How to End a Love Story(106)
“‘Yours, Helen,’” she reads, finally.
“Are you?” His voice is hard and his words are cold. “Now or never, Helen.”
Now or never. Helen contemplates a few eternities of nevers she’s already experienced. She never told her sister she loved her. She never told her parents unpalatable truths. She never felt as loved as she did the first time Grant Shepard held her in his arms.
Bring Grant Shepard back to the present tense, where he belongs.
“Yes,” Helen says finally, and she sees a flash of heat behind his eyes. “If you still want me.”
Grant doesn’t move any closer—though his knuckles have turned white from gripping the door frame.
“That day in the hospital,” he says slowly, carefully. “I think I lied to you. I told you—and I can’t seem to stop replaying it in my mind, whenever I think about it—‘I’d rather have a fraction of you than all of someone else.’”
Helen swallows a lump of regret. “I remember.”
“The thing is . . . I had a fraction of you then, and it damn near killed me.”
“Oh,” she says, and nods in understanding. He’s saying it’s too late. “I’m sorry.”
He takes a step forward and her world seems to tilt on its axis.
“I want all of it this time,” Grant says, his voice harsh and impossibly close. “I want the nights and the days and the weekends and the holidays and I want you at my side and in my bed and in my life. I want to meet your parents and I want to take you to a sheep farm in fucking Ireland and my dad’s place in Boston. I want to see what kind of person you are when you’re eighty. I want to do this for real, and I want to call you mine so badly it’s a fucking joke, but if you can’t sign up for the whole show this time, then don’t—”
She surges forward and kisses him then, and he tastes like whisky and surprise. His hands immediately pull her closer, closer, closer, his desperate heartbeat crashing against hers.
“I want all of that too,” she murmurs, and he seems to take offense to her separating from him long enough to even say it out loud. He lets out a growling “hmmph” and chases her lips closer. “I’m still so afraid of messing things up. I don’t think I’ve completely healed yet, and you deserve someone whole—”
“Helen,” he exhales, his forehead against hers. “You don’t have to be completely healed to be everything I want. To be mine. I love every part of you, you silly, infuriating woman. I love the parts of you I haven’t even met yet.”
“I love you too,” she says, and her cold, broken heart suddenly seems to glow from the feeling of saying it out loud to someone else and meaning it so damn much. “I love you so much, it doesn’t make sense to me in words.”
“In that case,” Grant says, and lowers his head to kiss her again, “let’s talk less.”
Thirty-Five
Around 6:25 a.m., a magnitude 6.8 earthquake hits fifty miles off the coast of Northern California. At 7000 Hollywood Boulevard, the tremors last for 39.73 seconds, and Helen wakes up to the feeling of Grant’s arms wrapped firmly around her as the entire room rattles and jolts and she has the fleeting, half-dreamed thought that they’re on a rickety roller coaster ride that’s about to take off through the ceiling and also maybe Grant never showed up at her hotel room and it’s all been some terrible, wonderful dream. Don’t wake up, she commands herself.
“It’s just an earthquake,” Grant murmurs in her ear, and she discovers a new fear—he’s here, and she’s about to lose him again. There’s an awful, clattering sound as the ground shakes the foundations of the building and everything inside of it, from wooden furniture and porcelain dishes to star-crossed lovers, newly reunited. “You’re safe.”
“I’ve never been in an earthquake before,” she says, and suddenly it ends. She turns around to face him and she’s relieved to find that Grant’s still here, watching her with a sharp alertness. She reaches out and presses her palm to his cheek, and he waits patiently as she checks his solidness: he’s real. “You’ve been through a lot, I bet.”
Grant takes her hand and kisses her palm, then reaches out to trace her cheek, like he’s checking that she’s real enough to touch too.
“Sometimes there’s aftershocks,” he says finally, once he’s satisfied. “If you’re really staying here, we should probably go over earthquake safety at some point.”
There’s a hint of doubt behind these words, and her heart breaks for it.
“I’m really staying,” she tells him.
“Good,” Grant says simply, and his hand drifts down her neck, then travels a slow, warm path to her shoulder. She’s naked beneath the sheet and he seems fascinated by his own hand disappearing beneath the sheet too.
“Grant,” she exhales shakily, as his knuckles graze her ribs.
“Helen,” he returns evenly, and his brown eyes stay locked on hers as his fingers explore hidden curves and valleys beneath white fabric.
“Should we”—she inhales sharply—“leave the building, or something?”
She glimpses a flash of humor in his eyes.
“No,” he answers, and leans forward to kiss his way down her stomach. He takes her hands and places them on his head, and she tangles her fingers in his hair reflexively. “The first rule of earthquake safety is if you’re in bed, you’re supposed to stay there while it’s shaking.”