Love In Colour

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: BROKEN PEOPLE & CLAIMS OF FOREVER

When I wake up, my body feels like I have been drifting through deep water.

The room is dark now, and I look at the digital clock I keep on my nightstand. A little after eight. I slept the entire day. My body feels heavy and light at the same time–the weight of exhaustion still pulls at my limbs, but there's something else, something that was absent before.

A release. A loosening.

I'm in my bed, still in Gray's arms. He's asleep. I can tell by the deep, even rhythm of his breathing and the way his chest rises and falls against my back. His arm is draped over my waist, his hand resting on my stomach. His face is pressed close to my hair.

He held me the whole day. He held me while the world tilted on its axis and rearranged itself around the words I've finally spoken.

I lie perfectly still, cataloguing myself like a patient waking from surgery, testing the new landscape of my new body.

The rage is gone.

Not suppressed. Not buried. Gone. The low, constant hum of fury that had been my background music since childhood—the song I didn't even realise I was humming–has fallen silent. In its place is something unfamiliar. Quiet. Stillness. The absence of noise rather than the presence of it.

I press my palm flat on my chest, feeling my heartbeat. Calm. Is this what peace feels like? I wouldn't know. I've never met it before.

The memory of the confrontation surfaces, and this time, I don't flinch. I replay my voice–the difference between him and me is I would never allow a child to go through that—I wait for the shame to arrive, the regret, the fear that maybe I went too far, said too much.

None of these emotions comes. Instead, I feel pride. I am proud of myself.

I said it all. Every locked room, every buried body. I opened every door and let the light in.

I don't regret a single word. Not one. That woman needed to hear it. The system that failed me needed to be named. The God who watched and did nothing needed to be accused.

I was magnificent. I was brave, and I was right.

Bentley's words echo, and this time, I let myself believe them.

And then, softer, closer: "I love you."

His voice. Whispered into my hair while I was falling apart.

He loves me.

The thought is too large to hold all at once. I examine it in fragments, turning each one over like stones found on the beach. He loves me. Not the curated version I present to the world. He loves the real me. The functional adults, the good friend, the woman who has her shit mostly together. The one who laughed maniacally in her living room. The one who screamed at God and meant every syllable. He saw the raw, pulsating, unbandaged wound of mine, and he didn't look away.

He leaned in. He loves me.

It seems unreal. Impossible. Like being handed a diamond in a famine. My whole life, love has been a foreign thing. All my life, I've longed for love.

But Grayson...he held me while I screamed. He didn't try to fix me. He looked at the gaping, bloody truth and whispered love into the wound.

How is this real?

An old voice rises, reflexive: It's not. You don't deserve this. You're too broken. Too much. He'll realise his mistake and leave. Everyone leaves.

I wait for the familiar spiral, the cold dread that usually follows such thought. But, tonight, in this quiet dark room, with his heartbeat steady against my back, another voice answers.