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I brush my fingers over the ink before leaning into her and pressing my lips over her tattoo. “I’m sorry,” I murmur against her soft skin.
Tully nods while discreetly wiping away a stray tear before snuggling back into my side and pretending as though it never happened.
The daylight quickly fades from the room and before I know it, the only light is coming from the moonlight filtering through the window and the television screen which I’m sure will turn itself off eventually.
When she finishes off the tub of ice cream, she reaches across and puts the empty tub on her bedside table before grabbing the remote off her lap. She turns off the TV and dumps the remote at the end of the bed and instantly curls back into me while scooting down the bed a little further.
Tully’s leg slides up over my hip and I can’t resist sliding my hand up over her thigh as her head falls into my chest, right where it belongs. Her hand slides under my shirt until it’s resting against my chest and my eyes involuntarily close in pure satisfaction. Nothing has ever felt so right.
Right here and now…I’m fucking home.
The room is dead silent until her murmurs have my head snapping down to check on her. “I think Spencer is already moving on with Lacey.”
“What? Lacey? As in my cousin, Lacey?”
“Yep.”
“No. That’s not…no. She wouldn’t be interested in a douche like that. Besides, it’s a bit soon, isn’t it? They’re probably just hanging out.”
She shakes her head against my chest. “He’s not the douche you keep thinking he is. He’s sweet and charming. He was great to me for four years and I treated him like shit. He deserved so much better than that.”
“There is nothing better than you, Tully.”
“Maybe to you, but to him…it’s a different story.”
“How so?”
“Can you imagine being in love with someone who could never feel the same, no matter how hard you try and what kind of life you promise them? Every move he made was for nothing. No matter what he did, I couldn’t give myself to him and he should hate me for that. I wasted three years of his life knowing I’d never be able to give him what he needs when he should have been out there looking for the girl who will.”
I hate seeing her so down about this especially after everything we’ve already talked about this evening. I pull her in a little tighter and splay my fingers over her skin. “You can’t be so hard on yourself for not being in love with someone. It’s either there or it’s not, and with Spencer, it wasn’t. You at least did the right thing by letting him go.”
“But that’s just the thing; I didn’t let him go.”
“What?” I grunt. “Don’t fucking tell me I’m lying in bed with another man’s woman.”
“No,” she says. “I mean that I wasn’t the one to let him go. He ended it with me the day after the wedding.”
“Shit, babe,” I say as a deep regret sinks into my soul. I kiss her temple again, realizing that over the past two weeks she’s been dealing with a different kind of heartbreak than I had been picturing. I thought she would have been the one to end it and Spencer was the one wallowing in a pit of self-doubt, but it’s not. It’s been her all this time and I’ve sat back and left her alone when I should have been right there beside her, holding her up. “You should have said something.”
“Couldn’t,” she grumbles. “I just…I wasn’t ready and besides, I didn’t want you assuming I was single and trying to take advantage of that.”
“I wouldn’t have done that,” I tell her. “I’m more than willing to force you to admit what you’re too scared to think about, but you know I would never make a move until I knew you were ready.”
“I’m not ready.”
“I know, that’s why I haven’t kissed you when every single piece of me is screaming to do it.”
Her head tilts up and her eyes instantly find mine before dropping to my lips. The desire is strong in her eyes and I know she wants this just as badly as I do, but the fear overtakes her. She doesn’t trust me and as much as she wants to give herself over to me, she’s not quite there yet.
Tully looks away and with a guttural sigh, returns her head to my chest. “As long as you need, Tullz. I’ll be waiting.”
“I don’t think I ever apologized for my drunken state at the wedding and thanked you for getting me home safe,” she tells me, clearly trying to skip over the whole ‘I’ll be waiting for you’ bullshit. Though, as much as she doesn’t want to hear it, she needed to know and I have a feeling I’ll be reminding her every chance I get.
