Chapter 25
Elizabeth
MAKE IT TO CHRISTMAS
Rehearsal Dinner
I slide out of bed, going to the bathroom and seeing Nate on his back sleeping. One arm is thrown over his head, the other on his stomach. The bedding covers one of my favorite parts of him.
A couple of minutes later, I’m walking out of the bathroom, and I see him still sleeping.
I walk to his side of the bed, taking him in.
The most handsome man I’ve ever seen, but it’s more than just a handsome face.
He’s the kindest person I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing.
He would literally give you the shirt off his back.
Now that I think about it, I was wrong for ever thinking otherwise.
I slowly flip the covers off him, seeing him naked.
His one leg is cocked to the side, almost in the middle of the bed.
I softly put one knee on the bed and then follow with the other.
Making my way to him, my hands grip his cock and his eyes flutter open.
“Morning,” I mumble to him right before I take his half-hardened cock in my mouth. He groans as I grip his base.
His hand that was on his chest is now buried in my hair.
“Fuck,” he groans, his hips thrusting up a bit so he can get deeper in my throat.
His cock, now fully erect, is filling my mouth halfway.
“That’s it.” His voice is rough with sleep.
He pushes my head down on his cock as he lifts his hips, going to the back of my throat.
My fist and my mouth work him at the same time with his own little thrusts up.
“Get up here,” he orders between clenched teeth.
He rolls to the side, his tongue slipping into my mouth before he holds his cock up. “All yours.”
I move my leg over him, gripping him in my hand, and positioning him right under me before I slide down his cock. His hands go to my hips, as my hands go beside his head on the pillow. “It’s so good,” I moan as I move up and down his cock.
His head moves up off the pillow to catch one of my nipples that are moving over his mouth.
He sucks one nipple in his mouth before moving to the other one.
The only sound in the room is of us breathing as I ride his cock, his hips moving up to meet mine when I slide down.
“More.” I close my eyes, taking in the feeling of his cock in me and his mouth biting my nipple.
I grip the pillow by his head. “More.” I slam down on him as hard as I can.
“Want me to give you more?” he asks, and all I can do is moan as he wraps an arm around my waist, and in the blink of an eye, his cock is buried to the hilt inside me as he flips me to my back. “I’ll give you more,” he hisses between clenched teeth, pulling out of me and then slamming into me.
“Harder.” I pull my legs back to get him to go as deep as he can, and does he ever. He slams into me over and over again, pushing me to the brink of orgasm.
His forehead is on mine. “I’m almost there,” he says.
I arch my back as I open my eyes, right before I jump off that cliff and everything inside me shivers.
“There it is,” he hisses as my legs wrap around his waist. He plants himself all the way in me and buries his face in my neck.
“Fuck.” I wrap all my limbs around him as he collapses on me.
“That we just did,” I joke, silently laughing as he gives me soft kisses.
“Good morning,” he mumbles before he slides out of me and falls to the side on his back. “Now that is a good fucking wake-up call.”
I turn on my side. “Figured I should return the favor since that is how I woke up yesterday morning.” He looks over at me, his eyes a light green and so warm, all you need is for him to look at you and you know you’ll be okay. He’ll settle all the insecurities you might have.
“Thank you for that,” he says.
I get up on my elbow and look out the window. “I think it stopped snowing.”
“I should hope so”—he gets up off the bed—“it snowed all day yesterday.” He walks toward the bathroom as I watch his ass disappear. Then I get off the bed, searching the floor for the pj’s I started to wear to bed but got ripped off me as soon as the lights went off.
I grab the shorts and tank top before walking to the door and opening it.
Whiskey is sitting outside the door, looking up at me with a look that says, “it’s about time” and “how could you lock me out of the room?” “Good morning, boy,” I say as he gets up and circles around my legs and then steps into the room looking for Nate, who is in the bathroom.
He hears the water running but then looks at me when I say, “Want to go outside?”
I walk down the step with him following beside me as I turn and head toward the back door. The snow is piled up in the back and you can see exactly where Whiskey played yesterday while we tried to shovel him a path. He couldn’t care less and kept jumping into the snow and then back again.
Letting him out and starting the coffee, I head over to the living room to turn on the lights on the tree.
Something I did also when I got up yesterday.
Snow was still falling when we woke up yesterday and all day long.
The message to everyone was if you could stay in, stay in, so we did.
We made breakfast and then lounged on the couch to watch a movie, which ended up with us having sex.
We lounged around all day long, either having sex or laughing when we would remember old stories about each other.
By mid-afternoon the snow had trickled off and everyone was going to gather at my parents’ house, but we opted to just stay in. It felt like neither of us wanted to let the outside into this thing that was going on between us.
I’m making the coffees when I hear him coming down the steps.
I feel him before I have a chance to look over my shoulder at him.
One hand is by my side, the other hand sliding against my stomach, he buries his face in my neck as he pulls me against his chest. “Just in time to let in Whiskey.” I move my head to the side, giving him access to my neck.
“Got it.” I watch him over my shoulder, going to the back door and letting him in.
“Good morning,” I hear him tell Whiskey and then hear the sound of him tapping his side. “Go get your grub,” he adds. “I’m going to check the front.” He walks to the front. “Snowplows finally passed,” he announces as he walks into the kitchen, “which means we can finally get out of here.”
