Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
She stands and crosses the space between us, stopping just short of touching, but her warmth and scent tempt me.
“I’m not saying we have to get married.” She licks her lips and stares down at the tennis shoes on the floor between us. “But I want us to build our lives together again, and not because it’s what’s best for the kids or because it makes sense for our business.”
She presses her hand to my chest, spreading her fingers over my breastbone, her eyes filled and brimming over with so much love, my throat catches fire. “I want you back.”
My heart stops when she says it, and I step away from her touch as if I’ve been burned. I’m torn between walking out that door and fucking her against a wall, locking the door so she can’t ever get away. Making her say it over and over again.
I want you back. I want you back. I want you back.
My emotions are rioting.
Confusion and frustration.
Hope.
Fear.
I don’t need Musa’s feelings wheel to know I’m scared shitless and angry as hell, but I’m not sure I fully understand why. Not the surface reasons, but the insidious ones that hide behind my traumas and settle into the cracks of my past.
I stare at her and bark out a laugh. “So you had a pregnancy scare with a side of epiphany and I’m supposed to believe that changes everything? That night when I asked if you loved me, when it mattered so damn much, you weren’t sure.”
“Here’s what I can’t do.” She counts them on her fingers. “I can’t go back to that night and change what I said, what I felt. I can’t undo the time we were apart. I can’t unbreak your heart.”
Tears roll down her cheeks, into the corners of her mouth.
“I can’t unbreak mine, either, because whether you believe it or not, as soon as you walked out that door, there was a part of me right here”—she bangs a fist over her heart—“that wanted you back, and I’ve been fighting it ever since.”
“And it had nothing to do with seeing me with Vashti?” I ask dryly, probing. “Rediscovering that you actually did want me?”
“Did it jar me to see you with her? Of course it did, but every time I was in a room with you, I wanted you. I’ve never not wanted you. I think I couldn’t imagine saying I wanted you back because I didn’t believe you’d forgive me.”
She twists her fingers together at her waist.
“How could you forgive me when I couldn’t forgive myself? I used to tell Dr. Abrams I just wanted to feel like myself again.”
“What did she say?”
“She said I would never be that person again. Not exactly the woman I was before. I was fundamentally changed by what happened. It took time and therapy and the right meds before I could learn to be happy as the person who remained after I lost so much.”
Her eyes blaze with sincerity and passion and everything I used to fantasize I would see there again.
“I’d like for you to trust that the person standing in front of you has done the work to get better and to understand how I lost myself. I’ve developed the tools to cope when I inevitably lose more, because losing things you love is a guarantee in this life.”
She takes my hand and presses it over her heart, her lashes spiked with tears. “Ask me again if I love you, Si. Ask me now.”
The words wait on my tongue, but there’s a gate set over my mouth, like if I let them loose, despite all my fears and reservations, I won’t be able to resist her.
There is a part of me that knows this is where I belong. There’s another part, though: the self-preserving part that remembers she gave up on us and it ruined me. The woman standing in front of me is the fighter I needed then.
How could I not love her?
She curls her fingers into a fist over my heart, and if she asked, I would carve it out of my chest and give it to her. Maybe that’s the problem when you love a woman and want to give her everything, only to lose it all.
I still haven’t asked the question when she closes the last few inches between us and leans up to my ear. Reflexively, my hand goes to her hip, possessive, anchoring her to me in case she decides to run.
“Yes, Josiah,” she says in a watery whisper to the question I couldn’t make myself ask. “I love you.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Josiah
There’s a crack in Dr. Musa’s professional inscrutability when I arrive at his office. I was so disoriented after leaving Yasmen that I got on the interstate instead of driving the short distance to my house. Before I realized it, I was en route to his office. When I called him from the car and asked if we could talk, he’d had a cancellation and could squeeze me in. He sounded unbothered, but when I enter his office, he watches me with a strange expression.