december 2018 : 1 year and 9 months ago

It was just about the coziest evening one could ever ask for. The aroma of freshly-baked gingerbread wafted through the Myers' kitchen and the flames in the fireplace softly crackled as they cast their warm glow upon the living room. The tree sparkled in the corner and the white, fluffy powder of a rare December snow could be seen silently falling outside the window.

Life was, without a doubt, good. Liam and Lily had pushed through the second half of the semester, made good grades in all of their classes, and were now enjoying the winter break. They celebrated six months together a few weeks ago and Henry would be back in just a couple of days to spend a whole week at home for Christmas.

There was just a singular blip in their happiness. Liam found out right before Thanksgiving that a school trip he was supposed to go on during the week after Christmas got rescheduled for four days in January, one of which happened to be Lily's birthday. She was a great sport about it, assuring him that they usually didn't do any major celebrations because it came so soon after the holidays, but he still felt guilty and a little disappointed that he wouldn't be spending it with her.

He had been at her house for most of the day and her parents invited him to stay for dinner. Despite being a little intimidating on occasion, they really weren't all that bad. Mrs. Myers went to pull the gingerbread out of the oven once all of them were done eating and Liam knew he ought to get up, too, but he was lacking in motivation to move. He was so full and content that he probably could have dozed off right there in his chair if he let himself.

Lils must have noticed him looking sleepy-eyed. She stood up and grabbed his empty plate for him, quickly kissing the top of his head as she passed behind him to go put their dishes in the sink. But when she was done, she didn't return to the table or bundle up under the blankets on the couch like he expected her to. She plopped down by the front door and started pulling on her boots.

"I'm gonna go look at the snow."

Liam nodded and got up to join her, grabbing his jacket from where it was hanging by the door. She went ahead of him, slipping outside to admire the winter wonderland while he sat down in the same spot she occupied just a moment ago to tug his shoes on.

Cold air immediately collided with his skin as soon as he opened the door, but it wasn't as uncomfortable as he expected it to be. Lily was standing in the middle of the yard, the trail of footprints behind her charting the exact path she had taken there. He carefully walked down the front steps – it would be just his luck to slip – and tried to step only where she had already dented the snow. It felt wrong to disrupt any more of the pristine white canvas of powder even though it was all so very temporary, anyway.

The snow crunched under his feet as he came up to her from behind, so she wasn't surprised in the slightest when he wound his arms around her and leaned over her shoulder to kiss her on the cheek. A laugh escaped him when he saw that she had her tongue sticking out to catch snowflakes.

"Get any good ones?" he inquired.

"Uhuh."

"How does it feel to be a snowflake murderer?"

Lily sharply elbowed him in the ribs but was smiling when she turned around to face him. She was adorable – her puffy white jacket made her look like a cuddly marshmallow – yet also so beautiful that she could have been pulled right out of a famous film or painting. Her cheeks and lips were stained rosy from the winter cold and snowflakes delicately settled on the glossy surface of her raven hair.

"Do you wanna go for a walk?" she asked.

He nodded. "Sure."

Although it wasn't exactly warm outside, Liam had no interest in turning her down. He wasn't sure if she just needed a few minutes away from her parents or if she simply wanted to cherish the beauty of the snow for as long as possible, but he was happy to stroll along with her regardless. Their fingers threaded together as they started off down the street, marveling at how magical everyone's Christmas decorations looked blanketed in white. Light-up yard reindeer illuminated Santa's path through the snowstorm and blinking string lights wrapped around porch banisters guided those in the dark back to the warmth of home.

But Lils was quiet, quieter than she usually was unless something was bothering her.

"Is something wrong?" he asked gently.

All she did was glance down at the ground, but her silence was plenty sufficient as an answer. His peaceful contentment started to dwindle.

"If it's about your birthday, I really don't mind trying to get out of it," he offered, tightening his hand around hers.

She shook her head. "No, it's okay. I already invited Katie and Izzy over to marathon old Barbie movies."

Liam had no clue what she was talking about and didn't think that he wanted to, so he didn't pursue that specific subject any further. "Then what is it?"

They had made it to the end of a cul-de-sac, now in front of a large tree that separated two lawns. She halted and faced him, letting go of his hand to nervously clench hers together. Her brown eyes were reticent and uneasy, like she worried she might be judged for what she was about to say.

"You just...you love me, right?"

His heart constricted in his chest and his mind temporarily blanked, emptying itself of all thought before confusion swarmed in. What was she talking about? Did he love her? Was it not obvious to her that he would have done anything for her, that he loved her more than anything else?

"Why is that even a question?" he implored, utterly lacking in understanding as to how she could believe that but seeing from the visible sadness that lined her expression that she was genuinely distressed. "Of course I do."

Did he not tell her enough? Did he not act like it? He thought he couldn't have been more clear about how much she meant to him.

"You just..." she faltered, watching him even more timidly now. "You won't say it in front of anyone else. We've been together for six months and you've never said it in front of anyone."

Liam fell into silence. His brain frantically fought to defend him, scouring every nook and cranny of his memory for an example that proved her words to be untrue...but he couldn't find one.

She was right, more so than she even knew she was. She had no way of knowing for certain what he did or didn't say to anyone when she wasn't around, but even from the multiplicity of moments he spent in the presence of Jo or his friends or his parents, he failed to cherry-pick a singular instance in which he confessed his love for Lily when it wasn't only for her ears to hear.

