You're sure now that he is what you want. Your skin is still damp, your hair wet and down your back as you step out onto the balcony to talk with him. As you usually do, you tuck yourself under his arm, your arms around his body.
He's not at all like the boy you left in the bathroom at XS, and you don't want him to be. The boy wasn't what you wanted.
You do everything but talk about what just happened. You tell him the truth, that you wanted to be like a normal girl, making silly mistakes, uncaring of things like consequences, but you aren't that girl. The girl you are died with a man in a hotel room (just a brief flash, him overbearing and stinking, then blood, so much blood) and the woman you are was born in Atlanta.
When you first moved in with him, you were worried. You didn't trust him and every day was a challenge. Would he betray his word? But he never did, and somewhere along the way, you started craving him even as you tested him. Every time he resisted only proved his worthiness. Your fingers creep over his shoulder, up to the nape of his neck where you can feel the short hairs there tickling your fingers.
There's nothing more in the world you want when you go up to your tip toes and press your mouth to his. His lips taste of the scotch he drank not long ago, but it's sweeter than the whiskey you had once, and the very taste of it burns through you even as your kiss breaks.
His mouth is sweet and you want more than the words you exchange after. More than him suggesting that you read more of the book, but the book promises closeness, as he reads with you curled warm against his side, his heartbeat reassuring in your ear. The book it is.