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I unlocked the latch and opened it. He reached for me, and our bodies crashed into one another. “I’ve been going out of my mind. She tricked me into attending dinner, and I only just managed to escape. I am so sorry.”
I choked back a fresh wave of tears and nestled my face into his neck. He cradled the back of my head, whispering soothing noises into my hair. Just the feel of his arms wrapped around me lessened my anguish, and when familiar hands tried to peel him away, I resisted.
I didn’t want to leave the sanctuary of his arms.
Not yet.
“Pen, babe, look at me.” Blake slipped his hand between us and forced us apart. His fingers tipped my chin. “There’s my girl. I told her everything. She admitted to knowing all about you. But she—”
“I… I had a visitor earlier,” I blurted.
If I didn’t say it now, I might never get the words out.
Blake’s eyes widened. “What? Who?”
“Your uncle, he came to see me.”
“He didwhat?”
I shrugged out of his grip and paced to the other side of the room. This was likely to go only one way—Blake ending up mad as hell.
“Penny,” he said sternly. “What did my uncle want?”
Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself and said, “He wanted me to leave Columbus. He offered me money if I walked out of your life immediately.”
Blake’s mouth dropped open, but his eyes gave away his shock. “He wouldn’t,” he said. “He’s done some crazy shit in the past, but he wouldn’t do something like that. Are you sure it was my uncle?”
“Blake,” I said softly, stepping forward. “It was your uncle. He had a case full of money with him. He was very clear about what he wanted.”
When you spend most of your time alone, dealing with your own pain, the pain of others isn’t something you have to experience. But watching Blake’s expression change from complete shock to heartbreak and utter devastation was one of the hardest things I’d ever witnessed.
He literally broke in front of me, and all I wanted was to go to him; to wrap my arms around him and take it all away. But how could I when I was the cause of it all, and there was a chance he wouldn’t want me to.
Defeated, he said, “He wouldn’t… He wouldn’t do that.”
Tears rolled down my face, but this time they weren’t for me; they were for the man I loved.
I took another step forward, aware that if I pushed him too far, he might break. “I am so sorry.”
He closed his eyes, balling his fists at his sides, and dropped his head back. My control snapped, and I rushed over to him, wrapping myself around him. His touch had healed me; maybe I could do the same for him in his moment of need.
“I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry,” I repeated over and over.
I don’t know how long we stood like that, but eventually, the tension ebbed away, and his hands found their way around my back. “I need you, Penny.”
As selfish as it was, I needed to hear that. I needed to know that this didn’t change anything between us.
“I’m here, Blake. I will always be here.”
He lifted me off the floor and carried me to the couch. He pulled off the throw blanket and adjusted us so that he was sitting on the far end, and I was lying with my head in his lap. He covered me with the blanket and slipped one of his hands underneath my sweater. Warm fingers began to draw circles on my skin.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” he whispered.
“We seem to be saying that a lot to one another lately,” I replied with a sad smile.
He leaned down, pressing his lips to my forehead, and my eyes fluttered shut. “Do you ever look back and wish things had been different?”
“Of course, I do,” I said.
