Mine
"You said you loved me last night."
I said the words flatly, trying to gauge her reaction. If she laughed, I would laugh, and it would be a stupid, silly thing that had happened because she drank too much again.
But she walked over to me in the middle of putting on her false eyelashes, stood on tiptoe, and put her hands on my shoulders. "If I remember correctly, you said you loved me, too."
"You remember a lot from when you're drunk," I mumbled. I could feel myself blushing, and it irritated me.
"Practice," she replied, deftly applying lashes to her right eye. "I wasn't nearly as drunk as you thought I was."
"German Brat." I replied. "If you were so alert, you could have picked yourself up and walked to bed like a normal adult woman."
She was back at the desk by now, putting on her lipstick. "I didn't want to deprive you of the pleasure of carrying me around, since you enjoy it so much." She turned to me and winked, half-sarcastic and half-serious, in that maddening, irresistible way she has.
She'd bested me. There was nothing I could say to that.
I came over to her and stood still, my reflection appearing in the mirror like a guardian angel behind her. I touched her, and my large hands covered her tiny shoulders. "I will say I love you again if you want me to." I looked into the reflection of her beautiful eyes.
In an instant, she'd jerked away and turned around, moving away from me. "You really mean that. I—thought you were just trying to get me to be quiet so I would go to sleep last night."
"Yes," I answered. "I really mean it." I steeled myself for her to take back what she'd said.
My girl turned her back to me and breathed so heavily that I could hear every intake of air. "I—meant it too. I'm glad you weren't joking." I could see her beginning to blush, starting with her ears.
It seemed stupid for us to be standing a foot apart, not facing each other, two people who had just admitted we loved each other. I went to her and gently turned her around and found fear on her face. "What's wrong?" I don't like to see her scared.
She looked down, and I pushed her hair out of her face and behind her ear, so I could look at her. "Are you afraid of me?" I asked. I'd never asked her that. It was the horrible thing, the unspoken thing, the thing that terrified me—that I might be scary to the girl I loved.
She shook her head. "No, Illya, it's not like that. Love isn't smart. It makes people unsafe to each other."
I looked down at her, so tiny and so strong. "I don't believe you," I said.
"Why not?" she asked, curiously and a little bit wearily.
"Because," I answered, lifting her chin gently, "you make me safer."
All of a sudden, she smiled. All of the sadness and fear and doubt melted off her face, and she took her tiny hand and mirrored what I'd done for her, moving the hair off my forehead. "Hold me. Hold me before we go, because I want to remember this."
So I held her, and we breathed together, and I didn't think about the past or the future. I just thought of now and of how her warmth against me felt like peace and of how I wanted to hold her in my arms forever—and make her my wife.
