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Ford gave me an extra couple of minutes to shower the hair dye from my hair and scrub the paint from my face, but I’d not even given myself the extra thirty seconds it would have taken to dry my body. I’d needed to see her in the flesh, and once I did, I knew I was done for.
She could say or do anything, and I’d forgive everything simply to keep her in my life. Because with her here, now, I’mthis closeto having everything I could possibly want.
All the reasons why don’t matter. Once I’ve earned back her love, we can address that. Once she loves me again, she’ll never leave. I’ll prove it to her.
I remember having a conversation with Dad shortly after she left when he told me words that never left me.
“Son, love is not what you say. It’s what youdo.”
And I woulddoeverything in my power to show her exactly how much she means to me. How much she’salwaysmeant to me.
Having nodded ever so slightly at my request to spend the week, Summer followed me into the house, stopping dead in her tracks upon catching sight of the huge picture in the middle of the foyer.
“Oh my God.” Her voice is scratchy from disuse, and I hear the thinly veiled emotions. “Who painted it?”
“Henry.” I grin widely when her surprise-filled eyes meet mine.
“As in, HenryDeMarco?” She continues, plainly taken aback when I nod. “Wow! He’s really good.”
I give her another minute to appreciate the image as a plethora of reactions plays across her beautiful features.
She’s not changed one iota. Her skin is still like alabaster, smooth and glowing. Her platinum hair sits on her shoulders, shorter than I remember, but it suits her perfectly. Huge doe eyes I’ve missed looking into dominate her entire face, fringed by heavy black lashes. Her lips are pink, the bottom one just slightly larger than the top, made for kissing.
Her body is the body of a woman now. She is more rounded and curvy in areas that were yet to fill out when we’d last been together, and the thought of holding her close outside, of being flush with those delectable curves, was making my dick harden at speed beneath my short white towel.
“Er…Bambi, I need to, umm…I’ll be right back.”
I take off towards the staircase before things get awkward, shouting over my shoulder for Maggie, my housekeeper, to come and make Summer a cup of tea.
“Hello, dearie. I’m Maggie…”
I hear Maggie making her introductions just as I crest the top of the stairs, my towel now tented thanks to my stupid dick.
The fucker has trouble rising on a regular day—something no one other than Layla is aware of—but, of course, today would be the day he’d act up.
I march into my room with a shit-eating grin front and centre on my face.
In the years since Summer’s disappearance, I’d been uninterested in sex. It hadn’t seemed anything out of the ordinary, as all I wanted to get off was her memory and all I needed was my hand.
It wasn’t until I’d made the decision to try to move on that my issues came to light.
Psychological erectile dysfunction, or that’s what the therapist called it.
But I knew it was because my heart and my dick are connected. One can’t work without the other.
“She makes me feel like a horny teenager.” My announcement is for no one, but my grin widens even further at the thought.
Now I just need to make her fall in love with me all over again.
* * *
Having re-dressed myself in some worn navy joggers and an old as fuck Jupiter’s Fallen 1989 World Tour t-shirt, I zip into Bug’s room to find she’s moved from the TV to her bed.
She’s been cleaned of all her Harley Quinn get-up, instead wearing her favourite Ironman pyjamas. Her mop of blonde curls has been tamed into a single braid down her back, as is her usual bedtime request of Serena—she hates waking up in a tangle of hair.
“Daddy! You tookforever.”
She sits forward on her bed—book forgotten and tossed to one side—to pin me with a stare as she crosses her little arms over her chest. I stifle a grin at her attempt to intimidate me because I damn well love how fierce she is.
