Having you here is enough, she says, and his heart sings even as doubt lurks at the corners. Because of course he has never been enough for anyone, had he? A memory sears through him, the feel of his own broken bleeding face, eyes torn out and laying on the sand, screaming or crying is this enough, is this enough?.
(It hadn’t been. There was nothing he could do to atone for the sin of being born.)
He hadn’t been enough for Cancer, either, who had healed him and left him for another. A whole parade of not-enoughs, years of evidence that she is surely, surely lying, but he tries to swallow this and smile because hope is a terribly persistent thing, and it flutters within him.
She keeps on. She offers more, tantalizing things that he wants with all his heart but still cannot trust himself to fully sup upon. But for all the doubt and fear that scurries within him like rats, he voices none of it, instead he smiles, instead he loves her.
“Yes,” is all he says at first, then, “I don’t want to leave you. Or you to leave me. We could…find somewhere.”
He fumbles, then. What next? What comes after this, staying with her?
(Maybe I could protect her, he thinks stupidly. He has never protected anything. But he would try, of course. He would throw himself to the wolves for her.)
“I’m tired of trouble,” he says, smiling, “you’re a much better option.”
