Chapter 37 #2
"And it's not going to be." I was proud of myself for not saying something shitty about her ex-husband but even more that I didn't lose it altogether.
The only thing that mattered was giving her what she needed.
Even if I wanted to come hard enough to leave a mark, I'd be happy if she finished without me and tucked herself into bed for the night. This was enough.
"I think—" Her words broke into a small cry. "I'm—oh god."
I shifted my hand to the small of her back, pulling her hard against me, deeper. "That's it. There it is. You're so close," I said. "You know it's mine, princess. Give it to me."
Her lips parted and she stared at me, a startled brightness in her eyes as her body drew tight and her cunt choked the fuck out of my cock. As if she was astonished, as if she had no idea her body could do this.
"A little more," I growled. "You're not done yet."
The wet slap of skin fell into the chorus of heavy breathing and those gorgeous little cries of hers. Her tits bounced in my face and her nails dug into my shoulders. I held her hips, steering her as she went soft and pliant. Thrusting into her as she chanted, "Oh god, oh god, oh god."
She came down in pieces. The hand gripping my hair fell to her side. Then her knees slid away from my hips, her shoulders slumped. Her breathing evened out as I stroked her back.
"I'm going to have to get up," she said.
"I don't think so. Just stay here."
She laughed into my neck. "I have to clean up."
"I'll take care of you."
I felt her smile. "That's not how it works but thank you anyway."
"Then I'll make it easier." I took her wrists, looped them around my neck. "Hold on."
When I pushed to my feet, she yelped, "Oh my god, what?"
"Just saving you a few steps." I carried her to the bathroom, which was bigger than my grad school apartment, and instructed her to grab a towel off the rack. I spread it on the marble countertop and set her down.
She peered up at me, her lips swollen, cheeks red, hair everywhere, and something inside my chest flipped. A switch. Maybe an entire organ. I wasn't sure but I knew nothing would be the same after this moment.
I turned on the sink, running my fingers under the water until it warmed up. "Do you know how gorgeous you are right now?"
She glanced over her shoulder to catch her reflection in the mirror. "If you say so."
"I don't know how you do it." I reached for a facecloth, held it under the water.
"Sometimes I look at you and you're this brand-new thing, even though I'd swear I've always known you.
" I pushed her legs apart, wide, wider than she thought necessary if her smirk could be trusted.
Her inner thighs were slicked with her arousal and my release, and it had a breath catching in my throat. "How do you do that to me?"
Audrey watched as I dragged the wet cloth between her legs, her bottom lip snared between her teeth. "I'm not new. You just stopped resenting me after doing it for more than a decade."
"That's where you're wrong." I ran the cloth over her folds, carefully cleaning up the mess I'd left behind.
"It's always been this way. You change my brain chemistry and you burn your fingerprints into my skin and I don't understand how you're even possible, but that doesn't matter because right now, you're here. "
"I think that's the orgasm talking."
I wet the cloth again, squeezed it out, and gave myself a quick pass. "Nope."
"It is," she went on. "Remember all those times when we parked behind Chili's and I'd give you blow jobs in the back seat? You'd say the most unhinged things."
"Yeah, like your mouth was made for cocksucking," I said, leaning in close, "and I was going to marry you the first chance I got. Really thought I would've sealed that deal by now."
She dropped her gaze, her pale lashes fanning over her cheeks. She swallowed hard. "Could you give me a minute?"
I pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Yeah. Of course."
I closed the bathroom door behind me and went to work gathering the clothes we'd left scattered around the room. When I came across her robe, I turned it right side out and set it on the bed. My girl was not about to stroll out here naked. She'd come looking for that robe soon enough.
I heard the toilet flush and the faucet run, but another minute or two passed in silence. I couldn't decide how to interpret that. I didn't know what I wanted all of this to mean. And I had no idea where we went from here. If she wanted it to go anywhere.
A few more minutes drifted by before Audrey peeked out from behind the door. "Would you—" I crossed to her in two strides, handed her the robe. "Oh. Thank you."
"Just know you're ditching that thing before you get in bed."
"You were a lot less bossy in the back seat," she said.
