38. Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Ava
Walking in the door to Stephen’s house, I’m deflated, defeated. I got what I wanted—she admitted she’d manufactured the whole thing with Raul. But instead of my life feeling on track, resolved in way that’ll make me happy forever, I’m despondent.
Stephen was right. I went there without a clear plan, and now I’m the one backed into a corner.
“Stephen?” I call, wandering from room to room, apartment to apartment. At the back of the house, it finally clicks that his car was gone from out front. Did he really go to work at this hour and in the middle of all this emotional turmoil? Men really are made of different stuff. I could never.
I flop onto his bed, and I curl into the scent of him left on his pillow. The urge to cry and cry and cry creeps into my throat over and over, but I keep swallowing it down.
Stephen said we weren’t powerless, and he meant regarding Raul, but I hope that applies to my mother as well. Why didn’t I listen to him when he said to wait?
Deep down, I didn’t expect my mother to come at me like that.
In all the years we’ve had conflict, she’s never done something so obviously cruel.
Not to me. But when I consider what she did to Nathaniel and Hollyn, I realize how na?ve I was.
For whatever reason, my mother has always protected the Tucker name and reputation first, and her children have come second to that goal.
It’s not even like she was born a Tucker.
She married into it, and if anyone should be this enraged over any dent in the Tucker reputation armor, it should be my father.
But becoming a Tucker, a member of one of the richest and oldest families on the island, was the jewel in my mother’s social crown, and she won’t let anything tarnish it.
Footsteps echo through the apartment, and Stephen’s bulky frame slides into the bed beside me, drawing me close.
“Didn’t go well?”
“I don’t know who that woman is.” But I do. I do. She’s just never wielded that side of her with so much force against my interests.
“She threaten me?”
“Yes,” I whisper. I rotate in his arms, and I dig my hands into his T-shirt. “And I won’t let her hurt you. I should have listened to you. I had no plan.”
“Shit. I didn’t get that recorded. Can you say it again?” His chin rests on the top of my head.
“None of this is funny.”
“I know.” He runs his big hand along my back and then sighs. “I know.” He takes a long, steady inhale. “There are a lot of important reasons for you to stay in your marriage, Ava. I wouldn’t hold it against you.”
I wrap my arms around his neck, and I bury my face in the hollow, clinging onto him. “How do I go back when I know this exists? When I know we were so close?”
“We’re not giving up. We’re not giving up. But I need you to know that if this gets too overwhelming, if you’re giving up too much, I won’t hate you for doing what’s best for you.”
“I’d hate myself,” I whisper. “I’d hate myself forever. How can you say you wouldn’t hate me?”
“Every piece of my heart has your name scrawled across it. There’s never been anyone who came even close to erasing a single letter. I won’t see you destroyed over this because it would destroy me too.”
A ferocious roar of emotion sweeps across me, and as I cling to him, I admit something I’ve never dared to before. Something I’ve fought against for years, battled to keep down, afraid the admission would tear me apart. But I can’t hold it back anymore. I don’t want to.
“I love you, Stephen. I’ve never, will never love anyone the way I love you.”
He tugs me away from him, and he frames my cheeks. In the darkening room, he searches my tear-stained face. “You love me?” His voice is hoarse.
“In my heart,” I say, choked up, “there’s only ever been you.”
His forehead lands softly against mine. “I never thought I’d hear the words.” His voice cracks. “I never thought you’d say the words.”
And I realize that holding them back all these years was its own kind of cruelty.
I worried that saying them out loud made them more true, harder to escape.
Even if I felt the emotion, I couldn’t say it out loud, and I justified it back then by telling myself that I didn’t want to get Stephen’s hopes up about where we were headed.
We were a fling. Not meant to last. Incredible sex that I was tempted to dress up as something more.
Now that I’m older, I can see us for what we were.
Two people who cared deeply about each other.
So deeply that we were afraid to show it, afraid to own it, afraid to give each other the power that comes with this kind of intense, unwavering love.
Because once you admit it, how do you ever settle for anything less?
And even if we didn’t call it love, it lingered in the air between us, in the touches we shared, in the caring we gave to each other in times of need.
Or at least in the caring he gave so freely to me.
I was such an idiot. Trying to hold back this enormous wave of love that’ll drown me, but I’d have died happy.
