CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Ford
The dreams never stop.
One after another. What could have happened. What did happen. And each nightmare shook me awake to find Ellery’s face on the pillow beside me. Her legs intertwined with mine. Her even breathing and steady heartbeat beneath my palm a reassuring reminder that they were just that. Nightmares.
And in between the terror and fear was the reminder of what happened last night. Of me pulling her onto my lap. Of us holding on to each other. Of her lips meeting mine as she sank down onto me.
As she loved me—with her body and the emotion in her eyes—but never with words.
We moved in the silence.
Reacting to each other’s touches. Each other’s moans. Each other’s pleas.
Reacting until it became almost painful to breathe knowing that I almost lost this. Lost her.
When I pulled back to look at her, to watch what she looks like awash in love, a lone tear slid down her cheek. I kissed it away. I murmured that I was okay. That I am okay.
And that I loved her.
But the pleasure became lost when the next nightmare hit. When it scared the shit out of me.
I think the dream jolts me awake. Or did the door just click?
The first thing I notice is the room is starting to lighten from the early dawn breaking.
The second is that Ellery isn’t beside me. The bed is cold.
I scrub my hands over my face and swing my legs over the side of the mattress. “Elle?” I ask toward the partially opened bathroom door.
Maybe she’s having the same nightmares I am. Maybe she needs a reminder that I’m okay.
But when I peek in the bathroom, she’s not there. I head to the hallway, and when I look down it, her back is to me as she rolls her suitcase behind her.
Panic strangles me. Does she have a meeting I forgot about? A conference call she needs to be on?
But I know the answer is no.
She’s running.
“Ellery?” I jog after her, but she doesn’t look back at me.
When I move around her in the hallway, blocking her path, it’s only then that I can see the tears streaming down her cheeks. See the utter devastation etched in the lines of her features.
“Baby. Please. Tell me what’s wrong?”
Her expression remains stoic despite the tears staining her skin and the subtle shaking of her head. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers.
Those three words fucking devastate me. Obliterate every bit of hope I’d held on to.
“Don’t do this. I’m not letting you go,” I say as my pulse races and my disbelief riots. “Not after everything. Not after yesterday. Not after . . . us.” I don’t even recognize my own voice right now. The pleading in it. The fear woven in it.
“This isn’t right,” she murmurs as she tries to step around me. I move to block her. “This can’t happen.”
“What can’t?”
“This. Us.” She looks down and tears splatter the new carpet between us. “I refuse to let myself . . .”
“To let yourself what?” I demand. To hope? To want me? To . . .
“To love you,” she whispers as her eyes look up and meet mine.
“Why? Why can’t you love me?” I challenge, my hands on her shoulders, desperate to give her a shake and knock some sense into her. But she’s scared enough already.
Just as I am.
But my fear is because I know what I want and am afraid I won’t be able to have it. And her fear is because she’s never had it and she’s terrified to feel it.
“Because I can’t.” She swallows over a sob. “I just can’t.”
“I deserve more than that. A better reason, Ellery, and you damn well know it.” I draw in a deep, fortifying breath to calm myself. “Why can’t you love me?” My voice breaks.
“Because . . . because everyone I’ve ever loved has died. Has left me. And I just can’t . . . I can’t lose you too. I almost did yesterday. I almost lost you. And I’m terrified of loving you and then losing you. I can’t put myself through that again.”
I stare at those sapphire eyes that own me. At those lips that can say anything and I’d do what they’d ask. At the woman who has my heart fully in her trembling hands.
“Son, when a woman’s temper makes you love her even more, when her defiance makes you want to challenge her, and when her smile makes you want to earn each and every one, then you know she’s worth the goddamn fire.”
My dad was right.
It is in this moment that I know I’d crawl over coals, risk the singe and the burn, to pull her against me and take away that look on her face.
God, how he was fucking right.
Fire’s got nothing on love.
On what you’d do for it.
On what you’d give for it.
On how bad you’ll burn for it.
“I just want you. Any way I can have you, Ellery. We’re worth the fight. You’re worth the fight. Everything else is just noise. We can work on the rest.”
She takes a step back and out of my grip, her eyes on everything but me. “I have to go, Ford.”
That tear last night . . . it was because she knew she was saying goodbye.
With that, Ellery Sinclair walks around me and out of the inn.
And with what I fear is out of my life.