Chapter 13
Thirteen
“You shouldn’t have told everyone until we’re sure,” Abby said an hour later when she and Adam were in their room upstairs.
“Until we were sure of what?” he asked as he unbuttoned his shirt.
She hated that baffled tone of his voice and hated that she’d given him reason to be baffled. She hated that both their lives had changed forever in that doctor’s office yesterday. What had seemed so certain one day ago now was anything but.
“Until we’re sure of what, Abby?”
“Our wedding. Everything.”
“I’m sure, and you were too this morning when you said you’d marry me on New Year’s Eve.”
“I just… I… I can’t seem to process any of it. The diagnosis, the wedding…” She shook her head in frustration and anguish.
Adam crossed the room to her, placing one hand on her shoulder and the other on her chin, compelling her to look at him. “You don’t have to process any of it today or even tomorrow. We’ve got the rest of our lives to process anything that comes our way.”
She couldn’t bear to see the hurt and confusion in his beautiful blue eyes, so she looked away.
He gathered her in close to him. “Everything is going to be okay, Abs. If we stick together, we can get through this. I promise.”
God, she wanted to lean on him. She wanted to hold on to him and never let go, but in the back of her mind was the nagging fear that it simply wasn’t fair to shackle him to her when everything was so uncertain.
He was saying and doing all the right things, and she appreciated his support so much, but that nagging doubt wouldn’t be silenced.
“Let’s get some sleep, honey. Tomorrow we’ll make plans.”
Abby let him lead her to bed, where she settled in her usual place—with her head on his shoulder, his arms around her. The thought of sleeping any other way but wrapped up in him was too painful to consider.
“I really loved the video,” she said softly in the darkness, eager to think and talk about anything other than the elephant that sat squarely in the middle of the room. “You did such a great job.”
“I’m glad you liked it.” He ran a hand over her hair, trailing down to her back. “Someday we’ll have our own video, packed with forty years of happy memories.”
In the fog of her despair, Abby couldn’t see that far into the future. She was having a hard time seeing next week or next month. She wanted to curl up in a ball and retreat from life, but Adam would never let her do that.
He turned to face her, keeping her head cushioned on his bicep. “I can hear your brain working a mile a minute.”
“You cannot hear that.”
“Yes, I can. I know you better than anyone else ever will, and I hear you thinking about all the ways this situation sucks and how unfair it is to me and all sorts of other things that would totally piss me off if you said them out loud.”
Okay, so maybe he could hear her thoughts.
His lips found hers in the dark, and all the despair in the world couldn’t keep her body from responding to him the way it always did. As his tongue slid between her lips to stroke hers, a sharp sting of desire between her legs had her squirming to get closer to him.
Under the T-shirt of his that she wore, his warm hand found her breast, rolling and teasing her nipple between his fingers as he continued to kiss her as if his life depended on reminding her of the fiery passion they shared.
Her T-shirt disappeared over her head. His shirt landed on the floor next to hers. When he brought his bare chest down on hers, Abby drew in a sharp breath at the glorious feeling of his skin rubbing against hers. That was one of her favorite things.
Adam broke the kiss and buried his face in the curve of her neck, making her shiver from the caress of his warm breath against her skin. “I love you more than anything else in this world, Abigail. If you leave me, you’ll ruin my life and yours. Please don’t leave me.”
His softly spoken plea broke her heart. Adam, her Adam, didn’t beg. He didn’t plead. He didn’t grovel. That she’d reduced him to all three was almost more than she could bear. Tears filled her eyes and slipped down the sides of her face, wetting her hair.
He kissed them away. And then his lips were closing around her nipple, making her moan from the pleasure that stripped away her worries.
When Adam loved her, there was no space left in her mind for anything other than him and the exquisite way he made her feel.
Her pajama pants and panties slid down her legs, which he pushed toward her chest as he bent to love her with his tongue.
Oh my God. “Adam.”
“Yeah, baby. I’m right here. I’ll always be right here, and I’ll always love you no matter what happens.”
A sob hiccupped through her as he caressed her clit with his tongue and drove his fingers into her, sparking an orgasm that made her scalp tingle as she throbbed with aftershocks.
Giving her no time to recover and no chance to check out, he entered her slowly, grasping her ass in his big hands as he drove into her.
She who had once had trouble taking a man into her body took this one like he was made for her, which he had been.
She who’d had trouble having orgasms with other men had multiple orgasms with him, because he had accepted her completely and utterly, loving her exactly the way she was from the very beginning.
That thought finally broke her, and her deep sobs echoed through the small room.
Fully embedded in her, Adam wrapped his arms around her and held her as she cried.
He had wanted her when she couldn’t stand herself or her life and needed to shake things up.
He’d wanted her after Cal rejected her. He’d wanted her when she had trouble reaching orgasm and when her body clenched up with nerves when they tried to have sex.
He’d never given up on her, and he wouldn’t give up now, either.
“Baby, talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m a f-fool,” she said, hiccupping on the sobs.
When he started to withdraw from her, she stopped him with her hands on his ass, keeping him buried deep inside her.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve always accepted me for who and what I am. That’s why I fell in love with you.”
He brushed the hair back from her face, and in the darkness, she could see the sparkle of his eyes as he gazed down at her.
“I’ve never wanted you to be anything other than exactly who you are—flaws and all.
Everyone has them, Abby. I’m not looking for perfect.
I want you to come to me next week and marry me and take the plunge with me.
” As he spoke, he began to move in her again.
“I want us to face down this health challenge together, and if necessary, adopt lots of babies to love and raise. We will have a family. I honestly don’t care how it happens as long as you’re the mom and I’m the dad. ”
Tears continued to leak from her eyes as his words washed over her like a balm, soothing the open wound inside her.
“We’ll find you the best doctors in the country, and we’ll keep you healthy no matter what we have to do. I need you with me for the rest of my life. You have no idea how much I love you. No idea at all.”
Except she did know. He’d shown her every day for more than a year now, and he’d never wavered in his acceptance of her.
That was the one thing that had been lacking in her other relationships.
She’d never felt truly accepted. Until Adam had rescued her from herself last summer and shown her what it meant to be truly and completely loved.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“For what?”
“For thinking that you’d be better off without me.”
“Don’t ever think that. When I say you’d ruin me if you left me, I’m not kidding.”
She ran her fingers through his thick, dark hair and kissed him. “I know.”
“Tell me you love me, too. Tell me you believe me when I say I’ll stand by you no matter how bad it gets. I need to know—”
“I love you, Adam, and I believe you.”
“Tell me you also believe that I’d rather have you and any challenges you may face because of your diagnosis than a perfectly healthy woman who isn’t you.”
“I do. I believe that.”
His lips curved into a smile on top of hers. “Let me hear that first part again.”
“Which part?”
“The ‘I do’ part.”
Abby returned his smile. “I do, Adam. I choose you to be mine, and I believe you when you tell me how much you love me.”
He turned his face away and blew out a deep breath that sounded an awful lot like relief to her. “Thank God for that. You’ve had me freaking out all day about what I’d do if you tried to run away from me.”
“You wouldn’t let me get away.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
She raised her hips to remind him of what they’d been doing before her emotional meltdown.
With his arms tight around her and his lips devouring hers, he rocked into her, thrusting deep the way she liked it best, until she broke the kiss to cry out from the pleasure that shot through her body.
Adam groaned and got impossibly harder and bigger inside her before he came, his fingers digging into her shoulders.
“Love you forever, Abby.”
“Love you forever, Adam.”
“So, New Year’s Eve? Yes?”
“I can’t wait.”