AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I press down hard on my back teeth and will myself to keep going. One of us has to do the right thing. It seems like it has to be me.
“We’re only going to be together for the next six months, Jericho. Why put yourself and your family in that type of danger for me.” My voice shakes, quivering with every word, but I’m proud of myself for deciding to make the sacrifice.
“You are my family.”
My heart slows on hearing those words, then it warms when he takes my hands again.
“Jericho—”
“You are my family River and I can’t let you go in six months.”
“What?” I give him a narrowed stare.
“I don’t want you to leave in six months. I don’t want you to leave me ever.”
“You want to stay married to me?” I check to be sure that what I’m hearing is what he’s saying.
“Yes. I want to stay married to you because I love you.”
I bite down on my bottom lip so hard I nearly pierce the skin. He would never know just how much it means to me to hear him say those words. I haven’t heard him say them to me in over eight years.
“I love you too, Jericho.”
“Do you want to stay married to me?” He searches my eyes.
I nod as true joy swells my soul. It’s strange to feel like that when I’ve been stuck in the darkness for days. “More than anything.”
He smiles but then the light in his eyes dims. “I wish I never let you go. You were always it for me. The one. The one girl I would have wanted to spend the rest of my life with and have everything.”
Everything he’s saying is so beautiful my soul leaps but the questions I’ve always had resurface. All the whys and what happened questions that have lived in my head all these years.
“You said we grew apart.”
He drops his head for a moment, then shakes it. “It was that.”
“Then what was it?”
“I got myself in trouble.” He speaks in that hollow voice I remember from Italy. It holds darkness and pain, but I’m so focused on what he’s saying that I pay more attention to that.
“Trouble?” I intensify my stare and process what he’s saying.
Trouble. That was why we broke up? All these years I thought he didn’t love me, but it was about trouble.
I think of all the things he’s shared with me since we’ve been together. The drugs and his father. Could the trouble be something to do with that?
“There’s…. some stuff I have to tell.”
“What stuff? What trouble was it Jericho?”
“I just need some time… just a little more time before I talk about it. Can you give me that?”
I’m so eager to know that my skin is burning, but the lost look in his eyes compels me to agree.
“Okay. Okay.”
“Thank you.”
He stands and reaches out his hand to me. I take it and he pulls me in for a hug.
