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But now the wound was open. It was agony, but all the poison could finally come out. “It was my fault,” he spat. “My fucking fault. I should have been there!”
“No!” I told him. “No, it wasn’t!”
“I didn’t deserve them. She was just the sweetest, funniest…and Max was...Jesus, he was a really good kid…”
“I know,” I sobbed. “I know.” And I meant it. From the way he’d described them, I liked them both. “But you did deserve them, you’re a really good father. A really good guy.”
“They were— They were—” He took big gulps of air, fighting to get the words out. “They were meant to be my forever and they’re just gone. And I don’t know—I don’t get what I did wrong.”
I threw myself against his chest. “Nothing. Nothing, you didn’t do a thing wrong.” I hugged him tight and he hugged me back even tighter.
“I miss them,” he sobbed. “I miss them so much.”
Oh JD… I’d always drawn strength from how big and solid he was. Now I lent him my strength, willingly, clutching his muscled body to me as it shook and shook. The sun blazed down below the horizon, the sky burning orange then red and finally succumbing to cool, soft darkness.
JD’s sobs died away and he just held me, emotionally wrung out. But he felt lighter, somehow, as if something painful had been extracted. I knew he wasn’t healed but it felt like he was in a place where the healing could finally start.
He pushed me gently back so he could look at me. His voice had lost that granite certainty: he was venturing onto unfamiliar ground. “When I started to get attached to you and Cody, it felt like you were replacing them.”
I shook my head, thinking of my dad. “Nothing can ever replace them. They’ll stay with you always. What we have…” I knitted my fingers together.
“This is something new.”
He nodded, then pulled me into another hug. And as he held me, I felt his strength gradually returning.
Manhattan was lighting up, becoming a glittering, night-time kingdom. He drew back and looked at me in the glow of the lights. The pain in his eyes wasn’t gone, but it didn’t rule him, now. And when he spoke, he was certain, again.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he told me. “I won’t do it again.”
I nodded. I knew he wouldn’t.
He cupped my cheek with his palm and ran his thumb along my cheekbone, staring into my eyes. He went to speak and then frowned, frustrated, like he was trying to find the words. “From the first time I saw you, that day in Mexico, I was just blown away. Not just ‘cause you’re beautiful. Not just ‘cause you’re a great mom. You’re special, damn near magical. The way you think…” He gestured helplessly at the skyscrapers across the water. “You imagine your way right up into the clouds and then you build your way there with math I could never understand.” His voice slowed down. “You’re starlight and dreams. And I don’t know what you see in a big dumb grunt from Texas—”
“Everything,” I said quickly.
That made those gorgeous lips twist into a smile. “...but I do know I never want to let you go.”
And he leaned down and kissed me.
The first kiss was soft and sweet. Just a gentle brush of his lips on mine: a fresh start, deliciously free and full of promise. Silvery tremors rolled all the way down to my toes.
He drew back and looked at me, as if confirming that this was real. Then he pulled me to him and the next kiss was urgent and fierce, a breathless, fearless, making-up-for-lost-time kiss, his hands crushing my softness to his muscled chest. The old-fashioned maleness of him hit me full force, even stronger for seeing that moment of vulnerability. I inhaled him, got drunk on him, my hands sliding over the hardness of his forearms and the smooth globes of his biceps. He took my head in both hands and kissed me even harder, and I felt myself disintegrate, just dissolve into a Lorna-shaped pillar of silvery glitter that was being sucked in a shimmering twister right up to heaven.
We both came out of the kiss heavy-lidded and slow. He looked down at me and I saw his gaze run over my body. When his eyes came back up to my face, they were clouded with lust. And suddenly, my gaze was flicking over him: the brute power of his wide shoulders where they stretched out his suit jacket, the contours of his chest under his white shirt, his darkly stubbled jaw and that hard upper lip…
We both leaned in and this time, he growled and demanded entrance, spreading me open, and I melted and submitted. He pulled me full-length against him, and together we fell against the car. The kiss took on a rhythm, pulsing through both of us as we twisted and moved. We emerged from it panting, staring at each other in the darkness. We couldn’t carry on, out here on the street. But this felt way too special to be put on hold while we drove back to the penthouse.
