Chapter 31 #2
"But why?" she asked, wriggling in my hold. "We have this big bed all to ourselves. We never had beds. Remember? There was the back seat of my car and that really old storage room in the library and—"
"I've already told you to behave."
I closed one hand over her mouth, grabbed my phone with the other, and went back to the photos. The album opened to me and Percy at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, a reef shark floating by behind us. She tried to say something but it was too muffled to understand.
I let my hand slide down her neck, coming to rest on her sternum. "Mind your manners, princess."
She gave me a tart glance from the corner of her eye that was almost enough to make me beg her to ride my leg.
She must've seen the hunger written all over my face because she rocked back against me, her ass working my cock with a sweet, filthy drag that was almost worth her hating me tomorrow. "I know you want to."
I stared up at the ceiling. "Not like this I don't. Not tonight."
"But—"
"No, Saunders. You had your chance back at the motel but you went and hid behind that little pillow fortress of yours.
Didn't you?" I moved my palm up her neck, turning her just enough to catch my gaze.
"You're so pretty when you're fearless and free to ask for all the things you don't think you should want.
So fucking pretty." I pressed my lips to her temple and let a breath rasp out of me.
"But the next time I touch you, it's going to be when you don't need any help asking for it.
When I know you'll remember every second. "
She made an aggravated, huffy sound and I was ready for another rebuttal but she sagged into me. The frenetic energy that'd pulsed in her just a moment ago bled out and she dropped to my shoulder.
"Just let me—" She slipped her hand under my shirt and pressed her palm to my torso. "Okay. That's better. I like this too."
I held my breath, waiting for her to dive bomb my dick again, but a minute passed with just the gentle sweep of her thumb along my side. It was back, that sensation of coming apart. Like she'd picked the right threads and now I was one good pull away from being unraveled.
"Why?" I asked, masochistic enough to squeeze every drop of tonight's honesty out of her. "Why do you like this?"
She yawned, curling into me a little deeper. "Because you just let me…be. I don't have to worry about anything. I don't have to think."
I sifted a hand through her hair, letting the strands slide between my fingers.
So soft, so silky. I'd always loved her hair.
There was something about it that quieted entire corners of my brain.
I couldn't explain it, I just knew that untwisting her bun or running my lips over the crown of her head calmed me the hell down.
"There's nothing you need to worry about anymore," I said. "I have you now."
She murmured in agreement, and for a few minutes we fell into a rhythm of her thumb on my side and my fingers in her hair.
There'd been times over the years when I'd questioned whether I'd loved her as much as I remembered, or if the intensity of the feelings I still shouldered was nothing more than a byproduct of living without a shred of closure.
But right now I knew it would always be like this. That I'd loved her in a way I'd never be able to recover from. She'd marked her place on my bones and inside my organs, and ruined me.
It was Audrey or no one, just like I'd told her under that meteor shower. And I was running out of time to get this right. All we had left was tomorrow, really. She flew back to Boston the day after. I was headed back to Seattle for meetings. It wasn't enough. None of this was enough.
"Have you ever thought about how basketball is about chasing pumpkins, tennis is hitting lemons, baseball is catching onions, and football is about throwing potatoes?"
I blinked down at Audrey, my head still busy inventing ways to squeeze more time out of the next thirty-six hours. "I haven't thought about that," I said. "But I know Percy would love it. He'd repeat that endlessly."
"Can I see more photos of him?"
I went back to the album and handed it to her.
She scrolled for a few minutes, keeping up a running commentary on the array of Percy's grumpy expressions, all the photos I had of various engine parts, and the screenshots she accused me of never once referencing.
I refused to admit any guilt on that last count.
But then she zoomed in on a photo where I had Percy's head tucked under my chin and she said, "I see it now."
"What's that?"
"You were meant to be a dad," she said. "I never thought that far ahead. For us. I mean, I did but those were just big, distant dreams and we had no idea what the world was really like. What was waiting for us."
A bitter laugh shook my chest. The fucking truth of that.
She swiped to another photo. "But I see you now and I know you were meant for this. You're a really good dad."
I didn't know how necessary those words were to me until Audrey spoke them into existence.
And maybe it was hearing it from her that made them land in the place where I'd needed them most. All I knew was I wanted to give my kid everything, even if I hadn't expected him and I'd missed his earliest days.
Even if Penny's family didn't believe I had any place in his life.
"Thank you," I managed.
"What does he want to be for Halloween?"
I twirled her hair around my finger, brushing the ends over my lips. "It's June, Saunders."
She held up a pic of Percy wearing Spider-Man pajamas with a dragon cape on top and carrying a Paw Patrol stuffie. "This kid has known what he wants to be since November first of last year."
I huffed out a laugh. "It changes daily."
"Such a cutie." She twisted in my arms to meet my gaze and her smile felt like an electrical current, all raw, spine-splitting power.
I wanted to grab her and shake her and make her see how she was the one in control here.
Make her understand. "You know how I know you're really good at this?
You have photos of the moments you want to remember. "
"Everyone does that."
"Yeah but you took twenty pics of your kid reading a book on the couch.
And there's another twenty of him eating a slice of watermelon.
Twenty more at the library, in the race car cart at the grocery store, waiting in line for the subway.
That's on top of the other eleventy hundred selfies of you two, your sweet little faces pressed together like you'll never be able to hug him tight enough.
" She pressed a hand to my chest. "You want to remember all of it.
Because you love him"—she held her arms out wide—"so much. "
I sucked in a breath but my lungs didn't want to expand. Probably had something to do with getting whacked with an emotional two-by-four by the woman who still knew how to reach in and wrap her fingers around my soul.
I gathered her hands in mine, brought them back to my chest. I needed something else from her now and I wasn't above using these hallucinogenic circumstances to get it. "When are you going to tell me what happened with your ex-husband?"
Her whole expression shuttered. Even her shoulders pulled inward. I didn't need the details to know what that reaction meant. But I had to hear this.
Her gaze lowered, she said, "I work very hard at not thinking about that part of my life."
Swallowing down a thorny knot of tension, I asked, "Why?"
"Because it almost killed me." The words fell from her lips like a simple fact rather than the source of my greatest fears. "But I got out and it's over and it's better for me when I don't go back to it."
Everything inside me surged with the kind of brutal energy that made me want to find him, drag him out of his absurd life, and make damn sure he knew she'd never suffer at his hands again.
But I knew it wouldn't help. Wouldn't erase those years for her.
And it wouldn't fix anything more than scratching a primitive itch for me.
I kept my hold on her gentle, running my thumbs over the insides of her wrists. "You never got my emails, did you? After they sent you to California?"
"No." She shook her head. "What emails?"
Another hard swallow. "That changes a few things."