The idealist in him always believed that love was the most powerful force in the world, but not even it was enough to overthrow his instinct to always keep to himself. And he let it happen so carelessly only to see now that he was much less intentional with the workings of their relationship than he thought he was. He was never trying to avoid saying that he loved her—he just didn't even realize he was doing it.

He unintentionally left her hanging while his mind spiraled down into this disheartening revelation, which compelled her to keep talking.

"And I do," she confessed urgently, almost desperately, like she couldn't hold it in any longer. "I run off and tell my friends how in love I am with you. Is that stupid of me? Do you not want me to do that?"

"You're never stupid," he told her quietly.

Liam lifted his hand to her cheek and lightly ran his thumb along it as if through touching her he could take hold of this doubt that ran through her veins like a poison and draw it back to its source: himself.

"I didn't realize I was doing that," he admitted, feeling ashamed. "I'm so sorry, Lils. I promise I'll make it up to you."

He thought she might softly nod and take his hand in hers again to continue on their walk, but she shied away from the apology and shook her head.

"You don't have to do anything," she said quickly, forcing a small, abrupt smile onto her lips. "Of course you weren't trying to upset me, I'm being silly-"

"Stop apologizing for your feelings, Lily," he blurted more forcefully than he meant to.

Her eyes widened and lips parted in silent surprise. She speechlessly watched him as a tidal wave of pent-up emotions that he didn't even know were hiding inside of him rushed out.

"You spend so much time apologizing just for existing and I still don't understand why you feel like you have to do that to anyone, much less me."

A spark of inward frustration threatened to ignite into a flame. How had they been dating for six months and she still didn't feel like she could be herself? How could she still not comprehend after all this time that she wasn't a nuisance? She was anything but. She was the sun that stopped all of his days from feeling like nights and yet he could perform the most extravagant gesture of love for her and she still wouldn't get it.

But the spark went out when he actually looked at the girl in front of him and saw her eyes start to glisten. There was a whole universe of self-doubt inside of her that he would never fully see the darkest edges of. There was a lifetime of experiences that came before him, a whole cast of characters that came and went and left her to try and repaint a beautiful portrait of herself with nothing but the dust they left behind. The tiny flaws in the portrait could never change the fact that she had done a remarkable job.

Universes were ever-expanding and all Liam was doing here was expediting the process. But that wasn't who he was, that wasn't what he came to do. He was supposed to help her fight the physics tooth and nail and force that universe to get a tiny bit smaller each day.

"I'm always getting worked up over the tiniest things..." she mumbled.

He closed the space between them and wrapped her into a hug, silently telling her that it was okay before he said it out loud. He allowed his eyes to close and breathed in the scent of her perfume, so familiar to him now that it comforted him more than even his own home. She was home.

"You're not just getting worked up over nothing," he murmured. "You feel your emotions deeply and they get too big for you to contain them, but that's one of the reasons why I love you so much."

She didn't respond verbally, but she clung to him tighter.

"I don't think you see it, but I do. For all that time you spend feeling overwhelmed, you spend even more time feeling joy." The smallest laugh fell from his lips as he remembered her hauling her giant stuffed polar bear out of the zoo and how thrilled she was to pet the kangaroos. "You get so excited over small things like an extra good cup of coffee or your favorite song coming on and it makes your whole day. You laugh at little jokes and you appreciate every single insignificant thing that others do for you. And the best part of all my days is watching you do it. If I need to catch up to you then that's on me."

She dropped her arms from around him only to lift her hands to his face. He couldn't stop himself from smiling when he saw that the defiant, passionate sparkle had returned to her eyes and she was smiling, too.

"Being shy doesn't make you less than, either," she said kindly but with determination. Like him, she seemed to have come to a sort of epiphany and grabbed onto an understanding that she was lacking whilst her mind was clouded with gloom.

"You're not behind me," she promised him, her fingers somehow so delightfully warm on his skin even though they had been out here in the cold for several minutes. "You prove that you love me by loving me well. I wouldn't trade that for all the words in the world. You knew how scared I was to date so you went and showed me all the ways people can be good. I-" she sucked in a sharp, excited breath. "I love you more than I know how to say."

He leaned in and let his forehead rest against hers, already longing for the kiss he was going to give her once he just hurried up and got his words out. "I love you, too, and please don't ever think for a second that I'm ashamed of it because I'm not."

She was very fortunately on the same page as him and kissed him with the same elation that was there in the first weeks of dating, both of them coming back for more even as it was broken up by their shallow breaths. It was the kiss you never wanted to end, the kiss you felt like you couldn't end lest there never be another one like it even though you knew there would be so many more. Yet this one was simultaneously so different from all those early ones. It wasn't nervous, it wasn't new. It wasn't fueled by a desire for something exciting; it was exciting because they had seen how beautiful they were together and it made them want each other more and more. They were in love.

He loved her so much and she deserved someone who was proud of loving her, so even if he had to scream it from the rooftops, he was determined to find a way to prove to her that she was the most valuable thing in the world. 

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Hi everyone! Thanks for keeping up with my somewhat inconsistent updates. There will be 10 more parts to this story including the epilogue, but I've written ahead far enough that I'm down to writing just the last chapter and the epilogue at this point! It's bittersweet to be so close to finishing this story that I started writing over 6 months ago, but my hope is that once I get these last couple of parts written I can dedicate more time to editing the remaining chapters and posting more frequently than I have been. My goal is to have the whole thing posted by the end of April, but I'll keep you guys updated!

Thanks as always for the support and don't forget to vote if you enjoyed <3