I don’t know why it bothers me when he says that, but it does. “Great.” I turn around and hand him his cup of coffee before sitting on the stool I’ve sat in ever since the first morning. “Do you want to make breakfast today?” I ask him and he leans against the counter.
“I could eat.” He shrugs. “What’s your favorite breakfast meal?”
“I don’t really eat breakfast.” I take a sip of my coffee. “I get off at eight a.m., and by the time I get home it’s middle of the morning and I’m exhausted, so I usually just heat up some leftover food from the morning before.” I laugh. “I sometimes grab a breakfast bar.”
“Well, let’s pretend you worked a normal nine-to-five job,” he says. I don’t know why I have this need to get up and go to him and have this conversation with my arms around his waist and my head against his chest.
“Okay, let’s pretend.” I smile at him. “I would probably have some pancakes and scrambled eggs, maybe some breakfast sausage.”
“Done,” he states, walking over to the fridge. “We have everything that we need to make it.”
“I’ll help,” I offer and he shakes his head.
“You made dinner the past two nights.” He looks over his shoulder, grabbing the ingredients. “Let me make you breakfast.”
“I won’t say no to that.” I watch him mix up the pancake batter before putting the breakfast sausage in the little toaster over he has to the side.
“Have you ever thought of working regular daytime hours?” he asks me as he makes the pancakes.
“I did,” I admit to him, “but I felt when I would work during the day, I was missing out on things that happened at home.” He looks at me.
“I know it’s crazy. It wasn’t like I could just be here at the drop of a hat.
” The feeling of dread hits me like I just hit a brick wall.
“But at least I could be in the moment. I would sleep when you guys would sleep so I felt I was semi-involved.”
“Have you thought of maybe, perhaps, that you want to just come back home?” he asks me and I shake my head.
“No,” I say honestly and shrug, “I have a life there.”
“But do you?” he asks me. “Because everything you’ve said to me since you’ve been here is that you miss home. I mean, not in those words, but everything. The way you live your life, it’s like you live there but you want to live here.”
“I can’t just move home,” I declare.
“Why not?” He asks me the question I’ve never been asked. So many people have just said move home, and when I said I couldn’t, they would just drop it. But not Nate. Nate is the one who would always ask me the questions that everyone else was either scared to ask or didn’t care to ask.
“Because,” I answer him and he just laughs.
“Solid answer.” He turns back. “So you have thought of moving back home?”
I’m thinking about what to say to that. “I mean, all the time, but what would I do?”
“You’re a doctor, you can work anywhere,” he points out. “You can even work with your mother or Jack.”
“But then it’s like I’m giving up.” My heart hammers in my chest.
“What the hell are you fucking talking about?” He looks at me as he flips the pancakes. “How is you coming home and working with your mother, you giving up?” He shakes his head. “It’s not like you didn’t go to med school and your mother just gave you a job. You literally are a doctor.”
“Yeah, but it’ll be me taking a handout,” I tell him. “Look at you.”
“What about me?” he questions, putting the pancakes on the plate and doing three more.
“You built a whole fucking vet clinic,” I say, my voice going higher. “No one did that but you.”
“Are you nuts?” He looks at me. “My grandparents left me a shitload of money and so did my parents.” I roll my eyes. “If it wasn’t for them, you think I would be able to have my own clinic?”
“Yes,” I answer wholeheartedly. “You would have still had the clinic, you just would have been in debt for a bit longer.”
He snorts. “I worked sixteen hours a day for four years straight. Took any animal I could. Did house calls. You name it, I did it. The same way you did it. You didn’t just wake up and get the shift you wanted or the department you wanted.
” I have this tightness in my chest when I think of all the struggles he had and not knowing or being there for him.
The last seven years have been lost to us and it’s half my fault.
“Yeah, but it’s still different,” I refute, letting his words settle, “you did it by yourself.”
“No one does anything by themselves, Elizabeth,” he says my name and finishes breakfast. “At least not if they don’t have to. My parents, my grandparents, your parents, they all helped.” I look at him and I’m about to say something to him when the front door opens.
“You really need to start locking the front door after you come inside,” I remind him as we both look to the side to see who is going to be coming in.
“I smell food,” Joshua says and I put my head back and groan.
“For thirty-six hours,” I say, looking at him, “I forgot all about you and this wedding of yours.”
“Well, happy to break it to you, but there are only a couple days left.” He pulls out the stool and sits down. “There is the rehearsal dinner tomorrow and then the wedding.”
“Put a finger down if you are counting down the hours until I never have to hear about this fucking wedding again?” I deadpan and hold up my middle finger. “It’s me.”
He laughs. “I have to say the snowstorm was a blessing in disguise.” He looks at us. “Don’t say anything to Macy but I’m so done with all of this, I just want to be married already.”
I slap the counter. “I’m telling everyone,” I tell him. “I’m getting a billboard in Times Square. I’m getting one of those planes that fly overhead with a long whatever it’s called. I’m putting an article in the newspaper.” The two of them laugh at me.
“Anyway, I’m here to talk about Christmas.” The minute the words leave his mouth, Nate and I groan. “Relax, it’s nothing big.”
“I just changed my flight,” I tell them. “I’m leaving Christmas morning at six a.m.” I try not to smile but the look on both their faces, I can’t help myself. “Kidding, I’m kidding,” I say. When I look back at Nate, a new look fills his face, and it’s not a look I’ve ever seen before. I hate it.