49. Zara
ZARA
Two days after Emily and I talked to the married couple in the park, I show up at Garrett’s house, buoyed by words of the husband’s undying love and support for his chronically ill wife.
I don’t know if it’s right or not, if their love is a sign I need to tell Garrett how I genuinely feel about him. But sign or not, it’s time I tell him the truth. I owe myself that much.
Garrett didn’t send any texts today to cancel on me, so I ring his doorbell. I don’t even bother to try to see if the door is unlocked. Athena prefers it locked for security reasons, and Garrett has gone along with that request. Even if he knows I’m coming over.
It seems like forever since I last saw him, and I miss him. I miss the mind-numbing sensation of his lips on mine, and I miss his achingly sweet kisses that flutter deep in my soul. Kisses that leave me feeling like I’m the most precious thing to him, other than his daughter.
The front door opens, and Garrett steps onto the stoop. “Hey.” For a millisecond, he stares at me, like I’m some sort of white-clad angel sent from heaven.
Then his lips are on mine, and he kisses me as if I’m the oxygen he’s thirsty for.
He’s not the only one who’s thirsty. I greedily gulp him down, my fingers knotting in his hair. All lingering fears about his true feelings for me are temporarily shoved aside.
I keep kissing him, embracing the dopamine rush, embracing Garrett until he eventually releases me. And even then, I don’t want to let him go. But I have to for now.
He presses his lips to my brow. “Thanks. I needed that.” His low voice comes out rough, scraping deliciously against my kiss-flushed skin.
“Me too,” I whisper, searching for the confidence to tell him I am in love with him. The confidence I had after talking to the couple the other day, but which seems to have momentarily fled.
He opens the door before I can pull together a reasonable string of words to convey my feelings.
I make small talk with Athena in the kitchen while Garrett rounds up the stuff we need for hiking.
Things are a little easier now between Athena and me, but the ghost of her wall remains. Solid, uncrumbling.
Baby steps. Things will get better in time, as long as she isn’t crushing on her boss and believes I’m somehow keeping him from her.
A few times, I’ve come close to asking if her feelings for him have ventured into the unprofessional arena. But the last thing I want is to piss her off with my questions and make things rocky between us again.
Peony comes rushing around the corner and practically hurls herself into my leg. “Zawa.”
“Hey, Princess Peony.” I crouch and hug her.
As I straighten to my feet with Peony in my arms, I catch the tail end of Athena’s scowl. Guess nothing has changed between us—at least not when it comes to Peony. It’s as if Athena is jealous of my relationship with Garrett’s daughter, but why would she be? That doesn’t make sense.
More than likely, I’m reading way too much into her expression.
I’m sweaty and my muscles ache more than normal by the time Garrett, Peony, and I finish hiking my favorite trail on the Warriors property.
Not once did I find the right moment to tell him just how much I care about him.
But the confession is not the kind of thing you do when the other person has a toddler strapped on their back.
“Are you still coming over after you get Peony to bed?” I ask as he carefully removes his sleeping daughter from the carrier. The warm evening and the rocking motion of the carrier have lulled her to sleep.
“Do you want me to?”
“Yes, please.” No matter what I think about or do while I pleasure myself, my body refuses to come apart at my touch the way it does for him. No one else’s touch will suffice but Garrett’s.
But I’m not about to admit that to Garrett. No need to have his orgasm-inducing powers going to his head. I’d never hear the end of it.
“Alright. I’ll be there as soon as she’s settled in bed.” He straps the sleeping Peony into her car seat.
By the time Garrett shows up at my apartment, I’ve showered, practiced yoga, and answered a bunch of emails. Em’s advice from two days ago buzzes in my brain. “Tell him you love him.”
Garrett walks to where I’m standing in the brightly lit kitchen. In a heartbeat, his mouth is on mine, and my thoughts are all scrambled in my brain.
His lips not straying from mine, he lifts me onto the counter. He widens the space between my legs and pushes up the hem of my skirt, revealing my underwear. His eyes darken.
Satisfaction at his response sings through my body. He wants me as much as I want him. No words need to be exchanged. We just know. The way we quickly learned how to read each other’s body, to read the signs of what we need. It’s all instinctual when it comes to us.
He runs his tongue along his bottom lip as his thumb trails along my pussy. I drag in a sharp breath, every part of me singing for joy, for him. Every part of me humming with an ache so different than what usually wrecks my body.
I suck my lip between my teeth, and his eyes go even darker with lust, igniting a power in me, a confidence I’ve never had with another man. I’m doing this. Making him react this way.
His thumb draws tight circles around my clit, teasing the throbbing bundle of nerves hidden under my panties. “Fuck, you’re so wet, Zara.” He pushes the panties aside, baring me for his naked perusal, and that only makes me wetter.
He separates my lips and takes a long lick of my pussy. “Christ, you taste so good.”
My head flops back, lengthening my neck, and a moan vibrates low in my chest.
A thick finger presses inside me and curves into the magical spot that will have me coming apart too soon. He pumps his finger while his thumb continues to create its own magic on my clit, each stroke taking me higher and higher and higher.
