“I guess grit and determination,” I said, sitting up on the couch and staring at my wedding band. I wasn’t comfortable having this conversation, but it was easy to see he wasn’t going to let it go.
“Grit and determination built one hell of a life for you, haven’t they?” he asked, and I nodded, half shrugging a shoulder until he held it down. “Then why do you undercut everything you’ve done by coming up with all these excuses why you can’t claim your success?”
“Psychological conditioning, I guess?”
He sighed and shook his head. “You’ve been told so many times that because you still live in your parents’ basement or because your leg doesn’t work the same way someone else’s does, that your success isn’t equal to everyone else’s, right?”
“Among other things,” I agreed. “I’m just tired, Bishop.”
That statement was heavy. It was heavier than merely the current conversation we were having. That statement carried the weight of the world on it.
He stood and scooped me up again, shutting down the lights in the living room on his way to his bedroom. He laid me out on his king-sized bed and shut the lights off, leaving only the small lamp on in the corner. “I know you’re tired, Amber. You have earned the right to be tired.”
“Why am I in your bed?” I asked, my champagne-filled mind fuzzy and slow.
“You’re in my bed so I can hold your burdens tonight, and you can sleep. I know you’ll still be tired in the morning, but for a little while, you’ll get to rest.”
I grasped his hand and held it to my chest, tears fighting for real estate in my eyes. “No one has ever understood me before. Not the way you seem to. It scares me.”
He stroked my forehead with his free hand as though I was a child that he had to soothe to sleep. “Why does it scare you?”
“Simple mathematics, Teacher Halla. When we go from two to one again, I’m back to having no one who understands me. I don’t want to come to rely on you knowing that eventually, you will find someone else to hold who isn’t tired.”
“My sweetart, we are all tired in some way or another. Some of us carry heavier burdens than others, but the bigger picture is this. When you find the right person to carry yours, it’s not hard to carry theirs in return.”
“You just dumbed down what being in a relationship is for my drunken mind, didn’t you?”
He laughed and kissed my temple, letting his lips linger for a moment and inhaling the scent of my shampoo. “No, I just dumbed down what love is, Amber. Love is carrying each other’s burdens, even if sometimes it’s not an even split of the weight. Sometimes, you’ll carry more of it than they will and vice versa, but in the end, being able to shift the load between you is what love is all about.”
“Shift the load,” I said, nodding my head as my eyelids drooped. “Love is carrying each other when the load is too heavy.”
“Exactly,” he whispered in my hear. “Right now, I’m carrying the load, so sleep, my beautiful wife. I’ve got this.”
Thirteen
God, she was unbelievable in so many different ways. What she’d gone through, what she’d done since, and doing it all with so little support. Finding out that Amber’s parents weren’t as supportive as I would have thought took me by surprise, until I started to think about it. As a parent, I can’t imagine the guilt that would riddle me if Athena had been almost killed because of a decision I’d made. It wasn’t their fault, but I knew they had to carry horrifying guilt regardless. They were probably too hard on her, but I could see both sides. If they coddled Amber too much, she might never find the determination she needed to make a life for herself. If they pushed her to keep moving forward, at least they felt like she’d eventually be okay. While a lot of what they’ve done I disagree with, I can see that they were probably equally traumatized by the events of that night. Parents aren’t perfect, even if we wish we were. We’re still humans, but now we have emotions that live outside our bodies.
Amber had been sleeping for a few hours, but I couldn’t stop staring at her. I was memorizing every detail of her. Maybe it was knowing that eventually, she would leave my bed, and my house, and we’d live separate lives again. Maybe it was knowing I was in love with her and was desperate to spend as much time with her as I could before she left me. I wasn’t sure why, but while she slept, I didn’t. I mapped those scars on her leg down to the very last one, noting the coloring and size, so I would notice if something changed or the infection came back.
She shifted toward me to her right side, and her shirt bunched up in her sleep. I snuck my hand over to pull it down, but my hand froze halfway, and my breath caught in my chest. She wasn’t kidding. The entire left side of her chest was mangled. I didn’t see it the other night because my head was between her legs, but I saw it very clearly tonight.
“It’s a skin graft,” she said sleepily, her open eyes taking me by surprise.
I’d been focused on her side and didn’t realize she was awake. “You weren’t kidding about the scars.”
She tried to tug the shirt down, but I wouldn’t let her. “Stop. You don’t have to hide it from me.”
Her hand fell to the bed and her eyes, too. “No, I wasn’t kidding. I