I’ll gladly spend the rest of my life putting Stephen first if he’ll let me.
I don’t need anything but him and Landon and our little family unit.
Raul can have all the rest. I don’t need it.
“I’m sorry,” I say as Stephen kisses me. “I’m sorry I never said the words. I’ve felt them for so long.”
“I need to be inside you,” Stephen says, stripping away my shirt and unsnapping my bra in hurried movements. “I need to be so fucking close to you right now.”
“Yes,” I breathe out, yanking at his belt, unsnapping and then unzipping his jeans.
We can’t get undressed quickly enough, and then he sits at the top of the bed, back braced against the headboard, and he tugs me onto his lap so I’m straddling him.
For a brief instant, the idea of asking about protection enters my mind, and then I dismiss it. I don’t want any barriers between us. I hover over him, and he puts his hands in my hair as I start to lower myself onto him.
He’s big, and I love the stretch as I sink onto him. As though my body has been waiting for someone to fill me up like this again for years. One of his hands eases along the small of my back, urging me to take him deeper. I let my head fall back, as he kisses a trail along my throat and collarbone.
“Fuck, you feel good,” he murmurs. “So good. Nothing in my life has ever felt as good as this.”
Once I’ve taken him all the way in, he adjusts my legs so every rise and fall brushes our bodies together, creating a delicious tension.
He memorized all the ways to make me feel good a long time ago, but I’m still a little surprised at how quickly those instincts return.
Like the memory of us sat a little below the surface for both of us, just waiting for a chance to reveal itself again.
“I don’t come if you don’t come,” he says. “I mean it. You deserve that. You deserve this.” But his voice is strained, and I wonder if he’ll really be able to keep that promise.
It doesn’t matter, though, because I can feel myself climbing higher, body tightening in a way I haven’t even come close to in years. Some part of me has finally remembered how to feel, how to get lost in a moment. Or maybe I just needed to learn how to love.
“I love you,” I say, clutching the back of his neck as everything in me becomes consumed with sensations. The more we move, the more my body responds. The best kind of muscle memory. “I love you.”
“Are you going to come for me, Ava?” he asks against my ear before taking my earlobe in his mouth. “I feel you tightening around my cock. I know you want the release only I can give you. Are you going to take it?”
My limbs start to tremble, and I don’t know if I’m holding on to my sanity by a thread or it’s already leaving my body. “Stephen.” I sound drunk with desire.
“You’re so good at coming for me, baby,” he says, and he drags his nose up my arched neck, breathing me in. “I can’t wait to feel you pulsing around my cock, squeezing me tight. Can you feel your orgasm rising, baby? Is it about to sweep you away?”
“Oh, god,” I say, and I’m so close that I can barely stand it. “I love how good you feel. So big and hard. Being with you is everything. The best.”
“Now that you’re mine again, now that I know you love me, I’m not letting you go. We don’t end, Ava. We just keep fucking going.”
His hands are on my hips, and he brushes us together with more intention, rough in the best way possible.
My head falls on his shoulder, and I can’t stop trembling, like every nerve ending in my body is strung too tight.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt so good in my whole life, but I know there’s more—I remember there’s more.
“Stephen,” I whine. “Please. I love the feel of you so much. I love you so much.”
“Come for me, baby. Then I’ll spill myself deep inside you. Fill you full of me.”
The rumble of his voice thick with desire, combined with his actual words, sends a flash of want through me, pushing me over the edge.
“Oh!” I dig my nails into the back of his head, and then I throw my head back as a rush so powerful it’s almost painful shoots through me.
“Oh, Stephen. Oh my god.” I’m panting as wave after wave crashes over me.
Keeping me secured tightly against him, he flips us over so he’s driving into me with purpose as I keep flexing around him.
His forehead is pressed against mine, and then he kisses me, taking in all my cries of pleasure-pain.
I wrap my legs around him, urging him as deep as I can take him.
In this moment, there is no such thing as close enough. I want to melt into him.
“I want to come inside you, Ava. Is that okay?”
“Yes,” I say. “Yes.” I want that more than I’ve ever wanted anything. “I love you. Yes.”
Then he hitches my leg a little higher on his hip and drives into me one last time. “Fuck, I love you,” he whispers into my ear as his hips kick forward and he spills himself deep inside me. “I love you so fucking much.”