Her cheek falls on your head, pressing against your skin and your hair, the way you always knew it would, but it feels so different from what you know. Her skin is warm and soft and you like the way it feels, catching your hair between the two of you. Her sobs land on the tiled walls, and then the glass doors of the shower before they settle in you ears because the beats of her heart pull you closer into her neck and drown out the other sounds. You know what it means. It means she's afraid. She's probably afraid of you, so you let go of the knife in your hand, slowly, careful not to hurt her, because you want her to feel safe. She's shaking in your arms. It makes you wrap around her a little tighter, and you do it gradually because her pulse quickens slightly, but you know this is what she needs, because it's what you need.
You need her. You forgive her. You love her. You've said it once before; you want to say it again. The way the foreign words leaked from your lips in a breathless whisper filled you with courage and strength when you finally allowed the truth to pour in your heart. But it weighs you down, too. Because it hurts when you aren't with her, like the separation could damage you in ways Tomas had never been able to. A pain that can't match the comfort of the deep blade carving into your skin, helping you right yourself when everything feels wrong.
You're afraid to her let go. Her skin won't be against yours and you'll pretend the sound of your own heart is hers when you can no longer hear hers beat, because you're certain they beat the same—you can hear the synchronization now—but when you let go, you'll just be guessing. And you don't want to guess. You want to know. You'll see the fear in her face, the tears in her eyes, and her heartbeats won't be able to muffle the broken noises slipping from her mouth when she catches the air in uneven breaths. And even though you're with her, letting go will leave an empty space where she presses against you now, creating a door wide enough to invite the fear inside because you've missed her so much in the time you've been apart. The lost feeling of loneliness that you've become too familiar with threatens to accompany the fear if you let go. It's not something you're ready to relive.
But you can't stay this way forever. Like you knew she needed your touch of assurance, you know she needs your release. The fear seeps in as you loosen your grip, leaching itself to the skin that stings in the absence of her warmth. Instinct tells you to close the space between you and her, that it will fix the broken pieces and conceal the window fear needs to find you. But you also want to pull away. You want to do it for her, to show her that you can be more than barely human, and that she is the reason you want to change.
Your eyes can't meet hers when you've finally retreated to your fearful, lonely self, afraid of what you'll find there, but you notice the way her cries have lessened, and you reach for the knife, knowing what you need to do next. You start to cry. The tears pool in your eyes, gleaming like glass that shatters into drops of suffering onto your cheeks the moment you let your eyelids fall because you don't want to see the way her lips twist and tremble over her teeth, or the blood that drips along her neck, or the pain she fights as her eyes shut when she takes a deep breath. But her breaths give you strength because they're even now and when you bring the knife to her wrists, you find the courage to look at her. The tears are there, and they hurt you like you expect they would, but you see more than her pain or her fear. There's something else there that you can't recognize. It's not the love you crave; it's something softer, but your heart still pulls and tugs at the way her eyes watch you as you reach to free her.
You have to do this for her, even if it means losing her again. Cutting those ties frees her from you. The pain you feel, mixed with the hope stirring in your heart, will overpower everything else if she leaves. But you know you can't make her stay without hurting her. And you hate to see her hurt. Your skin brushes against her fingers before you make the final cut. They're cold from the lack of blood, but you pretend they are warm like her cheek was warm against your forehead, because that is how you want to remember her. You break the tie that keeps her here, close to you, and steady yourself for the darkness bound to follow you when she leaves. Your eyes close to the returning sound of her heavy sobs echoing in the small space. You imagine each one as an engraving into your delicate skin, more bearable than the image of her fading from your sight. It's playing through your head as you wait for it to happen.
Instead, her arms fall around your neck and you keep her from sliding to the floor. Her cries ring directly into your ear, but the sound comforts you because it means she is still here. She hasn't left you. You let your arms wind around her waist as she presses her cheek to yours. You'd imagined what this might feel like a thousand times before. It would be like when those three words tumbled from your mouth. But it would also be different. Her arms would've come around you tightly, and you'd be more gentle. It would have felt like she loved you too.
And maybe it didn't feel exactly like that, but this feels better, because this is real. She needed you to save her, to rescue her, to touch her, to let her go, to hold her again. She needed you. She still needs you, or her arms wouldn't still be around your neck, feeling her hands get caught in the ends of your hair, and you wouldn't still feel the heat of her cheek on your face or the beat of her heart against yours.
Loving you is hard for her. But she needs you. And you're going to be there for her even if she never finds the strength to say those three words. Because you can feel it in the tenderness of her embrace and the way your hearts beat as one.