Chapter 42
THE FACTS
MAGGIE
Zeke didn’t cook anything for dinner and stayed shut in his room, laying on his side and staring out the window.
I made a sandwich for him and set it on the nightstand, but he didn’t acknowledge me, so I backed out of the room and closed the door.
As much as I wanted to help, no words of wisdom came to mind.
What do you say after hearing your husband grew up in an abusive, neglectful household? And that he had autism the entire time?
Actually, I didn’t even know what that meant.
I pulled out my laptop and typed “autism” into a search engine.
A dozen medical sites came up first to describe the autism spectrum.
I learned that there are different levels of severity with autism; Zeke clearly fell on the lower end of the spectrum because extreme cases typically didn’t speak and had rage-filled outbursts.
Yeah, maybe Zeke’s not that far off on that one. The bedroom wall didn’t destroy itself ,after all.
The lack of understanding with social cues stuck out the most on the list of symptoms. Zeke always talked about being isolated, especially as a child.
While it couldn’t have been easy to grow up with James Leggett, having untreated autism certainly didn’t help him make friends.
My heart broke for little boy Zeke who just wanted someone to talk to.
I spent the rest of the night reading about autism, its symptoms, and the treatments for it.
While an autism diagnosis wasn’t a worst case scenario, I recognized how hard it had to be for Zeke to learn this about himself.
It also made sense why Zeke thrived in the military.
All the structures and routines were good for him.
Maybe I couldn’t comfort Zeke with words, but I could offer him the one thing I knew—my body.
The clock read two A.M. by the time I crawled into Zeke’s bed.
He laid in the same position as before, on his side facing the window.
Shadows danced along the wall from the moonlight flooding in; Zeke never closed the blackout curtains.
I curled up against his back and wrapped my arm around his chest, causing him to jerk up.
He held my hand in a vice grip painful enough for me to whimper.
“Zeke, it’s me,” I murmured. “It’s just Maggie.”
“You’re not ‘just’ anything, Trouble,” he whispered back. The hold on my hand loosened. Turning over, he faced me without trying to hide the tear falling down his cheek. “Thank you for being here.”
I pushed closer so that our bodies pressed against one another from the chest down. Zeke drew an arm around my waist to hold me in place. Even our noses brushed against one another. His eyes were so round and pure that they broke my heart.
I didn’t let myself think, I simply acted. Closing the distance, my lips met his with everything I had. I needed him to know how supportive I planned to be, how much I was on his side. He didn’t have to be alone anymore.
And as the tension in his body melted away and he sank into the kiss, I realized I didn’t either.
Zeke helped me when I hit my lowest point.
Hell, he still helped me every time he cooked dinner or met me for a doctor’s appointment.
He asked about every therapy session. I didn’t know for sure, but from what I gathered, Zeke didn’t work his normal job anymore so that he had more time available for me. Always for me.
Everything Zeke did was for me.
“I’ll always be here for you, Zeke. You never have to worry about being alone again,” I promised.
Yielding to him, I flattened onto my back so he could straddle my hips. Kisses peppered my jaw and down my throat. Need ignited like an inferno low in my belly. Zeke’s weight on top of me felt divine, so much so that I moaned before I could stop myself.
“Maggie,” Zeke whispered in a husky voice that sent a new wave of arousal to my core, “I love you.”
I froze beneath him. Even my lungs stopped functioning.
“Maggie?”
He pushed up higher on his forearms and stared down at me with concern. My husband—someone I should be able to love.
But nothing came out. An invisible hand gripped my throat, preventing me from speaking. Icy tension filled the room between us.
Zeke’s blue eyes filled momentarily with pain, but it was there and gone in the blink of an eye. He scrambled off the bed to the other side of the room.
“Zeke, I—” Only I didn’t know how to finish the statement.
“It’s fine,” he replied, but he wouldn’t look at me. His eyes stayed trained to the floor. “We should both be getting to bed. Good night.”
Rather than waiting for me to move, Zeke entered the en suite bathroom and shut the door with a firm snap. Metal scraped against wood as the lock shifted into place.
My footsteps sounded soft as I pattered across the floor on tiptoe. I raised my hand to knock, but stopped halfway. “I’m sorry,” I murmured against the bathroom door.