She drew a box on the chalkboard underneath the triangles with an anatomical heart inside without a single mistake, like it was second nature.
“I can’t let you go, not without telling you how I feel, but I had to think outside the quadrilateral parallelogram to figure out how. Bodie, you’re like a math book; you solve all my problems. And like decimals, I have a point.”
She turned and moved toward me with her eyes so full of questions and answers and secrets and love that it broke my heart and healed it. My hands fell to my sides, my breath shallow, when she stopped just in front of me.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was afraid, and I’m sorry I hurt you. You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I want to return that gift. I want to be your everything if you’ll take me back. Because there’s no equation in my heart that doesn’t put you and me together and end in infinity. I’m all in, Bodie. All three hundred sixty degrees of me.”
I took a breath and stepped into her, bringing her into my arms as my lungs filled with air, filled with her.
“You are one well-defined function, Penny,” I joked quietly, holding her against my beating heart, searching for words. “This was all I needed — to know how you felt. If we’re going to work, you’ve got to tell me. You’ve got to trust me.”
“I do,” she said softly. “Does this mean …”
I gazed down at her, drunk on her, smiling. “You know,” I said as I brushed her hair from her face, “they say the best angle to come at something is the tryangle.”
“Do they say that?” She smiled, her eyes shining as she leaned into me, her breaths short.
“They do,” I answered, thumbing her cheek, searching her eyes. “I don’t want to lose you either, Pen. So I’ll take your three-sixty and give you mine. It was already yours,” I said against her lips.
And with the smallest of shifts, we connected, breathing out relief and breathing each other into its place.
Her lips were so sweet, the feel of her in my arms so much better than I’d been daydreaming about since I’d held her last. And all my fears fell away. All except one.
Slowly, reluctantly, I broke away slowly.
“You changed your hair again,” I said as I slipped a lock through my fingers.
She nodded, smiling lips together. “It was a complete science experiment of pink-to-blue ratios, but it worked out. I really like this color after all. I think I’m gonna stick with it for the long haul.”
“Penny,” I started, looking down at her, hoping this was it, that she was mine for good, “I need to know you’re not going to run when it gets hard. Because it will get hard, and I … I can’t hang around on the fence waiting to see which way you’ll go.”
She nodded. “God, I hate that I’ve done this to you, that you’d question it. So I’ll tell you now, and I’ll prove it as we go.” She held my jaw in her hands and looked into my eyes. “I’m here to stay. I’m not going to run, and I know it’ll get hard. And you’re right; we can’t pretend like everything’s fine when it’s not. I can’t be afraid to tell you how I feel, and you can’t either. I promise to be honest with you if you do the same.”
“I promise. But that’s not the only reason you bugged out.”
She took a breath and looked down. “No, it wasn’t the only reason. I’ve never felt like this before, Bodie. For so long, I’ve suppressed all of this, hid from it, stopped it before it started, and now that I’m letting go of that, it’s like learning how to walk. And I want this. I want you. But I’m scared.”
I cupped her cheeks and tilted her face up to meet my eyes. “I know,” I said softly, gently. “But I’m not going to hurt you, Pen. I want to protect you. I want to love you.” My chest tightened as the word passed my lips.
“I want to love you too,” she said as the fear left her eyes, “and I know you won’t hurt me. All you’ve ever done is try to make me happy. So now it’s my turn.”
And when she stretched onto her toes, when her lids closed and lashes cast shadows on her cheeks, when she pressed her lips to mine, I knew without a doubt that it was true.
She opened her mouth and opened her heart, and I slipped in, holding her against me. She held onto me like she never wanted to let me go, and I did the same. Her hands found their way into my hair, her tongue sliding past mine, her back arching her body into my chest, bringing us almost as close as we could be fully clothed.