It’s not low enough for me to miss the weight of it.

  The warmth.

  The….

  The strangest ache is taking over my throat—a spike of emotion, though not tearful.

  I swallow, then do it again. Then I stop at the counter and turn around. My eyes are drawn right to him through the shadows, up from his shirt to his face. As I nod my wordless answer that my shoulder is okay, he comes to a stop a couple feet from me, the edges of him faintly lit by the soft golden candlelight flickering on the other side of the room.

  And I’m…

  …so many things.

  I’m fault lines and butterflies, trembly and fluttery, unable to be still inside or out; my fingertips drum the same quick beat on my thighs that my heart hammers against my ribs.

  I’m memories and moments, gripped and electrified, unable to separate my deep peace and newfound happiness from him because he’s the biggest reason I have them.

  We stand here and do nothing but look at each other.

  Until he inhales and keeps coming forward, sending my pulse stumbling.

  I can’t move as he shuffles in close enough to still my fingers with gentle taps of his shaky ones, and for me to make out the scar on his cheek even in this dimmest of lighting, and for the short inches left between us to crackle so much it puts my hairs on end.

  They crackle even more when his eyes drift down to my lips.

  I want to draw my own breath, but it feels impossible to do.

  His solid nearness, his half-shy touch, his intense expression, his unfair and fantastic beauty—I can’t breathe around it.

  Yet my next inhalation comes, and it dives all the way down into my lungs, satisfying.

  It makes no sense.

  Nothing makes sense.

  Up is down. Left is right. White is black. Night is day.

  This Beckett is not the Beckett I’ve always known.

  His eyes find mine again and he isn’t joking, grinning, breezing through the moments…but he also isn’t hurting. He’s fully existing, living in this quiet moment with me and only me, holding me in place with a stronger gravitational pull than I ever expected him to possess.

  And he doesn’t want to stop here. I’m aware of it just like I’m aware of the rigid line of kitchen counter at my lower back and of the lock of his hair that’s slipping from its casual style. It doesn’t matter how silent he is on the outside—from the inside, he’s shouting what he wants at me.

  It’s pouring out of his gaze, skipping in and out of his lungs, closing around my fingers.

  It’s digging into my chest and pulling.

  In surrender, I sweep my fingers out from under his and cage his face into them.

  He overwhelms the space between us in an instant, moving in so close, fumbling for my waist. Hazy gazes close as noses bump in what should be an awkward way but isn’t because—

  Our lips meet in a soft rush.

  After they slip away again, we drag in a breath and hold it tight.

  A stolen kiss, here and then gone.

  A secret let loose between us in all these shadows.

  A wave of longing down my spine.

  My breathing doesn’t merely resume. It speeds up.

  So does his. Against my lips, his unsteady breaths fall fast and withdraw sharply, fall and withdraw. My eyes flutter open just long enough for me to catch the touch of his tongue to his bottom lip, where my kiss was, as if he’s savoring the trace of it.

  I lose a heartbeat over it.

  His hands spread up my back until he’s cradling me even closer to himself. Our lips barely touch again, and that strangeness from before spikes back up my throat—raw sentiment that is familiar and brand-new at the same time.

  My thumb presses at the scar flawing his cheek. His breath is a balmy tremble on my lips.

  With an eager slant, we trap each other in a firm, not-stolen second kiss.

  And I lose entire heartbeats now.

  More and more with each clinging second—more still as I urge another confession of a kiss from him, and as he pulls another from me, back and forth, each one a quicker step into something so tenderly desperate it makes my head spin.

  Something that makes me feel like, here and now, right where I stand in his arms, my soul itself is being crashed into.

  My shirt bunches in his flexing grip and sends chill bumps whispering across my skin. With half a gasp, I swing an arm around his neck before my weakening knees can give out. He swiftly locks one of his around me, hauling me impossibly closer as his other hand finds the back of my head, drawing us into a tighter kiss—and then he clumsily steps into me, making me go back so I’m wedged harder between him and the edge of the kitchen counter. It interrupts our give-and-take for a second, worsens our breathlessness because this press of his body along mine is overwhelming.

  Yet despite that and our new claim of each o
ther’s mouth, I’m steadied.

  ‘I’ll always catch you.’

  The sudden memory of his words brings a fresh wave of chill bumps over me.

  My lips part because of it, and he pauses against them. We inhale the same stuttered breath. And I’m overcome with the urge—I give in and hesitantly taste his bottom lip, and he makes a low sound of liking that I echo without meaning to, and our fingertips dig in harder than ever, and he seeks out my tongue with his, and…oh my God….

  We lose ourselves in a slow, deep, heartfelt kiss, and I don’t know where my moan ends and his begins.

  All I know is that he’s cradling me, crashing into me, consuming me like the ocean he is.

  I have never felt anything like it.

  I’ve never felt anything like Beckett.

  It’s such a perfect truth that it makes me ache.

  Until—

  —until it’s so sharp it hurts.

  My brain finally really registers whose name is stitching itself into every part of me, as well as the fact that he has just left my tongue to leave, “Ellie,” on my lips in a way he’s never said my name before—it’s hot with adoration and desire because we’ve been kissing. Beckett and I have been kissing each other.

  Alarm erupts through me.

  Gasping, I tense and drop my hands to his chest.

  He goes still.

  Goes still in the middle of moving in for yet another kiss, I realize—one I can’t help wanting like crazy even as reality comes smashing—

  He sucks in a brittle breath.

  Lets go of me, staggers back from me, rasps out, “Oh my God.”

  And even with my alarm turning into hellfire-hot panic, I feel cold with him so far away.

  What’s wrong with me?

  What the fuck is wrong with me?

  “Oh my fucking God,” he huffs out, “we….”

  From across the chasm of empty shadows between us, we stare at each other, frozen.

  He isn’t crashing over me anymore, and I’m no longer at risk of drowning in him.

  He isn’t kissing me like I’m his, and I’m no longer wordlessly begging him not to stop.

  What have we done?

  The words are written on his face, blaring through my mind.