Always Only You by Chloe Liese (z-lib.org).epub

you’re tired of talking. I have a growing suspicion no one has really touched
Ziggy since she had her breakdown and got diagnosed. I mean, I saw Ren hold
her shoulder, gently touch her back, but has someone hugged her? Held her?
Helped her contextualize these big, overwhelming, scary feelings and
challenges, so she knows that they don’t have to consume her, that they don’t
make her inhuman or broken, but that instead they prove her resilience, her
capacity to heal and grow?
Loving touch reminds us of our humanity. Most everyone needs it, in some
shape or form or timeframe. Sometimes, all we have to do is ask.
“When’s the last time someone hugged you, Ziggy?”
A tear slips down her cheek. Shit. I made Ren’s baby sister cry. He’s going
to disown me and stop giving me great orgasms and never again make me
Swedish food—
Chill, Francesca. Focus on Ziggy.
Another tear spills over, and she blinks away, staring at her hands in her lap.
“Ziggy,” I ask her quietly, “would it be okay if I hugged you right now?”
A small, eternal silence hangs in the room as tears spill faster and faster
down her cheeks. I witness the weight of her grief, which I entirely recognize,
and it clutches my chest in memory, twists my heart.
Ziggy wipes her nose with her sleeve, then nods, two slow dips of her chin.
Carefully, I set the popcorn aside and scoot closer to her on the couch,
holding my arms open. I let Ziggy come to me. Because I know, from the way
her brother opens his arms and lets me choose how and when I fall into them,
what a world of difference it makes when someone doesn’t just tolerate you for
where you are but embraces you for it.
Slowly, like a sapling cut and felled, she drops toward me, until her forehead
lands on my shoulder, her cheeks wet with tears. The sobs start quietly. But they
don’t stay that way. They build, a wave of buried emotion, finally surfacing.
Pain. Confusion. Hopelessness. I feel them seeping out of her. I feel their echoes
in my memory. Tears stain my cheeks as I carefully wrap an arm around her,
rubbing her back in steady figure eights.
“You’re going to be okay, Ziggy. And while it might not be as soon as you’d
like, you’re going to figure this out. You’re going to be happy again one day, I
promise.”
Her sobs grow sharper, and suddenly she clutches her arms fiercely around
me, a vise grip of bird bones and tenacity. “God, I hope so.”
“You will,” I whisper, laying my cheek to the top of her head. “I promise.
And I don’t say that lightly. I promise, okay?”
I sway her in my arms, until her cries grow quiet. As I gently release her, she