Chapters (52)
- Copyright
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Acknowledgments
- Read More from the Market of Monsters Series
- More Books from HMH Teen
- About the Author
- Connect with HMH on Social Media
“And you mean the world to me,” she whispered. “And you were right. Kissing, romance, sex, all of that. I don’t really want it. But I do want you. I want this.” She waved her hand at him, the room, everything. “I want to lie here with you, talking. I want to curl up next to you while you sleep. I want to rest my head on your chest when I feel bad, and I want to lean my shoulder against yours just to feel you there.”
He stared at her a long moment, the soft lines of his mouth curling into a slight smile, his sharp eyebrows drawn, his dark eyes on her. Something shifted in his expression, but she couldn’t read what it meant.
She gave him a nervous smile. “Say something.”
He looked at her, those beautiful black eyes soft. “I’ve been thinking too. About what I want. About who I am. About who you are to me. And I still don’t know that I’ve figured it all out yet. Maybe I never will, not completely. But I think, before, I was scared about how it would go wrong. About how everything I didn’t know and didn’t understand yet could end up making things between us worse. That was flawed logic—it won’t go wrong as long as we talk about things, as long as we work together and communicate what we want.”
Nita agreed. “I think we’ve been doing a good job of that lately.”
“We have.”
He leaned forward then, slowly, and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her body tight against his own, and all her muscles relaxed, because sometimes you didn’t need words to understand, and Nita cuddled up against the warmth of his chest, pressing her face into the rumpled fabric of his T-shirt.
His hands were wrapped around her back, and he turned his face into her hair and whispered softly, “What you said, about touching, about supporting, about being near.” He swallowed heavily and tightened his grip on her, fingers warm and gentle on her back. “I’d like that. I’d like that very much.”
She smiled into him, her head on his heart so she could hear it beating a soothing rhythm, her uncertainty fading as she took his words and held them close. She knew exactly what they were to each other, and she didn’t need a word for it. They were themselves, terrible, vicious, and united, and they understood each other and what they each wanted, and that was all that mattered.
They lay like that, a perfect tableau, both smiling as they whispered to each other until they drifted off into warm dreams.