I cry afterwards, like he’s my first. Luke
holds me, murmurs into my hair, it’ll be alright, it’s okay, and I
believe him. It’s going to be okay.
Sometime before the sun rises, I wake to find
him climbing over me. “What?” I ask, groggy with sleep. The room is
a washed-out morning gray that tells me it’s too damn early to be
up. I grasp at the blankets covering us to hold him before he can
slip away. “Where are you going?”
He kisses my jaw, noses the hair away from in
front of my ear and whispers, “The couch.”
I’m more awake now, and when he tries to
slide out of bed, I won’t let him. “Luke.” I speak in the same
whispered tones that he uses, as if Kent’s asleep in the room with
us and we don’t want to wake him. “No…”
He kisses me again—so persuasive, his kisses.
“It’s still e
