RC’s Reviews > Happy Place > Status Update

"Wyn," I whisper shakily. His fingers twitch, tightening through my curls. "Are you saying I can come home?"
"I'm saying it's not home unless you're there."
My arms twine around him, my heart speeding wildly "I love you," I tell him.
"In every universe." He kisses me then. Like it's a first and a last. The end of one era and the beginning of another.
This, I know, is exactly where I want to be.

Only once I'm half asleep, drifting off with my temple pressed to his chest, do I hear him whisper it one last time: "I love you."
Through the gauzy layers of sleep, I hear myself murmur, "You."
piango fiumi

"I love you," he says into my mouth, and I wish I could swallow it, like that would let me keep that sound forever, this moment forever.
My nose burns. My voice crackles. "Don't say that."
"Why not?" he whispers.
"Because," I say, "those words don't belong to me anymore."
"Of course they do," he says. "They belonged to you before ever saw you. They belong to you in every universe we’re in.”

"Sabrina didn't run because she doesn't want you," I say. "She ran because she's scared that, in the end, she won't be worth chasing.”
🤝

"There was nothing bigger than you," he says raggedly. "Not to me. Not ever."
io mo m spar ve lo dico

“Everything's different and nothing's changed, Harriet.” he says.
"I tried so fucking hard to let you go, to let you be happy, and when I see you, I still feel like like you're mine. Like I'm yours. I got rid of every single piece of you, like that would make a difference, like I could cut you out of me, and instead, I just see everywhere you're supposed to be."
💔

"Spent like seventeen years operating on fifty-five percent lung capacity without realizing breathing just wasn't supposed to be that hard. Starting antidepressants was like that for me. I felt like shit all the time, and then suddenly I didn't. And all this stuff seemed possible for the first time. My mind felt ... quieter, maybe. Lighter."
Wyn vita mia vieni qua

"I will always love you," he says fiercely. "That's the point, Harriet. It's the only thing that's ever come naturally to me. The thing I don't have to work at. I loved you all the way across the fucking country, and at my darkest, on my worst days, I still love you more than I've ever loved anything else.”

Wyn's hand moves to the back of my neck, light, careful. "And then I met you, and I didn't feel so lost or aimless. Because even if there was nothing else for me, it felt like loving you was what I was made for. And it didn't matter what anyone thought of me. It didn't matter if I didn't have any other big plans for myself, as long as I got to love you."

My parents aren't people of words, but they sacrificed so much.
That's love, and I hate that I want more from them. That I can't just feel grateful for all they've given me, because at all times I'm aware of what it cost them.
beh che dire