Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
Henry
“It’s him, isn’t it?”
Tabitha doesn’t flinch. Not outwardly. She keeps her fingers around her mug like the heat’s a shield. “Yeah.”
I want to hate him.
But how can I? He saved her from what could have been something horrendous. Something she probably still hasn’t recovered from.
Still, I hate him. I hate him and am grateful to him at the same time.
How would I have reacted before Ralph? Before my mind got so fucked up? Would I have been this ridiculously jealous of someone who doesn’t mean anything to her?
But that’s also a lie. Of course he means something to her. He saved her.
Hell, if I were in her shoes, I’d probably choose him over me. What the hell have I ever done for her besides fuck her hard and fast after promising myself I wouldn’t and then breaking her heart in the same fucking breath?
I close my eyes, inhale deeply. It doesn’t help. The cabin has that after-storm hush, a kind of ringing quiet that deafens.
She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. The gesture kills me. Familiar and brand-new at the same time. I want to step forward and push the hair back myself, press my mouth to the soft spot under her jaw until she forgets every name but mine.
I don’t move.
“Henry,” she says, quiet. “We don’t have to do this.”
“Do what?”
She frowns. “Circle the thing we’re both pretending isn’t in the room.”
I huff a laugh that doesn’t sound like one. “I’m not pretending anything.”
She cocks her head. “You’re jealous.”
“Yeah.” No point dressing it up. “I am.”
She parts her lips. In surprise or relief? I can’t tell. It only makes me want to kiss her.
“Why?” she asks.
“Because last night you said you didn’t want safe,” I say.
“And that scares me a little because I haven’t wanted safe since we were in the barn together.
Because I walked into my house under construction and decided I’d drive to Boulder and tell you that, and a beam tried to make sure I never said it. ”
She goes still. The quiet of the storm outside the windows has nothing on the silence between us now.
“You were coming to Boulder,” she says. “To see me.”
She says it like a statement. Like she already knows.
“To say I fucked up,” I answer. “To say the way I slowed it down after the wedding wasn’t me changing my mind, it was me trying to be a better version of myself than the guy who couldn’t see straight for twenty-four hours.
To say I’m not proud of anything right now except the part where I want you and I’m done pretending I don’t. ”
Her throat works. “You told me we had no future.”
“I told myself we had no future,” I snap too fast. “I told you what I thought would protect you from me. I was wrong. I may be a fucked-up mess, but you don’t need protecting from me. You need the truth.”
She takes a step forward, her lips parted. “What truth?”
“That the morning after the wedding, I left you in my bed because I didn’t know how to say any of this without breaking something I didn’t think I deserved to touch.
That in the hospital I asked for you because you were all I wanted in the whole damned world.
Because I woke up and counted what I had and what I almost lost, and the list didn’t make sense if your name wasn’t on it. ”
Her eyes shine. Not tears. Heat. Fight. The thing in her I fell for because it matches the meanest part of me that still wants good.
She looks at the face-down phone and then back at me. “You don’t get to be mad about a text from a man who helped me when you weren’t there.”
“I’m not mad at him,” I say. “I’m mad at a beam that fell. I’m mad at myself for not wearing a fucking hardhat when I know better. I’m mad at time. I’m mad at every second I gave away because it was easier to be a ghost than a man who says what he wants.”
Tabitha’s gaze burns into me. “And what do you want?”
“You,” I say. “I want to build you a kitchen drawer that never sticks. I want to learn how you take your coffee. I want to be the one you text when your hands won’t stop shaking after lab. I want to be the name that lights your phone, and your heart.”
A tremor goes through her, visible in the way she presses her lips together like she’s holding something back. “You sound sure,” she whispers.
“I’m terrified,” I admit.
Something breaks in her posture. She loosens her shoulders, drops her chin a fraction.
The smallest surrender.
It’s enough for now.
I move. Not fast, not slow. Just straight.
She doesn’t step back.
Her breath hits my throat. Mine hits her cheek. The kitchen narrows to two bodies and a counter and the space between a question and an answer.
She closes her eyes. “I don’t want to compete with whatever lives in your head when the lights are off.”
“You’re not in competition,” I say. “You’re the only thing that ever felt simple and impossible at the same time.”
She exhales sharply. “That’s not simple.”
“It is to me.”
I touch her wrist. Her skin is like the softest silk. I feel the flutter of her pulse.
“Henry…”
“Tell me to stop.”
She doesn’t.
I drag my thumb over the inside of her wrist once, slowly. Then I’m cupping her jaw, tilting her face, catching her mouth with mine.
God…
It feels like I’m taking a deep breath after being underwater too long.
The kiss isn’t pretty. It’s hungry and rough, a little desperate. She yanks me closer until the counter presses into her hip and my body slams against hers.
I bite her lower lip.
She gasps into my mouth.
And I lose the last piece of control I was holding on to.
I slide my hands over her body, caressing her waist, her ribs, the curve under her breast. I’m both greedy and reverent. At least I try to be.
I can be both.
“God, amber,” I breathe against her mouth. “I tried to do it right, and all I did was make it worse.”
Her laugh shivers through me. “You’re doing it right now.”
“Then I’m not stopping.”
I kiss her deeper, touch my tongue to hers, slide it around every crevice of her sweet mouth. She answers with a soft sound that punches right through my ribs.
The phone on the counter vibrates again, but the noise feels far away, like something happening in another cabin, in another life.
I lift her onto the edge of the counter. She parts her knees, and I push my hips in. I stroke her neck, feel her thundering pulse.
“Tell me to stop,” I say again, because I’m not the guy I was in the barn, and I need the words to draw the line we keep stepping over.
She fists her hands through my hair, pulling at my scar. I wince, but I don’t stop her.
“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t you dare fucking stop.”
It’s not permission.
It’s a dare, and I meet it, mouth on hers again, deeper, until she breaks the kiss with a sharp inhale and presses her forehead to mine.
She unbuttons my jeans, slides them over my hips.
My cock springs out, hard and ready.
She spreads her legs. God, no underwear. Her pussy is pink and glistening and beautiful.
And I thrust inside.
Fuck, sweet heaven.
“Henry,” she whispers, breathless.
“I know, amber. I know.” I pull out and thrust back in.
Everything I’ve ever needed seems to be inside this woman. Peace. Ecstasy. Pure unadulterated bliss.
I thrust, thrust, thrust…
“God, yes,” she grits out. “Just like that.”
She tightens around me, and when she shatters, I go along for the ride, spilling into her as if my life depends on it.
We stay there for a moment until I back away and she slides off the counter.
And I look at her.
At her beautiful face, her gorgeous eyes, her blond hair.
Peace.
That feeling that’s been so elusive for so long.
It’s finally within my grasp.