Total pages in book: 171
Estimated words: 162003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 810(@200wpm)___ 648(@250wpm)___ 540(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 162003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 810(@200wpm)___ 648(@250wpm)___ 540(@300wpm)
“I love you,” I whispered.
“Love you too, baby girl.” He nuzzled against me and breathed me in. “So fucking much.”
Ryland had beaten the odds. He told me he always would. For me.
I understood his craziness now. I felt the same uncertainty he did every time I had to watch him walk out the door or drive to work. Fear had a permanent place in my heart, and it likely always would. It couldn’t be helped. But I made the most of every single second I had with him. I told him every day how much I loved him.
We were a crazy pair, and our poor son would likely not have any semblance of a normal childhood with the two of us watching over him. But I lived by a new motto now, and it was that there was no such thing as being too protective.
I’d seen the flip side. I’d seen what happened when you hoped for the best or left things to chance. I wouldn’t ever make that mistake again. My son would be well loved and well cared for, and he’d be raised by fiercely protective parents who nobody would ever dare fuck with again.
He came into this world screaming.
When my placenta ruptured, I had no idea what happened. They rushed me into surgery right away, and Jacob Jackson Bennett was delivered four weeks early.
He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. He looked just like Ryland, blue eyes and all. Sometimes when I looked at them, my heart was so full it hurt. I wouldn’t ever let anyone take them away from me again.
I knew Ryland felt the same. There were so many nights that one of us would wake up in a panic at three am, desperately seeking out the other just to know they were still there. That they were real, and they hadn’t disappeared.
We’d consume each other during those nights.
“I need you,” I whispered.
It was all I ever had to say. Ryland wrapped my legs around him and entered me with a long, contented sigh. I clung to his body like it was my lifeline, and he kissed and licked and worshipped me while he moved in time to the beat of our hearts.
This was our morning ritual. Our evening ritual. And our everything in between ritual. We stole every precious moment we could to connect like this. People said we were crazy for still being so in love. It was true. Our love was the craziest thing I’d ever experienced. It knew no bounds. It couldn’t be contained. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Come to the office tomorrow afternoon,” Ryland ordered, already planning out our next encounter. “I want to fuck you over my desk.”
His words had the intended effect, and I detonated around him with an explosion of color behind my eyelids. Ryland followed with a pained grunt as he fell to the bed beside me. He pulled me into his arms and kissed my face until his ragged breathing calmed.
“Who cares about tomorrow?” I teased circles around his chest. “We still have all afternoon.”
Ryland laughed and pulled me even closer, splaying his hand across my belly. I knew what he was thinking without even having to ask. He was worrying about what would happen in six months. When he’d learned what happened with Jake’s birth, he panicked and said we were never going to have any more.
Eventually, I got the doctor to convince him that it was going to be perfectly fine and that they would monitor me carefully just in case.
After the specialist had come to see Ryland, I was a believer in miracles. He’d found a way to help him. To bring him back to me. And while I would never really know if it was medicine or sheer determination, I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was he was there.
***
“What do you think of this one?” Ryland asked.
I glanced at the paper in his hands and shrugged. It was my decision, but every year I’d left it up to him. Even though he’d never said so, I knew it was important to him. So I always let him choose who the foundation’s scholarship would go to that year.
“That was the one I was going to pick.” I smiled and leaned into his touch.
He was so warm, just like always.
He set the paperwork aside, and his hands wandered over my breasts while his lips grazed my chest. I knew what he was kissing. The place I’d been permanently marked, for him.
I’d gotten the tattoo of his and Jake’s heartbeats on our one-year wedding anniversary. Something permanent. Something nobody could ever take away from me again.
His hands caressed my face with a contented sigh as he kissed his way along my neck. Every once in a while his teeth would graze my skin, and then he’d make his claim on me. The darkness that would likely always be a part of Ryland was still there, but it didn’t overshadow him anymore. He still had moments where the grief threatened to swallow him whole, but he knew how to control it now. And I could always tell when he squeezed Jake in his arms a little bit tighter, he was having one of those moments. If there was ever any claim that another man loved his son more than Ryland, you wouldn’t be able to convince me.