Page 93 of Tangled Up In You
“Me?”
“You,” Ren said, and felt Edward’s eyes on her as she carefully pulled her hair back, securing it at the base of her neck with a rubber band.
“You’re pretty important right now,” he said nervously. “I’m sure they’d be happy to send a professional up to do this.”
“I don’t want a professional to do this. I want you.” She walked to the bed, climbed on, and scooted to the middle, patting the space behind her. “Come here.”
The mattress shifted under his weight. Ren could feel him hesitate, but then came the soft brush of his lips on the back of her neck. “Before I do this, I want you to know that I’m in love with you.”
A tiny firework went off in her chest, electricity sparking through her veins like a summer sky before a storm. She wanted to say it back, could see the words drawn in thick, black calligraphy in her mind, but no sound came out.
“You don’t have to say it,” he said, lips brushing the shell of her ear. “I just wanted you to hear it.”
She nodded. What she felt for him was more profound than anything she’d ever experienced, but right now everything was heightened. Everything was new. And, perhaps most obviously, the whole idea of love was such a scrambled, messy one for Ren. What did that word even mean?
“I want to say it,” she admitted.
“It’s okay. That isn’t why I told you.”
“I know…it’s just…there are so many things I’ve never felt before,” she said. “But I thought I’d known at least one kind of love.”
Edward sat quietly, letting her organize her thoughts.
“I’ve been working through this in therapy,” she continued. “What does love mean? Was love how Gloria and Steve justified kidnapping a little girl who lived across the street?”
From what they’d been able to parse out, Gloria—Deborah, she reminded herself—had seen a single father trying and failing to raise a young daughter alone. She’d seen Ren’s birth mother, Aria, messy and drunk in the neighborhood. In whatever reality she and her husband had created, they thought they were saving Ren.
“How am I supposed to hate them if they truly were doing what they thought was right?” she asked, voice tight. “They never hit me, they never abused me. In their own way, I believe they did love me. But how could they claim to love me while lying to me my entire life?”
“I know,” he said quietly.
“And then there’s the love Chris has for me,” she said. “I can tell when we sit together at lunch every day that he loves me deeply. That he loves me in that consuming, unconditional, instinctive way of parents I’ve only ever read about in books.” Ren closed her eyes, thinking about how Chris listened to her like she was the most fascinating thing in the world. Steve and Gloria had tended to her basic needs, but they were always so focused on their idea of what was right and best for Ren, that they’d never once asked—or possibly considered—what she actually wanted. Now, every day, Ren registered Chris’s amazement at her silliness and her curiosity, his admiration of her strength and grit, his pride in everything she’d managed to accomplish entirely on her own. He listened to her and valued her opinion. His love was as clear as a ringing bell in the crisp morning air.
“But he barely knows me,” she said quietly. “How is that love any more believable? His memory of me is as a towheaded three-year-old whose favorite food was watermelon and favorite song was ‘The Muffin Man.’ His memory of me has been frozen in time, locked on the girl who liked to be read to before bed and who loved getting raspberries blown on her belly.”
It could be a genuine love, she supposed. At least, eventually. The foundation was there; the desire was there to reconnect. He was desperate to build the relationship he’d always imagined. And even in this deepest part of her bewilderment and heartbreak, Ren knew she was also open and hungry for family. As far as fathers went, Chris seemed to be an ideal one. He was calm and measured; he took their therapy sessions very seriously. Outside of that, he was surprisingly funny and self-deprecating; that humor hid what Ren could tell was a uniquely sharp mind, and as she spent time with him every day, she grew to think maybe she got his curiosity, his drive. He was patient with her, warm and loving, and other than Edward, there was no one in Ren’s world who made her feel as cherished and important as Chris did.
“I can understand why you wonder what it all means,” Edward said carefully. “I can’t even imagine what you’re feeling. But I know that I’d do anything for you. I’d sacrifice anything.”
“I’ve been talking about you in therapy with Anne, too,” she said, nodding. “How it’s confusing to be this happy when I feel shredded up inside. About whether at first my feelings for you were real or somehow tangled up in my excitement about being out in the world. About whether I should be starting a new relationship, especially something intimate and complicated, when I’ve never been with anyone romantically before.”
“Yeah?” he said, gently, without judgment. “Those seem like good questions to be asking.”
“Anne reminded me there were no rules,” she said. “I don’t have to be happy just to make sure people aren’t worrying about me, and I don’t have to be sad all the time, either, even though everything is objectively hard.” She looked at him over her shoulder and smiled. “There are beautiful things that came out of this tragedy. The way I feel about you is beautiful to me. It feels like a gift. I want to let my heart stay open, even if it’s scary to trust again.”
And she did. She trusted Edward in ways she wasn’t sure she could totally understand. He’d started calling their nightly conversations “radical transparency,” and he always said it with a laugh, which told her it was a term his own assigned therapist was giving him. But it was working. He’d answered every one of her questions. She knew about his past, and she also knew that he was doing everything he could to figure out a new plan for his future. He’d been given an open calendar to reschedule his internship interview, but his thoughts on what he would do with a law degree were starting to change. He’d realized he wanted to help kids like himself. He knew it wouldn’t pay as well, but for the first time in his life, that didn’t seem to matter.
She shook her hair down her back, taking a deep breath. “Okay. I’m ready.”
Edward gathered her ponytail in his hand and bent to kiss her neck again. “You’re really sure?”
“I am. I’ve done some research and can donate my hair to an organization called Locks of Love.”
He audibly winced at the first cut, but the immediate weight lifted—actually and figuratively—made tears of relief spring to her eyes. In tiny snips, Edward carefully and quietly worked until she was free, and he was left holding the long castoffs in his hand.
He passed the cut ponytail to her, and she stared down at it. It was thick, and at least a foot and a half of soft, blond hair. She ran her fingers through it.
“How do you feel?” he asked.