"Do you want me to call down to the valet? I'm sure we can find a Chili's. Applebee's in a pinch."
She rounded the bed, a far-off gleam in her eyes as she wove her hair into a braid.
Had I ever watched her braid her hair? Probably, yes.
But not like this. With a bed between us, the night waiting for what we made of it.
With her lips kiss-bitten and that robe hanging open. She hadn't bothered with the ties.
"Too many of our parking lot places have closed," she said. "Remember Bertucci's? We got into a lot of trouble in those parking lots."
I slipped between the sheets and smoothed out her pillows. "All I remember is that you're not nearly as well-behaved as you'd like people to think."
She shrugged out of the robe and crawled in beside me. "Excuse me but I'm a very good girl."
I stroked a hand over the crown of her head, down her braid. Caught the tail between two fingers. "I wouldn't have it any other way."
Audrey curled into me and closed her eyes, a full, warm smile on her lips.
I dragged my fingers over her shoulders, her collarbones.
Down the line of her chest and over her breasts.
I let myself stare at her without caring that she'd notice.
That she'd see everything I'd tried to ignore this week. Or longer. So much longer.
Then I spotted a dark line riding low on her hip. "What's this?" I asked, swiping my thumb over the words inked in a thin, swooping script. I couldn't believe I'd missed that. "When did you get a tattoo?"
I expected her to laugh. Or cringe away from the question. To turn into a rosy, blushing mess and tell me a story about claiming some rebellion for herself. But she didn't do that.
A cold, steady quiet settled over her. The life seemed to bleed from her eyes. Then I was cold too.
She swallowed. "After I moved to Boston."
I traced the words again. The script was fine and thin. "What does it say?"
"'I carry your heart with me. I carry it in my heart.'"
"From the poem? E. E. Cummings?" A single bob of her head. "Can I get a closer look?"
Another nod, her gaze still frozen and empty. I didn't know much but I'd bet my life that quote wasn't about her asshole ex.
I shifted down the bed and cocked my head to get a better look. The last t in heart swept out with a long swash that curled into a heart around a pair of finger-wide silvery scars. And then there was another scar, longer and craggy where it ran across her pelvis.
I dropped my palm to the scars and met her gaze. "What happened?"
She turned her head and stared out at the inky night, and it occurred to me that she might not answer. I stayed there just the same, my head resting on her thighs while I smoothed small circles low on her belly. Nowhere else in the world I wanted to be.
Then, "When I found out I was pregnant, my first thought was that I had to leave Chris.
Probably the first clear, decisive thought I'd had in years.
I'd been so…ambivalent for so long. Just floating.
Existing. I hadn't really cared about anything but then it was real and I had to care.
It didn't matter if all I could do was float but I wouldn't let that be my child's life. "
You're wrong, I wanted to say. It did matter. But I knew when to keep quiet.
"He had a big boys' trip planned. Yachts, helicopters, private islands.
All his favorite things. He'd been gone nearly a month.
That was when I'd planned to leave." Her voice cracked and that sound scraped against my soft tissue.
"I didn't feel well but I never felt well.
I'd been sick for years at that point. I couldn't digest anything.
I was always having one kind of flare-up or another.
Everything hurt every day so I didn't realize something was wrong. "
She brushed a tear from her cheek but when she dropped that hand, she dropped it on my shoulder.
"I collapsed after filing for divorce. Right there in the lawyer's office," she said, a slightly hysterical laugh ringing in her words.
"Ectopic pregnancy. The egg had implanted in one of my tubes.
It ruptured and blew up the tube. It felt just like my regular pain level.
But my belly was full of blood all the way up to here.
" She tapped a spot above her navel and then edged my fingers away from where they covered the heart tattoo. "That was the first surgery."
"The first," I echoed.
She gave a thoughtful nod as she moved my hand from the other scar.
"Did you know that after you've had internal bleeding, all the places that the blood filled can feel itchy?
I was so itchy—but inside my body. The minute I woke up from surgery, I wanted to scratch my skin off.
It hurt to touch my abdomen but I couldn't help it.
And I had a terrible reaction to the pain meds, which only made it all worse.
