The Contract Said Leave After, His Mind Said Please Stay Chapter 10
This was how things finally settled between us. One night, we were lying in bed.
He was holding me from behind, his chin resting on top of my head.
[She’s in my arms. She’s real. She’s warm. This isn’t a dream.]
“Julian.”
“Hm.”
“I need to tell you something.” His body tensed against mine.
[Tell me something? Tell me what? She’s not going to say she changed her mind, right?]
[No – she wouldn’t. She kissed me yesterday. She wouldn’t.]
“Don’t be nervous,” I said. “It’s not a bad thing.”
[Then what is it? Just say it my heart can’t take the suspense.]
I rolled over to face him. The light was low, but I could see his eyes.
“I can hear your thoughts.” The room went completely still.
He blinked. “What?”
“Everything going on inside your head – I can hear all of it.” He didn’t speak.
The quiet stretched. And then it hit him.
[She’s joking. That’s impossible. If she can hear what I’m thinking, then everything I’ve thought…]
His expression shifted.
[“I barely got started” – did she hear that?]
It shifted again.
[“I could die right now and I’d be fine with it” – did she hear that?]
The color drained from his face.
[“I wanted to smell her hair” – did she hear that?!]
[“The frosting and I almost licked my thumb” – DID SHE HEAR THAT?!)
[I’m finished.]
[This is it.]
[Literally dead]
Julian, twenty-eight years old, cause of death: terminal humiliation.]
He let go of me, rolled over, and yanked the blanket over his head.
“How long?” His voice was muffled under the blanket.
“Three months.”
[Three months? Three months?!]
[That means she heard EVERYTHING starting from “I barely got started”…]
A strangled groan came from under the blanket.
[I don’t want to be alive anymore.]
I smiled and peeled back the blanket. His entire face was red.
The flush ran from his neck to the tips of his ears, and he wouldn’t look at me – his eyes kept darting
anywhere else.
“Julian.”
“Don’t.”
“Look at me.”
“No.”
[If she laughs at me one more time, I’m burying myself alive.]
–
“Listen to me,” I said. “It was because of those thoughts that I knew – really knew you liked me.”
He finally looked at me. His eyes held embarrassment, frustration, and underneath it all – a fragile flicker of
hope.
“So everything you did – leaning on me, the good nights, asking if I liked you…”
“I only had the nerve because I could hear what you were really thinking.”
He stared at me for a long time. Then he pulled me back into his arms and held on like he’d never let go
[This woman. Three whole months.]
[She listened to everything in my head for three months and spent every one of them laughing at me.]
[But she didn’t leave.]
[She stayed.]
[She said she likes me.]
[She heard every humiliating thing in my head… and she still likes me.)
He buried his face in my hair. “Harper.”
“Hm?”
“Can you stop listening? Please?”
“No.”
[I knew it.]
“Then can you at least pretend you can’t hear it?”
“Also no.”
[There’s no surviving this.]
I smiled and wrapped my arms around his waist.
“Julian.”
“What.”
“What are you thinking right now?” He was quiet for three seconds.
[I’m thinking about how fucking lucky I am.]
He didn’t say it out loud.
But I heard it. I pressed my face into his chest and listened to his heartbeat.
Thump. Thump.
Thump. It was steady now, and strong, and warm.
The door to our gilded arrangement had been open for a long time now. Neither of us walked away.
There was nowhere else to go. The other fool had been waiting for me all along.