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This was having everything—a life and a future—only to have it ripped from us. This was somehow finding our way back to this exact place despite it all.
The pain of what we’d gone through only made it more profound.
More beautiful.
A shudder worked through my body and seemed to pass to his when he pulled out. His chest heaving and lips hovering just over my own for those long moments before he stole a soft, slow kiss. Lips barely brushing against my own. Tongue nothing more than an affectionate tease.
And then his hands were moving. Wrapping around me as he shifted us so we were on our sides and facing each other. Laying in silence as we continued coming down from the intensity of the moment.
It wasn’t until both our bodies had stilled from the subtle aftershocks that he said, “I can feel it.”
My eyebrows lifted in question, but I just wove one of my hands through his and waited for him to explain.
“You know when you can’t think of a word, and it feels like it’s right there, on the tip of your tongue?” When I hummed in acknowledgment, he said, “That’s what it feels like. Like I know what happened. Like I know my life, myreal life, but I can’t fully grasp it yet. It’s just sitting there. On the edge of my mind. Waiting to be freed by that one push that’ll send everything rushing to the surface.”
“Is that a new feeling?” I asked, an appreciative sound rising in my throat when his fingers began trailing over my spine.
“Started noticing it in the kitchen after I remembered what happened to you,” he confirmed as his hand drifted over my hip and between our bodies to brush along my stomach. “Is that why we don’t use condoms?”
“You don’t remember that,” I said in understanding, my head bobbing softly as I tried to clear my throat—the emotion that built there swiftly and unbidden. “At first, it was because we were careless. Got swept up too fast in the moments and didn’t stop to think until it was too late. Then because we couldn’t imagine anything else. But after losing—”
I swallowed again and again, eyes unfocused for long moments as flashes of those days tore through my thoughts before I could block them. The pain and humiliation. The agony and sorrow. All of it stealing the small joy we’d had.
“We decided we’d let whatever happened happen,” I finally said, lifting one of my shoulders.
His eyes searched mine, and I could see the question lingering within that well of worry and pain. Wondering if anything had happenedsince.
“It’s just been us,” I answered when nearly a minute passed in tense silence, the tremor in my voice betraying me when I added, “Funny how life works, huh?”
His eyebrows slanted low just before his forehead fell to mine. Head moving subtly as he roughed out, “Nothing about that’s funny.”
He captured my lips before I could respond and easily parted them the way he’d always done. Silently asking. Softly demanding. And then he was kissing me...
Slowly. Deeply. Sliding his tongue against my own in a gentle, adoring dance as he continued that soft brush against my stomach.
“One day,” he breathed against my lips.
“I know.” I wasn’t sure if there was any strength behind the words or if I’d only mouthed them, but it didn’t matter. Chase heard them all the same.Feltthem.
One day, we would have what we’d lost.
One day, we would have the wedding we’d been planning.
One day, our lives would be the way they used to.
First, we needed to make it the rest of the way over this hurdle that was doing everything to break us.
“Are we just going to keep staring at the box?” Konrad asked a couple days later, stretching his arms across the island and nearly touching the pink box that sat in the middle, practically begging to be opened.
“Go ahead,” Brandon said with a smirk. “Open it and see what happens.”
Konrad pushed back to cross his arms over his chest. Eyes rolling irritably. “Asshole,” he murmured.
Brandon and Konrad had shown up with breakfast long before Scarlet’s friends had arrived for their Friday morning workout, as promised. None of us had said a word to each other or Litany when she’d come running in to toss the box of pastries on the island and use the bathroom.
She also hadn’t done or said anything other than giving us a flirty wink with a“Boys”as she’d hurried for the garage.
I hadn’t known what to think. Both Konrad and Brandon had sworn up and down that she’d never been that tame, and none of us knew what it could mean.
