She couldn’t sleep that night. The floor seemed harder than she remembered, the blankets less comforting, the cold more pervasive. She was pushed up against him, snuggled under his chin, protected by the cavern of his arms. His warmth was all around her. Any other night it would have been enough, but her restlessness and inability to move combined to set her mind racing.
She whispered his name, softly enough not to wake him if he were asleep but urgent enough to be heard.
“Mm hmm,” he responded from deep within his chest.
“Do you ever get homesick?” she asked cautiously. They never spoke much about what had been before they met, and generally avoided the subject out of politeness and respect.
He sighed a long sigh that came from his stomach and took his shoulders with it. He waited a moment; in the dark, she could see his eyes staring at some invisible point on the floor. A creature stirred somewhere in the floor below them; a car roared in an impatient idle outside.
“Sometimes,” he finally responded. “When I’m alone, and get to thinking.” He breathed. “Do you?”
“Never,” she lied.
He shifted around her, rolling away so he could try to see her in the blackness. She avoided the look she could not see. His warmth was sorely missed as every patch of skin that had been next to his longed for him back again.
Realizing his stare was doing nothing in the dark, he took her face in his hands. “You do,” he said. “Maybe… maybe it’s not the home you left that you’re sick for, but at least the home you remember. Do you remember? What home used to be?” He waited; she shook her head in refusal to answer. “Home was somewhere warm, where there’d be good food and a warm bed and a loving family.”
She flinched unmistakeably.
“Your family loved you once. Whoever it was,” he spoke with intensity, “Whoever thought they could get away with marring your image of family and love had that image torn from him a long time ago. I’m not going to forgive him or his actions,” he said, understanding the situation better than he knew, “But it’s like something contagious.”
She spent a long while hoping he was done. She would not think about what happened, not ever. But thinking about not thinking about it made it even more prevalent in her mind. Tears welled into her eyes.
“But that love you felt when you were young, it can’t be taken from you. You spent nine months closer to your mother than anyone else in the world can ever come. Your father will always be there to protect you, no matter how he failed. Your home is perfect, because your home is love.” He breathed. “That’s all a family is, an idea that can never be the same in anyone else’s mind.”
She waited for him to calm. He had worked his point; now he would clam up and deny ever saying it. He would hide his past in his present, deny it and move on.
Before she could let this happen, she moved closer, pressing against him. His warmth seeped in; his heart beat rapidly in his chest. “You’re my family,” she whispered, and slid his hand into hers.
