Chapter 53
GEMMA
We stay in the bathtub much longer than we probably should have.
Until the water turns cold and our hands and feet have pruned because as usual, there are things to say.
Things neither of us want to hear. Things that will shatter the illusion that the last few hours have built, and once they’re gone, there will be no getting them back.
“Gem…” Riggs says my name quietly, the sound of it rumbling against the cheek I have pressed to his chest. When I don’t answer him, he runs a puckered hand down my back and sighs. “We need to talk about it. I know you don’t want to, but?—”
“You’re leaving.” Tilting my head slightly, I’m just in time to watch his jaw clench at my blunt words.
“I know. I heard Colt earlier.” I don’t tell him that I always knew he was going to leave again.
That I’ve never been enough to make him stay.
“It’s okay.” Forcing a smile onto my face, I tilt my head back even further to press a quick I don’t want to talk about it kiss to his jaw.
Moving to get out of the tub, I start to shift myself on his lap.
Sitting up, bringing us face to face, I bob my head.
“I was thinking I’d just make sandwiches for dinner. Is that?—”
“I don’t want to talk about dinner, Gem.
” Tightening his fingers around my hip to keep me where I am, Riggs looks at me, the deep furrow in his brow warning me he’s not going to be put off.
He’s not going to let me pretend everything is okay.
That I can handle what just happened on my own. “I want to talk about this.”
Even though I know what he’s talking about, I pretend that I don’t. “This?”
“Don’t do that,” Riggs says, shaking his head. “You know what I’m saying.”
Clinging stubbornly to my feigned cluelessness, I give him a shrug, hoping he’ll give up and let it go. “’Fraid I don’t.”
“This.” His tone spikes with impatience. “Us, Gem. I want to talk about us. What just happened.”
For a second, all I can do is stare at him because even though I knew it was coming, sooner rather than later, I’m suddenly and irrationally angry.
“That’s a first,” I say, trying and failing to keep my tone even.
“Usually, when something like this happens, talking about it is the last thing you want to do. Usually, you just find a way to blame it on me and leave.” When I say it, his shoulders jerks against the side of the tub like I took a swing at him.
“Yeah…” Jaw tight, he flicks his dark gaze away from mine for a moment like he’s trying to keep himself calm before he looks back at me. “Well, I don’t usually fuck you in the bathtub without protection, either.”
Now it’s my turn to feel like I’ve been hit in the face because I didn’t even think about it.
The risk didn’t even register. All I could think about was him.
How much I wanted him. How long I’ve been without him.
That soon, Riggs will be gone and this time it’ll be for good.
“Is that what you think this is?” Shaking my head, I feel the urge to scream at him again.
“You think I’m trying to trap you? You think that?—”
“What?” His jaw goes slack and he shakes his head. “No—but you’re not on birth control either, so I think we should?—”
“Let me make it easy for you Riggs—you don’t owe me anything and I learned my lesson a long time ago,” I reassure him, forcing a placid smile onto my face. “I know better than to ask, so let’s just enjoy the time we have left, okay?”
“No.” He gives me a stubborn head shake, fingers tightening around my hip like he’s afraid I’m going to try to run again. “Not okay. If you’re pregnant?—”
“I’m not.” I very well could be but I don’t even want to consider it because I know what he’s going to say next.
“—we’ll get married.” Just like I knew he would, he says it like it’s already decided. Like it’s not even up for debate. “I have savings—not a lot but enough to cover the back taxes on the house. We’ll pay them off and?—”
“No, we won’t.” I give him a short, choppy head shake while my chest starts to ache and hitch. “I just told you, Riggs—I’m not asking you for anything. You don’t owe me anything.”
“So you have health benefits, then?” he asks, his tone edged with sarcasm because he knows I don’t. “You can afford to have a baby on your own? You can pay for doctor’s visits after its born? You can feed it and clothe it and?—”
“I’d manage.”
“How?” He barks it at me, my refusal to see his side of things sharpening his tone. “You’re on the verge of losing this place, Gem. What’s going to happen when?—”
“I’m not pregnant,” I hiss at him, my temper bleeding through.
“But if I am, I’ll do what I’ve always done.
I’ll figure it out on my own—without you.
” Reaching down, I try to pry his fingers away from my hip because I have to get away from him before I fall apart.
“You haven’t given me a second thought for the last eleven years.
There’s no reason for you to start now.”
“No reason?” Riggs parrots back, his tone hollow. “Are you?—”
“Crazy?” I give him a panicked laugh that sounds like I might be.
“Maybe.” Giving up on prying his fingers loose on my own, I look at him, aiming my gaze at his cheekbone.
“Please let me go. I need to check on Janet. She’s been unsupervised for hours.
There’s probably dead mice, stacked to the rafters by now. ”
“Gem—”
“Please, Riggs.” I say, my tone wobbling.
Face falling slightly, Riggs loosens his grip.
