I don’t want him to buy me a camp.
I just want him to love me.
And here I am, thinking I was finally getting over this, and instead sobbing to myself as I walk through the doorway of my dad’s art hut to meet some random stranger who’s expecting a mature woman who’ll have ideas on what to do with a summer camp.
“H-hello?” I call as I push through the creaky door. My voice sounds like two frogs are fighting over a bug in my throat, and I can’t stop sniffling, and everything’s blurry.
And that’s before someone inside answers my call.
“Begonia? What’s wrong? Who hurt you? I’ll kill them. I’ll fucking—”
I trip at the achingly familiar voice, but I don’t fall, because two massive arms and a solid chest are suddenly holding me against the softest fabric in the world, and I smell the Maine seashore, and my heart can’t decide if it wants to be in my throat or if it wants to burst out of my chest, because Hayes is here.
He’s here.
“Don’t cry.” He sounds on the verge of tears himself, desperate and aching and alone, and it only makes me sob harder. “Begonia. My sweet angel. Please—”
“Don’t call me that.” I try to push him away, but my arms don’t get the message, and instead, they circle his waist and hold on for dear life. Two more minutes. Just two more minutes of pretending this is real. “Don’t call me that.”
His arms tighten around me, and he presses his face into my hair. “I’ve fucked this up again, haven’t I?”
“W-what—you—here?”
“I missed you.”
My brain tries to process the words, but all I manage is absorbing the pain in his voice.
The pain, and the fear, and the desperation.
Everything his mom told me comes flooding back, and I squeeze him harder.
I can’t be the person who does all the loving. I can’t. But he’s here.
He’s here when I need him to be, like he materialized out of thin air, and—oh my Georgia O’Keefe.
“You bought my camp.”
“It’s too much. I know. But I can’t go small, Begonia. Not for you. Not when I—when you—it’s yours. It’s all yours.”
“You can’t buy my love!”
“I know. I know! But I—Begonia. I—”
He stops, cutting himself off abruptly with a curse, the words he won’t say hanging in the air between us, and my heart flips inside out.
He bought my dad’s camp. He’s here. He wants me.
But he can’t say the words.
Is he here because he loves me? Or because I’m the easiest path to whatever it is he thinks he needs?
Can I do this?
Can I risk continuing a relationship with a man who might not be able to love me?
“I’m so sorry, Begonia.” His voice is hoarse, and I can feel his pain. “I should’ve told you. I—god, I haven’t said this to anyone in fifteen years. I can’t do words. Words don’t matter. Not when they’re tossed about so carelessly, when they’re twisted and manipulated and used for anything but what the word is supposed to mean—but I can show you. Begonia, let me show you. Please. Please let me show you. Don’t leave me before I can learn to believe in the goodness of the words you need to hear.”
Oh, my heart.
My battered, bruised, hopeful heart. “You turned the plane around.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t—I shouldn’t have—god, Begonia, I’m so fucking tired of being afraid to live, and you just breathe and you live. Even when you’re terrified of something, you’re alive in it. I’m a toad basking in the glory of your rainbow, knowing you don’t need me, that you could have your pick of princes and gods and unicorns, but hoping you want me anyway, because you light up my life. You make me smile. You make me hope. You make me want to dance under the stars. And I—I don’t know what I have to offer you in return, but whatever it is you want, it’s yours. You want my time, it’s yours. You want my ears, they’re yours. My heart—Begonia. I swear, you stole it the minute you confused me with a dead president, and I don’t know how that’s even possible, but it’s the simple truth. I want to be where you are. I want to bask in your sunshine. And I want to show you every single day how perfect and precious and adored you are.”
“Hayes.” I can barely whisper his name.
“Please tell me I’m not too late. Tell me some lucky fool hasn’t swooped in while I was being an idiot.”