It’s hard. It’s deep. It’s ruthless, raw, primal and needy, but it’s ours and it’s love. Violet shouts my name into her mattress and I have my face in her neck and I whisper I love the way you fuck me over and over again.
She comes. It’s cosmic, her body shuddering and bending and drawing me in, her hand in my hair, pulling my face to her shoulder. Her body arches into me as she tightens, squeezes, pumps me until I explode inside her and can’t stop, draining myself in spasm after spasm.
I kiss the back of her neck, rising. I let her hand go and I kiss that, too, roll off and land next to her. She takes the pillow out and puts her hand in mine.
“I like this,” she says softly.
“I like this too,” I say.
“I like us,” she goes on. “I always did, even when I didn’t want to admit there was an us.”
“You came around,” I say.
“I slept at Adeline’s the last three nights because my bed felt awful without you in it,” she says, the words tumbling out in a rush. “I missed you so much, and I hated how much I missed you, but —”
I wait, our fingers laced together.
“I did miss you,” she says.
I kiss her fingers. I open her hand and kiss her palm.
There’s still something else. Something stupid and reckless, something that I never should have done but that I did anyway.
“Stay there,” I tell her.
“Where are you going?” she asks, going up on her elbows as I pull on pants and a shirt.
“So many questions,” I tease, and walk out of her bedroom, through the living room, out of her house to the Bronco.
On the backseat there’s a manila folder with a bunch of paperwork inside it. I glance through it one last time, standing barefoot on her driveway.
Are you sure? I ask myself. You might scare her off again. Maybe you should wait.
I glance back at the trailer, think of Violet inside, her admission that she missed me.
I’m done pretending I feel casual about her. Fuck it.
I’m sure.
She’s sitting up in bed when I get back, and I hand it to her.
“You got me paperwork,” she says. “I love paperwork.”
“Open it, smartass,” I tell her, getting on the bed and curling around her, my chin on her shoulder.
She opens it. I hold my breath.
Violet freezes. She doesn’t speak, her fingers drifting over the first page, her shoulders suddenly rigid.
I knew it.
“No,” she says.
I don’t answer her. I knew that would be the first thing, so I wait. She flips over the first page, the folder now lying in her lap.
“Did you…?”
“Yup.”
“This is insane,” she says. “What? No. Eli.”
She flips through the pages, then turns around and looks at me.
I look back.
“You bought the house by the lake?” she asks, her voice quiet and still.
My heart thumps in my chest. I knew it was a lot. I knew that there was a big difference between be my girlfriend and I bought us a house, but it was reckless and impulsive, a late-night decision to write an offer letter and send it off.
“Technically, I just have an accepted offer on the house,” I say, draping an arm over her shoulder. “I think there are like… ten more steps before it’s mine.”
“Why?” she asks.
“I need to move out of my mom’s house,” I say. It’s technically true, but I can tell Violet’s not buying it. “And I couldn’t think of a better way to spend twenty thousand dollars than on getting us a place.”
Her eyes go even wider, her lips parted.
“And because I love you and I want to live with you,” I say. “That’s pretty much it, actually.”
She doesn’t answer me right away, just flips through the paperwork again, slowly this time, and stops on the last page, her fingers floating across my signature.
“What’s the H stand for?” she asks suddenly, pointing at Elijah H. Loveless.
“Hiram,” I say.
“I never knew your middle name was Hiram.”
“Well, I don’t really advertise it,” I say.
“It’s a good name,” she says, her fingers still on the page.
“Is it?”
“I like it,” she says.
Then she turns her head suddenly, looks right into my eyes.
“I’m gonna say yes,” she says, her voice serious. “But if there’s something else you want to do with the money besides buying this house just because I like it —”
“Nope,” I say. “This is what I want. I want it to be ours, and I want to live here with you, and I want you to wake up every morning knowing someone loves you.”
She bites her lips together.
“And not because you’re the best at anything. I love you for who you are. You’re determined, you’re smart, you’re funny. You’re never boring. I went around the world looking for someone like you and you were here all along.”