Grounded (Up in the Air, #3)(35)

“I love you so much,” I said quietly into his ear when the tears had passed. “I wouldn’t have survived without you. You saved me in so many ways. You still do, every day. I’m not sure I’d even be capable of loving another person if you hadn’t come along when you did. I was so numb inside, so resigned to just watching my life play out in one horrible episode after another, until one of those episodes finally ended me for good.”

He whimpered, squeezing me so tightly that I had to pause for a moment.

“You saved me from so many horrible things,” I continued. “You kept me from having to make so many of the hard choices that a girl would have to make living out on the street. You were a teenage boy, but you provided for me better, and loved me better, than some parents do for their own children.”

“Oh, Bee,” he whispered.

“We met in the gutter,” I continued, “but even there, you shone like a light in the dark for me. You were the only good thing in my life, but you were so good that I knew it had all evened out. All of the bad was balanced because I got you out of it. Even jaded and abused and dead inside, I saw that clearly. If Javier can’t see it, trust me, he’s not worthy of your love.”

He kissed my forehead.

We didn’t talk about this stuff often, so once I started it was hard to stop. “I never met your family,” I continued, “but I can tell you that you were the best of them, not the worst. They did throw you away,” I said, and he made the faintest whimper of a noise. It killed me to hear that, to know that it still hurt him so badly, still affected him that much. “They did throw you away, but that says nothing about you, and everything about them. You would never throw someone away, never turn on someone that needed you.”

I had said my piece, and so fell silent. He hugged me to him for a long time, burrowing his face into my hair.

“I love you, Buttercup. You’re my rock. Best thing that ever happened to me,” he whispered.

I closed my eyes, feeling unworthy of those words, but relishing them all the same.

I didn’t realize I had drifted off until quiet voices woke me up. Stephan’s chest was my pillow. He spoke in a low voice to someone behind me as he stroked my hair.

“You have to understand how proud she is, if you’re going to keep her with you. It’s a resilient kind of pride. She had exactly one pair of pants and three tops in our junior year of high school, but no one ever would have suspected that it was because she was homeless, just because of the way she held herself. And that was just a taste of it, just a tiny piece of the superficial part of it. It goes so much deeper than that. It’s the kind of pride that would keep a person from ever saying how they feel, at the risk of being rejected. Do you understand?”

I heard a deep hum of noise behind me and knew that it was James.

Oh Stephan, I thought.

He was matchmaking, trying to bring two stubborn souls closer; two people who he was afraid were incapable of doing it themselves.

I felt a weight settle onto the couch beside us, a hand resting on my hip with a soft touch.

“I understand,” James said quietly.

I couldn’t begin to read his tone.

“Are you okay, Stephan?” he asked.

I felt Stephan nod. “I’m better. I vented, got it all out, and it actually helped.”

“Are you up to talking to Javier tonight? I set him up in another room, but he’s asked to speak to you at your earliest convenience. He swears he’s done yelling—swears he’ll be civil.”

I felt Stephan nod again. “Yeah. I’m ready to talk. Are you going to wake her?”

“I’ll carry her to our room.”

I felt Stephan kiss my head and then James was shifting me into his arms. I let him take a few steps before I rubbed my cheek against his chest. “I can walk,” I told him, my voice sleepy.

“And I can carry you,” he said, just gripping me more tightly.

And he did, carrying me upstairs and laying me on our bed. I let him strip me down to nothing without a word, just watching him. I couldn’t begin to read his mood. Was he upset? The evening couldn’t have gone how he’d been planning.

He shrugged out of his own clothes, lying on the bed beside me. I was flat on my back, and he perched himself at my side, one hand propping his head up, the other moving to my belly with a light touch.

It was a peaceful kind of standoff. We lay and watched and waited for the other to speak. I thought I was well suited to the contest.

James broke first.

“I listened to you and Stephan talking,” he said finally.

I was hardly surprised, so I didn’t react. “Why?” was all I asked.

“I led Javier to the furthest room down the hall from Stephan, and when I stepped out into the hall, I heard you sobbing. I couldn’t stay away. I couldn’t hear you crying like that and just let it go. You have to know that about me by now.”

I did know that. I just nodded for him to go on.

“I just sat outside the door and listened. I tried to give you space, but that was the best I could do. Let me start by saying that I’m grateful for Stephan. I feel like I owe him a debt, a debt that I can never repay, for taking care of you, for keeping you safe, body and soul, before we met. He’s a part of you. I see that. But Javier was right, in a way.”