Take Care, Sara

Sara would hold each moment close to her heart and treasure it, like this moment.
    He sang to her; his voice deep, slightly rough, and beautiful.
    Their faces were inches apart, brown eyes locked with gray. Sara smiled as Lincoln smiled, his fingers entangled with hers. “I love you,” she told him.
    Lincoln smiled a sweet smile, leaning his head down to kiss her. “I love you. Sometimes it’s hard to believe you love me back, finally. I’ve loved you for so long, so impossibly long. I thought that’s the way it would always be; me loving you, you being clueless.”
    “Hey.” She jabbed his hard stomach. “I’m not always clueless.”
    “Sometimes you are.”
    Sara nodded. “I suppose I can admit that.”
    He grinned, saying, “It feels like a dream, a really good dream.” Lincoln caressed her face, stroked her hair. He pressed a kiss to her temple.
    “If it’s a dream, let’s hope we never wake up.”
    “If it was a dream we’d be having a lot more sex.”
    Sara snorted, looking up at the fiery ball that was the sun and quickly looking down, spots in her eyes. “Why do you love me?”
    “ Why do I love you?” he repeated, a frown between his brows. “I know what I love about you. I love your hair, I love the way your brown eyes light up when you’re excited about something. Your nose, your lips. Even that small scar above your lip. The way you eat chocolate—“
    Lincoln closed his eyes, inhaling slowly. “I could watch you devour a chocolate bar for ever . Really. I could. There’s something so sensual about your lips kissing it, tugging the chocolate into your mouth, the way your eyes close—“ Lincoln swallowed, running a shaking hand through his hair. “It’s hot,” he ended abruptly.
    Her lips parted at the mixture of pleasure and pain on his face. That’s—“ She swallowed, tried again. “That’s not what I asked.”
    He grinned. “I know. But I’m on a roll. Just go with it. I love your laugh, your smile, your sense of humor, your strength. I love the look on your face when you’re painting; you look completely lost, consumed; it’s the same look you have when I’m inside you. Like you’re shattered and whole at the same time. I love that look,” he said, his eyes darkening.
    Abnormally hot, even with the sun shining, Sara said, “Stop talking like that. And don’t look at me like that either.”
    “Why? Am I turning you on?”
    “No,” she lied. “You’re getting off subject.”
    “Okay, okay.” Lincoln exhaled noisily as he visibly fought for composure. “Why do I love you,” he mused.
    Sara nodded, her hands clasped loosely on his narrow hips. “What made you love me?”
    “Do you remember the first thing you said to me, the first time we talked?” he asked slowly, twirling a lock of her hair around his finger, gently tugging it.
    She searched her brain, seeing a baby-faced young man with laughing gray eyes and a mocking grin. “You said something about serial killers. It wasn’t funny.”
    Lincoln laughed. “You’re right. It wasn’t. I said my brother wasn’t one, but you didn’t know if I was or not. Something stupid and lame like that. I couldn’t think straight when I saw you, when I realized you were the girl I’d seen walking. It was the first thing that came to mind, what Cole had told me about your encounter with him. Your comeback was something like how I didn’t know about you either.”
    Sara crinkled her nose. “That’s what made you love me?”
    “Nah. But you always had quick-witted retorts to counter mine. It was like we had our own language.”
    “Our language of sarcasm.”
    “Yeah.” He grinned, dazzling her with the beauty of it. “I always loved you; pretty much instantaneously, but that day on the river, when I realized you could be taken away from this world, that’s when I realized how much I loved you. It killed me that you belonged to Cole, but at least you were living and breathing and that was enough, it had to be enough, but the thought of you not being alive—“ Lincoln shuddered. “That I couldn’t deal with.”
    “Hence the punching of Cole in the face.”
    “He deserved it,” he said with a scowl.
    Sara laughed. “No argument from me. He kind of did, yeah.”
    The grin was back in place; the shine in his eyes. “You always understood me. I think that was it. I didn’t have to pretend with you, I didn’t have to not say what I wanted to. If I was being rude or grumpy, you called me on it.