Page 66 of Left of Forever

“She’s a friend,” he says calmly. Because that’s what he’s capable of. Staying calm in the face of life-altering disaster so we can move through it. I want to throttle him until he’s as rattled as I am. “She’s a friend who I confided in about you and me. After Silas’s accident, I… I… She’s like ten years younger than I am. She’s a kid! I did some work on a campaign fire when the rest of the crew took time off over fall, and that’s what I know her from. She’s just a friend, Wren. I swear on everything.”

“Then what the hell does she know that I don’t? ‘Tell me’ what, Ellis? Tell. Me. What.”

“That I still love you,” he gasps, his eyes falling shut. “That I still love you. I was worried telling you too soon wouldn’t be fair. I needed to tell you the right way. I needed to show you the right way.”

I want to say it back. I want to say it back, but I’m still scrabbling. “But you could tell someoneelse? You could talk about everything with someone else before you could tell me?” I ask. There’s not enough room in this truck cab for everything I’m feeling. I’m out before I’m even aware that I’ve made the decision to be and he’s right behind me, his car door shutting right after mine and his steps coming for me.

“Stop.” I hold up a palm. I know if I look at him I’ll lose my nerve. “My bad thing for the day. It’s the last one I’m going to do because it’s worse than all the rest. But the thing Ihated… that I stillhate. Is how you didn’t trust me. Not now, and not then, either.”

The way his breath sounds when it gusts out of him again letsme know he’s holding back tears. I keep my eyes closed. “What are you talking about?” he croaks.

God, he’s been trying so hard, but I know it in my marrow that I’ll have to drag this out of him, and I don’t know if I have the strength. “Did you ever want another baby?” I ask.

I hear his heel skid on the packed earth. “We tried for three years. After the ectopic, they said there was a higher chance of it happening again. You could havedied. I wasn’t going to risk it.”

“Did you ever want another baby?”

“Wren.Byrd.” The hitch in his voice claws at me. “I wanted to give you everything you ever wanted. Ever.”

“Did you ever want another baby, Ellis?”

“I wanted you to be happy.”

“Did you ever—”

“No,” he says, the syllable ripped from his chest. And now I open my eyes, just in time to see his face crumple before he wipes a palm across his mouth. The rest comes barreling free. “No. I didn’t want to take care ofanyoneelse. I wastiredof trying to hold all these pieces of myself together all the time. Too fucking tired to take on more!” The billows of his breath get ragged. “I wanted to make you happy, though. I’d… I thought I’drobbedyou of so much, Wren. Of more of a life! I felt like I’d trapped you into it with me in the first place, however accidental it was, getting pregnant so young, I still felt like I’d robbed you of something. At the very least, of getting to experiencethat, getting to feel excited and prepared for a baby. Having to do it when we were kids was fuckinghard. I couldn’t stand the idea of taking anything else away from you.”

I shatter, all my fissures expanding into one jagged, flooding canyon. “You robbed me ofYOU! Don’t you see how not telling me how you really felt robbed me ofyou?!” I wail. “Three years, and I felt every single day. Ifeltyou pulling away. You workedmore and more. You were quieter and quieter. You retreated and retreated and retreated. And I thought it was because you weresad. And you didn’t want to go to therapy then. Didn’t want to talk to someone else back then. And you wouldn’t talk tome!”

“You wouldn’t talk to me, either!” he cries. Angry tears hit the dirt between us. “You’d getsilent, too, and most of the time, I couldn’t stand the thought of pushing you, knowing how disappointed and upset you were. Every fucking month.”

“I thought—” I gulp back a shuddering breath. “I thought you were disappointed inme.”

He looks horror-stricken. The moon and stars are so bright I can see every line of his expression. “No.”

