Most of All You: A Love Story(60)

She looked up and blinked rapidly, and the guarded hope in her eyes almost undid me. But it was quickly replaced with uncertainty, maybe even a small measure of panic. “No, Gabriel.”

“No what?”

She shook her head. “You shouldn’t love me.”

I let out a breath. “It’s too late. I already do. I’m sorry but I can’t take it back.”

Her eyes moved over my face as if she was trying to find some untruth in my eyes, some deception in my expression. I caught that same small glimmer of hope before she blinked it away. Ellie.

I suspected she had feelings for me, too, though she might not be ready to admit it, even to herself. I’d first thought so the other night when she was looking at the sparrow on the mantel. I’d seen the same yearning in her eyes that I felt, saw the flush on her face when I touched her, the way she leaned into my hand instead of away. And then the night before at dinner, as she’d watched everyone from under her lashes, looking shy and happy and completely defenseless. I’d taken her hand under the table and noticed the goose bumps that formed on her bare arm.

She’d looked at me and smiled that same dazzling smile she’d given me when she held the rainbow in her hands, the one that filled her face and her eyes and seemed to make her shimmer in some indescribable way. I’d lost my breath again and I knew then I was in love with her. And it scared me and energized me and made me weak with want. It made me want to touch her, to know her in every way possible, to love her in every way possible, and it made me want to be touched and loved by her as well.

Loving her had begun to heal that last part of myself that still felt broken. So I’d wait. I’d wait for Ellie as long as she needed me to.

“I …” Whatever she was about to say after that faded away.

I smiled at her. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything until you’re ready. But I got a lesson once about never missing the opportunity to tell the people I love how I feel about them. And it’s sort of a motto I live by now.” I smiled again and she tipped her head, a small smile appearing on her pretty lips. I glanced at her mouth, feeling overwhelmed with the desire to kiss her. But not today. Not the day after my brother had taken something from her.

She looked away from me, out toward the road for a minute before looking back. “I’m sorry for leaving without telling you. I just …” Her words faded away and she shook her head. “I’m good at running, I guess.”

I inclined my head, trying to catch her eye, to make her smile. “I don’t mind chasing you, Ellie. Just let me catch you once in a while.”

*

For the next week we fell back into the routine we’d had before. We watched the sunrise together, and Ellie chatted with me as I worked on William. With the admission of my feelings for her, there was a certain tension that hadn’t been there before, a sort of knowing swirling in the air that neither one of us were addressing. I had told her how I felt, and now I was waiting for her to do the same. Hoping. I saw her sitting alone on the patio in the afternoons, her arms propped on her knee, staring off into the trees, and I left her to think the thoughts she needed to think, hoping to God some of them were about me.

At night I lay in my bed and thought about her, unable to help the fantasies that ran rampant through my mind. Wondering how her skin might feel beneath my hands, what her mouth would taste like, how it would feel to join my body with hers. Thoughts of intimacy didn’t scare me as much anymore because when I pictured touching someone, I no longer pictured an unknown, nameless, faceless possibility. I was picturing someone specific now, someone I loved. I was picturing Ellie.

Chloe came to the house almost every day, and we chatted easily as we’d done from the start. Even though the topic was extremely personal, Chloe had a way of making me feel comfortable and at ease. She’d make a good therapist someday. She was warm and intuitive, and I found myself hoping we’d keep in touch even after this project was over.

I couldn’t deny that I wondered what it would have been like if I hadn’t met Ellie, if Chloe had shown up and I’d felt ready to pursue a relationship with her and she had wanted one as well. Chloe was vibrant and pretty and so easy to be around. I liked her, and maybe under very different circumstances, I could even love her. It would be a comfortable sort of love, I guessed. But she’d never set my heart on fire like Ellie. She’d never move me and captivate me and make me feel a thousand different emotions all at once. I knew that like I knew the feel of stone beneath my palms, the same way I understood how to move the chisel to create a round edge instead of something square, how much pressure to apply to chip away, but not to break. Because Ellie’s mine. Not to possess. But to love.

Maybe it was something I saw in her eyes that reminded me of the pain I’d experienced, too. Maybe it was the same reason I loved anything I loved: because it spoke to my heart and my soul. Maybe it was nothing that could be explained and nothing that needed explanation anyway.

My love for Ellie felt like a breath of life inside of me.

And so, in a way, it felt strange to be sharing intimate details of my life with one woman when the only woman I ached for was sitting somewhere in another part of the same house.

One day, after Chloe left, I found Ellie sitting on the patio, and she turned to me and smiled. “I’ve been thinking.”

I chuckled. “Thinking’s good.”