I had scratches and hives all over the place.
" She brought my hand back to the scar. "That's why they didn't catch the sepsis until it was too late. Why the hysterectomy was such a mess."
"Audrey." I rested my head on her belly and wrapped my arms around her hips.
Squeezed her hard, hard enough to put all these broken things back together.
I wanted to ask where her husband, her family had been during this ordeal but I was pretty sure I already knew.
Pretty sure I wanted to strangle the shit out of them too. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart."
"That baby almost killed me," she said, letting the tears run down her face now. "But it also saved my life."
I leaned in and kissed my way across the larger scar, the two small ones, and then the line of script. Then I shifted back to the pillow and folded her into my arms. "There is no safer, stronger place to carry that baby's heart than your heart."
"I don't usually tell people this because they never actually get it," she started, "but I know I would've died if I hadn't left him. Not because of him but because I'd stopped living. And I hadn't truly understood that until I came out of surgery and they said I wouldn't have another baby."
"Thank you for trusting me with that," I said, kissing across her cheeks, the bridge of her nose. "You know you can always tell me anything. I'll always get you."
She buried her face in my chest as a sob broke free. I held her while she cried, keeping one hand gliding up and down her spine as she let it pour out of her.
I'd always known her parents had maneuvered her out of my life and under their thumb.
But there'd also been a shitty little voice in there too, one that liked to say she left because she'd outgrown me.
Because she'd come to her senses and recognized we never would've been able to turn our teenage dreams into reality.
Because she'd decided our worlds were too different.
Because I'd never been good enough for her, and nothing I could do would change that.
I'd let that shitty voice tell me a lot of shitty stories.
Let it convince me I'd suffered the most. I mean, the fucking restraining order made a strong case for that all on its own.
But I'd never really stopped to think whether she'd suffered too.
Not when I'd told myself she'd been forced to make a choice and, in the end, she'd chosen her family's comfortable world over me.
All while she'd suffered in the most devastating ways. She'd almost died.
After blowing through half a box of tissues, she said, "Sorry about that."
"Don't apologize." I delivered a light slap to her backside. "But tell me what happened when he found out. Tell me the rest."
"I was still recovering when he came home from the trip.
I'd wanted to leave but I could barely walk up a flight of stairs.
I just—I couldn't do anything." Her shoulders lifted, tightened under my palm.
"He said it was good I'd filed for divorce.
He thought I was doing him a favor. Because I couldn't have kids anymore. That he would've filed if I hadn't."
"He's a fucking asshole."
"I know. Believe me, I know all about it. But him not understanding the sequence of events made it easier for me to leave. As far as he was concerned, I was no better than a busted toaster oven and he'd be happy when I was out on the curb with the rest of the trash."
"Jesus, Audrey, don't say that."
"I'm not saying I believe it," she replied. "But Chris did, and it motivated him to move out of the house, offer me a decent settlement up front, and get the divorce finalized before I was even cleared to lift more than a few pounds."
We weren't that far from San Diego. Six, maybe seven hour drive. I could have my hands around his throat by morning if we left now. "Please let me kill him."
"Your mother's been through enough. Don't add a murder trial to it."
"He's still a fucking asshole."
"Yeah, I pray that he has recurrent canker sores and all of his socks have annoying seams, but it could've been a lot worse."
"No, princess, there's no story where you almost die from internal bleeding and almost die again from sepsis, and all the while your dickbag ex can't be bothered to leave his boys' trip early to be by your side, that could be worse."
"No, wait, listen. I told him to stay there. You think I wanted him with me in the hospital? For what? To tell me healing was all mental and I'd feel better once I got some cardio in? Or feed me some mushroom coffee and bitch about me needing the painkillers? I don't think so."
"I just—" I brushed a few loose strands over her ear. I wasn't sure what I was trying to say. "I wish I'd known."
"Why?"
I swallowed past the boulder in my throat. "Because it hurts my heart that you went through this alone."
Audrey was quiet for a long moment that left me wondering if I'd said too much. Then, "You're here now."
"Is that enough? After everything?"
She lifted a shoulder. "I don't know. Maybe."
I didn't think it was.