Re: [Adult] VIP Area
The agreement in French made her smile against his stomach, made her press another kiss there, and she considered telling him what he had just agreed to. But she didn't, in the end. Forever was something he'd always said they were too young for all those years ago, and now things were complicated in a way that made forever something that felt more important than it had when she'd wanted it back then. "You sound like your son," she said instead, the level of slur in her voice making it fairly clear that she only had a few seconds of wakefulness left in her. Even so, she stretched her arm up, placed her fingers over his lips to keep him from correcting her this time. "I like being able to say that," she admitted, because for years she hadn't thought Gus was his, and for years after that she thought she'd never get the chance to tell him about the little boy at all.
She edged up just a little, until her cheek was against his chest, and she kept her fingers where they were, possessively on his lips. She began to tell him she loved him, began to say it in a language he understood, but the alcohol and the pills tugged her under, and all she managed was "I lo-," before the words melted into a sigh and she fell asleep against him, trustingly, without even a twitch of nightmares or a gasp of fear, just bare, sleep-trusting limbs and her fingers pressed against his mouth.
***
In the morning, while he still slept, she would leave the chain from around her neck on the bed beside him, that tiny ring still as carefully shined and polished as the day he'd given it to her. She could have sold that ring a thousand times over in those starving, unforgiving days after New York, but she never had. The note tucked beneath it on hotel letterhead would read, simply: I've never taken it off until now. You can give it back when you're ready to.