“I know it’s not reasonable,” I say. “Iknowit’s not the truth now. But at the time when I was drowning in everything else? That’s how it felt to me. And I started to resent it.” I have to pause to let out a sob. “I started to resent you. How much I needed you. How much I wanted you. While you could just pull further and further from me. And then… and then, Jesus Christ, Ellis. Threeyears, and then threedaysafter my surgery, you tell me you’re done?! You’re getting a vasectomy. I felt like you’d backhanded me. It was your choice. Just like what we decided to do when I got pregnant with Sam was mine. But right then and there, it was clear to me that you’d never wanted to in the first place.” I quit struggling against the tears and just let them fall. “After everything. Everything we were to each other, to know that you wouldn’t trust me to care about what you wanted? And then things started with Mom, who’d never needed anyone before, and nothing feltfair, and I just… Everything made me angry. All the time. And I hated who I was. I started getting short-tempered with Sam. I hated going to work. I hated that Icouldn’thate you. When I said I wanted out and you didn’t fight me at all, I thought I might,but the closest I ever got was hating myself. I couldn’t hate you, couldn’t even stay angry with you.” Another burning sob. “Because I know you. I know what kind of man you are.” I stab a finger at him. “I. Love. You. I would chooseyou. Over everything! Over everyone.” He’s a statue other than a rogue tear tracking down his cheek. “I still would. I still love you.” I put both hands over my breastbone like I can hold my heart in place there, the cage of my ribs not enough to keep me together. “Whatever you want from me, Ellis. It’s all yours. It’s always been yours.”

He reaches me in a single stride.

He’s not gentle, and I’m grateful for it. I’m grateful he’s as messy and out of control as I am for once. He circles my wrists and tosses my hands down to my sides, his mouth replacing my palms. He kisses me hard there, right against the bones of my chest. I feel it like a volt rattling through my frame. My fingers come back up to curl in his hair when his teeth scrape against my clavicle. I let out a small cry against his jaw when he nips at my neck, at the way his grip leaves my waist and tightens around my hips. His mouth chases mine and swallows down every sound after that. My spine bows, our stomachs pressing into each other, the metal of his belt biting into my soft skin. For the million and one kisses we’ve shared, I’ve never felt like this. I want to be in him and for him to be in me. I want tobeEllis. I want him tobeme. I want to be one single body and spirit, and I want him to feel what I feel for him like air in his own lungs.

“I’m sorry. I was blaming myself. I thought I was killing you, because I didn’t want it the way you did, and then when you almost…” He chokes back a sound. “I’m sorry,” he rasps against my lips, his hands in my hair now. Cupping my jaw now. Around my throat now. His lips are salty with tears. “The worst had happened before. My mom getting sick. My dad. Sometimes the worst really does happen and I knew it could happen again. And I thought it was my fault and I just—I shut down.”

“I’m sorry,” I cry back, our noses sliding across each other and tongues licking into our mouths. I can feel the heat still coming off the truck engine beside me and I don’t care that a tent is right there on the other side, I want him to fuck me into the ground at our feet. I don’t think anything is more important than having him moving inside me as soon as possible. I’m practically climbing the length of him, blindly trying to strip off his clothes. He hauls me up and wraps my thighs around his hips and starts toward the tent. My shirt hits the deck before we make it inside. He lets me leave the kiss to yank off his.

And then I’m laid down onto a soft bed, white canvas above me and white sheets all around me, a glowing lantern strung up in the peak of the tent. Everything a clouded blur other than him. He’s peeling off my shorts with quiet determination and pushing down his pants, and then he’s there, naked and glorious above me.

“I have to tell you more, Byrd,” he says gruffly, his eyes black and greedy over every inch of me, following the path of his hands. “But I need you so bad” comes out of him in a whispered breath. “I have more I need to say.”

“Later,” I say. “Say more later.” Right now, I want him to take and take and take. I spread my legs, catching his hand at my thigh and guiding it where I need him. We both groan when he slips against me. When he feels how wet I am. “I needyou.”

He drags himself over me, kneeling between my legs, his entire body trembling. He’s achingly hard. Has to push himself down to notch against me. Tears I can’t bother to be embarrassed about slip from my eyes when he nudges the head of his cock inside me.

“Don’t be gentle,” I say, voice tight. “I won’t break.” If living without him this long taught me anything, it’s that.

He doesn’t move right away. He’s lost in thought, eyes roving over me with so much adoration it makes me ache. I’ve never felt more beautiful. He shapes me with his palms; from the abundant swell of my hips to the sharp dip of my waist. His hand spreads wide over the flat of my stomach. He traces the shimmering stripes below my belly button and all my scars with his fingertips.

I writhe and try to pull him deeper, but he’s brutally stubborn, even as he holds himself there, shaking with need. He thumbs my clit lovingly.