Another finger joins the first. “Not much further,” he says, his hoarse, deep voice finding new, tantalizing ways to push me closer to the edge. His hot breath brushes my mound.
His tongue flicks my aching clit again, and a tsunami-sized wave of euphoria crashes through me, heat flooding my lower belly with mind-numbing relief.
“Ooooh God, Garrett.” The words fall out on an endless groan.
He kisses my brow after a beat as the euphoria lulls to gentle waves lapping the shoreline. His gesture is so sweet, so tender, it melts me further into my newfound bliss.
He lowers his forehead to mine.
“I love you.” The hushed, unvetted sentence falls past my lips and mist over his with a kiss.
I freeze, the words echoing in my head, my eyes saucer wide. I can barely breathe, almost hoping he didn’t hear them. Almost hoping he did. This wasn’t how I had planned to tell him.
Had I ever planned to really tell him?
But that doesn’t matter now. It’s too late to yank the words back. To hide them away.
I’m not the only one who’s unmoving. It’s as if Garrett has been turned into the stone statue that stands in the middle of his parents’ pond. And I’m sure if I put my hand on his chest, I’d find his heart equally motionless.
But even knowing that, I cannot hold back the feelings I’ve held in check for so long. “I’ve been in love with you since college. I’ve never stopped loving you.”
I halt the spill of words to gauge his reaction, but what I see on his face is enough to lacerate my heart with a thousand tiny cuts.
His eyes are squeezed closed as if I’m causing him pain, as if I’m the one destroying his heart. Behind him, the hum of the refrigerator reminds me I’m sitting on the kitchen counter, too stunned at myself, at his reaction, to jump down. To adjust my clothes. To hide my shame.
Garrett shakes his head, and a long breath hisses from him. It’s only then he opens his eyes.
“I can’t do this, Zara.” His voice doesn’t come out apologetic. Or warm. It’s cold and unyielding. It’s laced with anger…anger that, somehow, I’ve betrayed him.
A sledgehammer slams into my heart, pulverizing it into something unrecognizable, something barely beating. I inhale slowly, gathering the remaining pieces. Taping them together so he can’t see my pain.
Garrett steps away, his face a mirror of the horror spilling inside me. But his doesn’t hold the regret, the grief, the longing twisting through me. Regret I can’t snatch back my words. Regret I can’t tell him I didn’t mean them. Can’t beg him to forget what I said.
I can’t lie to him like I’ve been doing for more than a decade when it comes to my love for him.
So I do the only thing I can to preserve what little dignity I have left. I hop down from the kitchen counter and adjust my clothes.
My movement snaps Garrett out of his stupor. The anger has smoothed off his face, replaced with some other emotion. Annoyance? Agony? Regret?
“I can’t do whatever this thing is between us anymore.
I need to focus on Peony and keeping her safe.
And happy.” He rubs his side below his ribs where one of his scars is located.
“I failed two of my closest friends in the Marines, and they lost their lives. Their kids lost their fathers. Their wives were left widowed.”
He steps back, the canyon between us growing wider, deeper. “I don’t deserve love, but I still want to be friends with you. Like before.”
Like before .
I want to touch his arm, to let him know he does deserve love. But another thought keeps me from reaching out. A toxic thought I can’t shake.
I’m a burden.
I have a chronic illness with symptoms that strike when I least expect them. Symptoms triggered by stress. Symptoms that can make being a mother to Peony challenging.
The husband from the park the other day is strong enough to stand by his wife’s side as they deal with her life-long chronic illness. But not every man is like that.
Not every man is like my mother, who stood by my father’s side through the worst season of his life.
And maybe that’s part of the reason Garrett can’t love me. Maybe it’s not just that he thinks he doesn’t deserve love. Perhaps he doesn’t possess the same strength as the husband and my mother.
That’s the easy explanation, the one I want to cling to, to rationalize his reaction. But the truth is, Garrett has never loved me the way I want to be loved. The way I deserve to be loved.
Kenda has always been his one true love, and I can’t compete with that.
I slowly nod and find the voice that has shattered alongside my heart. “I understand.” I clear my throat of the tears clogging it and will them not to fall while he’s still here.
Please go. Please go before you see how much you’ve eviscerated me. Before you see how steep the walls are that I have to climb to finally move on once and for all.
Garrett walks to the apartment door as if he hasn’t just torn my heart from my chest and driven over it. “I’ll see you Monday,” he calls over his shoulder. “For our evening walk.”
Except I have no intention of walking with him. Not for the next while. I need some distance while I put my heart back together.
I swipe at the falling tears and wait for the door to close.
It’s only once the resounding click echoes through the hallway that I can gather my thoughts, use them to tape the pieces of my heart together, and pad it against future pain .
Maybe even pad it against taking another foolish chance like that again.
I walk to the coffee table and pick up my phone. I deliberate my options for a heartbeat, then send Emily a text.
Me: Never tell a man you’re in love with that you love him when you’re not sure if he feels the same way.
Me: It never ends well.
Em responds less than a minute later.
Emily: Ben, Jerry, and I will be right over.