Chapter 22: I love yous
The following night found them tangled in the cotton sheets of Joe’s bed, the world outside his windows a blur of city-lit haze. They hadn’t left the house all day, existing in a lazy bubble of delivered food, old movies, and the sheer, novel pleasure of not having to be anywhere else.
Svet lay on her back, sated and loose-limbed, tracing the stark lines of a tattoo on Joe’s shoulder with her fingertip. The afterglow was a warm, humming thing in her veins. He shifted beside her, propping himself up on one elbow. His gaze was heavy, thoughtful, as it moved over her face, then down the length of her body, where the sheet had pooled at her hips.
He didn’t speak. Instead, he bent his head and placed a soft, closed-mouth kiss on her shoulder. Then another, lower, on the curve of her breastbone. His lips were warm and impossibly gentle.
This wasn’t a prelude. The urgency from earlier was gone, replaced by a deliberate, reverent pace. He kissed the dip of her waist, his large hand splaying across her stomach to keep her still, though she wasn’t moving. She was barely breathing. A flutter started low in her belly, different from desire—sharper, more terrifying.
He moved down, his lips grazing her hip bone, the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. With each kiss, he exhaled a low, whispered phrase against her skin.
“I love you,” he murmured into the hollow of her thigh, the words vibrating through her.
He kissed the side of her knee.
“I love your mouth when you’re about to say something sarcastic.” A kiss on her shin.
“I love you.” On her ankle bone.
“I love the sound of your laugh in the game room, how it cuts through all the other noise.” His lips traveled back up her other leg, a slow pilgrimage.
Svet’s hands fisted in the sheets. Her eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling fan as its blades made lazy circles. System overload. Every nerve ending was firing, but not in the way she understood. This was a full-body emotional ambush. Each declaration was a pebble dropped into the quiet pool of her skepticism, sending out ripples that destabilized everything.
He kissed the plane of her stomach, his stubble a rough, wonderful contrast to the softness of his lips. “I love the way you looked at me when you climbed onto that counter. Like you’d burn the whole world down.”
“I love you.” He said it again, into the skin just below her navel, as if reaffirming the foundation.
Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. She blinked rapidly, refusing to let them fall. This was too much. It was everything. He was mapping her not with the intent to possess, but to cherish. To catalog. His words weren’t poetry; they were simple, unwavering truths, observations she didn’t even know he’d stored away.
He worked his way back up, his kisses lighter now, peppering her ribcage. “I love that you pretended to like my charred steak.”
A wet laugh hiccupped out of her. The sound was broken, grateful.
He reached her collarbone, her throat, the hinge of her jaw. His breath was warm on her ear. “I love you,” he whispered, and the repetition was becoming a mantra, a steady drumbeat syncing with her pounding heart. “I love the weight of your head on my chest when you finally fall asleep.”
He finally found her mouth again, but just brushed his lips against hers. Not demanding, just present.
Svet was drowning in it. In him. The words were right there, a tangible pressure behind her teeth. I love you. They felt true. Terrifyingly, utterly true. But the ghosts of past mistakes hissed warnings in the dark corners of her mind. Too fast. You’ll ruin it. He’ll see you and leave.
So when he pulled back, his eyes searching hers in the semi-darkness, she couldn’t make her voice work. She saw the hope there, fragile and raw, and it almost shattered her. Instead of speaking, she did the only thing that felt certain. She surged up and kissed him, pouring every unsyllabled feeling into it—the gratitude, the fear, the overwhelming, dizzying yes that was beating inside her like a second heart.
She kissed him until they were both breathless, until her hands were in his hair and his were framing her face, his thumbs catching the traitorous moisture that had escaped her eyes.
When she finally broke away, she rested her forehead against his, their noses touching. Her voice, when it came, was raw and whisper-thin. “Joe…”
He waited. The silence stretched, taut and expectant.
She couldn’t say it. Not yet. The fear was a cold, hard lump in her throat, choking the words back. But she couldn’t leave that hope in his eyes to wither, either.
She delivered another soft kiss to his lips, then one to his chin, his sternum, over his heart. She let her head rest there, listening to the strong, steady beat.
“Your heart’s going crazy,” she murmured against his skin.
His hand came up to stroke her hair. “Yeah,” he said, his voice a rumble in his chest. “It does that around you.”
It wasn’t ‘I love you.’ But it was a truth of her own. A confirmation. She felt him relax beneath her, his breath easing into a deeper rhythm. He understood. The conversation wasn’t over—it was a song, and they were still finding the harmony. For now, her ear pressed to his heartbeat, his arms locked around her, was its own kind of answer. The words would come when they were ready, when the last of her ghosts lost their voices. Until then, this was enough. It was more than she’d ever had.
It was more than she’d ever had. She lay there for a long time, ear still pressed to the steady thump beneath his ribs, until his breathing evened out into the deep, slow pulls of sleep. The heavy arm draped over her back relaxed into true dead weight. The city’s nocturnal hum faded into a distant backdrop.
Svet carefully extracted herself, just enough to look at him. In the faint light from the window, his face was peaceful, the usual focused intensity softened away. He was out. A lock of his brown hair had fallen across his forehead. The sheer normalcy of him sleeping so trustingly beside her cracked something open.
The words, dammed up for hours, began to leak out in a silent stream behind her teeth. They needed air. He was asleep. It was safe.
Her voice was a phantom in the dark, so quiet it was almost inaudible. “Joe.”
She swallowed, her throat tight. “I love you.” The admission hung in the air, terrifying and real. It felt like stepping off a cliff. “God, I love you so much it scares the shit out of me.”
She paused, listening to his unchanged breath. Emboldened, the whispers grew, tumbling out in a rushed, fractured confession. “I’m terrified of saying it to your face. Because if you see how much, you’ll know how easy it would be to wreck me. My track record is a graveyard of ‘almosts’ and ‘not quites’. You’re not like any of them. You see me. You actually see me, and you stayed.”
Her finger traced the line of his jaw, barely touching. “I love that you’re quiet. I love that you notice things, like how I take my coffee. I love that you cook terrible steaks with total confidence. I love your stupid big hands. I love that you let me have your t-shirts. I love that you didn’t push me after... after everything. I love the way you smell. I love that you mean it when you say it.”
She let out a shaky breath, the fear still there, coiled tight, but now shared with the darkness. “There. I said it. I’m in love with you, Joe Alt. And it’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done.”
His breathing remained deep and even. He didn’t stir. A mixture of relief and a strange, hollow loneliness washed over her. She’d said it. It was out. And he hadn’t heard.
She settled back against his side, closing her eyes, letting the weight of her own truth settle somewhere behind her sternum. Then his arm, which had lain slack around her, tightened. Not a sleepy spasm, but a deliberate, possessive pull, molding her firmly against him.
He nuzzled his face into her hair, his lips finding her temple in a soft, unmistakably awake kiss. “I know,” he whispered, his voice thick with sleep and something else. Pure, unvarnished joy. “I heard every word.”