It was difficult, to bite back the protests, the denials, the rejections, that immediately rose up her throat, nearly out her mouth. If she had learned anything in the last year and a half, it was that this man was hers, for better and most certainly for worse. If he'd stood by her side through their vicious fight the summer past and its aftermath, stood by her on the days she was simply the worst version of herself, there was no room for reasonable doubt that he meant what he said.
Never in her life had someone given her that so unconditionally, without reserve, or even expectation, and to her mind, it was a gift with which she risked being extremely careless.
And yet, even after all this time, those three words were the only ones Rachel could never seem to manage to Gabriel. Such a small thing, really. Three syllables, though they meant the world. Over the months, with no small amount of intensely private shame, Rachel learned it was not necessarily that she was afraid she herself would be hurt, but the certainty that she would hurt him. Trying to warn him, trying to make him see reason, had never worked, because he never believed that there was that side of her that deserved to be unloved, that deserved so much of the hurt she'd doled out in the past.
His arm was snug around her waist and though there was comfort in being so close to him, there was also that spike in the beating of her heart, that tingle along her spine that made her the slightest bit uneasy, threw her just off her stride.
Striving for amused, she laughed lightly as he lifted her out of the dip, trailed her fingers ghostingly across the nape of his neck when the two had straightened. "You know I simply don't know what to say when you talk like that."
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