Free, I scramble out of the tub, feet landing in a large puddle of water. Colt was right. The whole bathroom is flooded. “You’re clothes are probably soaked,” I tell him, desperate to get back to some semblance of normal, so I can pretend the last five minutes never happened.
Pulling a stack of towels from the shelf above the toilet, I set them on the bathroom sink.
Gaze averted, I struggle into my robe before using my foot to kick and push my bathtub forks into a hasty pile next to the sink.
“I’ll go downstairs and get you something dry to wear.
” Land mines cleared, I set a towel out for Riggs within easy reach before spreading the rest on the floor, soaking up as much of the water as I can while he tracks my every move like I’m dangerous.
Like he has no idea what I’m going to do or say next.
Straightening, I muster up a wry smile and offer it to him while I start to move away from the tub. “I know better than to ask you to stay in the tub until I get back, so please just promise me?—”
Reaching out, Riggs snags my wrist.
Looking down at the place his fingers are wrapped around my arm, I let out a short, shitty laugh. “Still a hard learner, I see.”
“We’re not done talking about this, Gem.” He flushes with embarrassment but he doesn’t let me go. “We’re not?—”
“We are.” Smile falling flat, I shake my head.
“You seem to forget that this is all a choice for me,” I remind him.
“I live on this side of the river because I want to. I work at the Mill because I want to. I drive that shitty car parked in my driveway because I want to. Not because I need to. Not because I don’t have a choice—because I want to.
And if I wanted to, I could be sipping champagne in Paris right now, so please don’t delude yourself into thinking I need to be rescued, because I don’t. ”
“Oh… so, you’re finally admitting you’re a creeker, and living in Barrett and working yourself to death has all just been some years long, elaborate cos-play.
” Riggs glares up at me, resentful because I just dismantled his entire argument in the span of a few sentences.
“You don’t need me so, that gives me permission to just walk away? ”
“Yes.” I nod my head, swallowing the ache in my throat because it’s not what I want. I don’t want Riggs to walk away—but I won’t have him staying out of a sense of duty either. “That’s exactly right.”
“What about Beck?” He looks like just thought of my brother makes him sick. “What would he have to say about me knocking up his little sister?—”
“This has nothing to do with Beck, and you know it,” I tell him, my tone low and even. “You decided I was untouchable, all by yourself.”
When I say it, some of that years’ old panic flickers across his face, telling me just how right I really am.
Rather than let him sit with the truth, I keep pushing.
“Say I am pregnant—what then, Riggs? I marry you and let you save my house, then… what?” I ask him, even though I already know the answer and it breaks my heart.
“I stay here and raise a baby with your last name while you go back to your life like I never happened?”
Riggs jerks back again, his fingers tightening around my wrist again. “I’d come back. I’d?—”
“Visit?” I practically choke on the word while it bubbles out of my throat on a sad laugh.
“I’m a Marine, Gemma,” he tries to reason with me, his tone becoming increasingly desperate. “Where I go isn’t up to me.”
“Except that it is.” I shake my head. “All so you can pretend to keep a promise we both know you broke a long time ago.”
“You don’t want to be with me.” He says it like it’s a fate worse than death. Like it’s something he’d never even consider. “You don’t want me dragging you from duty station to duty station, one shitty base house to the next. You deserve better than that. You deserve?—”
“You’re right.” I bob my head, throat not just aching anymore.
It’s throbbing against the sob I have locked away.
“I do deserve better than that. I deserve to be more than someone’s promise or obligation.
I deserve to matter. I deserve someone who loves me enough to stay—but instead I get this.
” Looking down at the hand clamped around my wrist, I swallow hard against the unfairness of it all.
“I get to be little Tagalong. I get to be in love with someone who keeps leaving me behind.” Reaching up with my free hand, I swipe at my face, knocking away the angry tears that stain my cheeks.
“I don’t need you to save me. I don’t need you marrying me because it’s the right thing to do.
I don’t need your pity. I don’t need you treating me like a promise and I sure as hell don’t want it—any of it.
” Twisting my wrist in the tight circle of his fingers, I feel them clench, ready to fight to keep me prisoner but then he finally loosens his grip and lets me go.
“Then what do you want, Gem?” His tone is low. Even, like he’s struggling to keep himself in check.
“I want you,” I tell him with a brief, heartbreaking shrug. “For as long as you’re here. I want to smile when I think about you, after you leave. I want to know you’ll miss me when you do. I want now—right now. I don’t want you to try to fix my life and I don’t want you to promise me anything.”
Staring up at me, I watch Riggs’s jaw tighten like he wants to argue.
Like he wants to fight with me about what’s right and what’s decent, but he doesn’t.
Swallowing hard, he bobs his head. Gaze narrowing slightly, he flicks it away from my face for a moment while he schools his own.
“Okay, Gem…” Settling his features into a calm mask before he looks back at me, Riggs shakes his head. “Now. Right now.”
“And no promises,” I say, prompting him quietly while he stares at me, the calm mask he’s wearing rippling with a convoluted mixture of anger and regret that scares me a little before Riggs finally concedes.
“And no promises.”