Maybe I would have been. I still wasn’t sure.
What a long time ago that seemed to be.
I picked up the clippers. They were rusty, but they still worked. I set to work on the bushes.
After a time, footsteps approached
“You look very silly.” I could hear the smile in Tisaanah’s voice.
“This?” I shrugged my shoulders, making the blanket that was wound up to my ears bounce. “This is practical.”
“You look like… a sleeping worm.”
“A sleeping worm?”
“The kind that makes silk. When they, you know…” She flailed her arms around herself, and I turned to stare flatly back at her.
“Was that intended to represent… a cocoon?”
“A cocoon. Exactly.”
“Ascended above, what a poet you are.”
She settled beside me, shooting me a glare. “Well, you tell me that in Thereni, and we’ll see if you’re a better one.”
Fair enough.
I closed a handful of dead petals in my hand and conjured fire, reducing them to ash. Even that small fragment of magic was… difficult. Like it met resistance within my veins.
“Look at this, Tisaanah.” I held up dead blossoms and leaves, shaking my fist. “This is a travesty.”
“I think the garden is more beautiful this way. It is…free. A sign that it can all flourish even if there isn’t a lonely, cranky man watching over it all day.”
Ouch.
“That theoretical lonely, cranky man wouldn’t appreciate you invalidating his life’s work.”
“And what if he isn’t so lonely and cranky anymore?”
“He will be cranky until the ends of time, I’m sorry to report.”
Tisaanah let out a low chuckle. Through many layers of blanket, I felt the weight of her head against my shoulder. “Part of his charm, I suppose,” she murmured. “But as long as he isn’t so lonely.”
My hands stilled. I dropped the clippers, and wound Tisaanah’s fingers in mine instead. An easy trade to make. I suppose it was back then, too.
No, I wasn’t lonely anymore. Though, “lonely” was a weak word for what I had been. My aloneness had simply become a stagnant part of me, like a missing limb. I hadn’t realized I was craving connection until I found it again. And I hadn’t realized how much I feared losing it until it almost happened.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Better. You?”
“Better.”
I glanced at her. Her brow was furrowed in a look that I knew very well.
“What?” I asked.
She blinked at me. “What?” she repeated, and I pressed my finger on the familiar wrinkle of her brow.
“What’s this for?”
She looked down at her hands and frowned.
“No magic,” I murmured, and she shook her head.
“Nothing.”
“Give it time. You died a few days ago.” Just saying those words out loud made me shudder. My lip curled into a sneer, of its own accord. “No matter the cost, I’m glad that monster is gone.”
Tisaanah nodded. Still, she went silent, and I knew her well enough to know that gears were turning, turning, turning inside her head.
I kissed her on the forehead, inhaling her citrus scent.
“We have time,” I said again.
“We have time,” she echoed, and I knew she was trying to make herself believe it.
We had time.
For so much of my life, time had been a curse — something to be endured rather than cherished. Now? Now I reveled in it. We have time. The most wonderful statement. A fucking gift.
We did everything the long way. That night, we made a ridiculously complex dinner, more food than the two of us would ever be able to eat, because we had time. We ate it over the course of several hours, between more than a few glasses of wine and stretches of long, meandering conversation. Afterwards, we stretched out in front of the fireplace and read, exchanging stories with so many interruptions that it took us hours to get through a few pages.
That was fine. We had time.
It was late by the time we made it to the bedroom. Tisaanah had risen and leaned over my chair, giving me one, two, three deepening kisses, the kind that blurred the line between a question and a demand. I scooped her up in my arms and carried her to the bedroom. We fell on the bed together, Tisaanah’s arms around my neck, her kisses deep and hungry. The minute we hit the bed, she had yanked off my shirt, and was starting on my trousers, when I pressed her down to the bed with enough pressure to stop her, giving her a coy smirk.
“Why are you in such a rush?”
I stretched out beside her instead, leaning down to kiss her again. Not the desperate, hurried kisses. Slow, our lips and tongues moving over each other with gentle caresses. When she tried to push back, deepen it further, I broke away and laughed.
“We have time, Tisaanah. Isn’t that terrific? We can take all.” My fingers trailed down her throat, in feather-light touches. “Damn.” Her collarbone. Lower, to the edge of the fabric of her shirt. “Night.” Unbutton. And another long, slow kiss.
She let out a raspy chuckle. “Why?”
“Why?”
“If we want something…” Another kiss. “…Why put it off?”
I pulled away and cocked an eyebrow. “Want ‘something?’ What is this ‘something?’” I continued down the buttons of her shirt, slowly. I kissed her throat, lower to her collarbone. I wanted to feel every muscle beneath her skin, the texture of every scar.
“Besides,” I murmured, “no one can claim you’ve been dissatisfied the last few days. And it’s nice to finally get the chance to take my time.”
The last button. Her shirt fell open. I pulled away enough to look at her. Moonlight streaming in from the window fell over her body, breasts peaked from the cold or arousal or both, silver falling over her dual-tone skin. Her hair was messy, framing her face, and she looked at me with such unabashed hunger, her lips parted, eyes half-closed.
Her legs parted, just a little, a challenge in her eyes.
Fuck.
I had to fight for my own self
