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He left the door open for me and seems to expect me to follow him, so I do, my tummy tumbling as I cross the threshold and gently close the glass door behind me.
Memories of the last time I followed a Granville into a shower stall creep in and fill me with insecurity. It doesn’t help that Milo apparently wants me in the shower with him, but he isn’t speaking. It doesn’t reallyfeellike he wants me here.
“You’re not mad at me, are you?” I ask tentatively.
He turns, his gaze softening as he looks at my anxious face. He shakes his head, reaching for me. “No, of course I’m not mad at you. Come here.”
I go into his embrace, wrapping my arms around his middle and pressing my bare body against his. My eyes close and I rest my head on his firm, muscled chest. It feels so good to be here, but I’m afraid to trust it. Lately, we’ve felt like a plank bridge that’s half-rotted so every step you take, you risk plummeting to your doom.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been dealing with this well, Kennedy,” he rumbles. “I know you’ve needed stability, and you’ve always been able to count on me for that before, but this whole thing… I haven’t coped as well as I‘ve wanted to.”
His words loosen a tightness I’ve carried in my chest for days now.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” I tell him. “There’s no manual, and you’ve never been through it before. It’s not an easy thing to navigate.”
“I’ve been paralyzed with fear, afraid I’m going to make a wrong move with massive repercussions. That’s not how I normally handle things, but this feeling of losing you… it’s stirring shit up. Long-buried shit, shit I never wanted to feel again.”
I want to tell him he’ll never lose me, that I’m his for as long as he wants me to be, but it also feels like he isn’t finished and I don’t want to interrupt.
“When Edie died, it was sudden and unexpected. There was no warning, no possible chance to stop it. After it happened, I would lay awake nights thinking of all the things I could have done differently. Her car needed an oil change—why wasn’t that the day I scheduled it for? I could have rearranged my schedule, given her a ride to work and picked her up. Hell, I made enough money that she didn’tneedto work. If she wouldn’t have had a job, she wouldn’t have been on the road that day. Any fucking thing I could think of to avert disaster, but it was all after the fact. I would have given literally anything to be able to rewind time and go back to before it happened and do things differently, to be able to stop it, to save her.”
I swallow, my grip on him tightening protectively. I can’t stand the idea thatI’vereminded him of that painful time in his life before me. “I’m sorry this has stirred all that up for you. I shouldn’t have said that last night, I just…”
“No, you should say whatever you feel. I don’t want you wasting energy censoring yourself for me. I’ll be fine, I can handle it. I’m just trying to explain that, even though the crisis was different, all I can fucking think about is why wasn’t I able to stop this from happening to you? Why did I let you leave that goddamn hotel room? Why didn’t I notice the phone lit up on the seat beside me? But since I know there’s nothing I can do to change what has already happened, my focus shifts to, ‘how can I stop it from getting worse?’ How can I protect younowto ensure it stops here and things don’t spiral out of my control? That I don’t lose you, too. I want to put you in a fucking bubble, Kennedy, because I’m terrified of anything else hurting you—whether that’s you, or me, or Jonathan. My instinct is to control and protect you right now, and that isn’t what you need, but it’s the only place my mind will go.”
“You can control and protect me all you want,” I murmur, my face flushing. “I just don’t want you to treat me like a leper.”
He catches my chin and tilts it up gently to make me meet his gaze. “I am so fucking sorry if I made you think for one second I didn’t want to touch you. That has never been the issue.”
I want to look away, but he doesn’t want me to, so I hold his gaze even though I’m deeply uncomfortable looking him in the eye as I say this next thing. “I thought maybe it was because of what I did with Jonathan.”
He shakes his head meaningfully, so I see he’s sincere. “No.”
“I haven’t started my period yet,” I blurt, voicing a concern that makes my stomach drop. “I looked it up online. Usually after three days, people do, but I haven’t. And I read that if the sex happened during ovulation, um… the pill won’t work. I don’t know if that means...”
He nods, understanding what I’m saying even though I can’t finish the sentence. I feel horrible for the light dimming in his beautiful blue eyes, so I hug him.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I should have said something. I shouldn’t have let him…”
He tightens his arms around me, holding me as the hot water beats down on my back. “It isn’t your fault. It doesn’t matter. We’ll figure it out.” He pauses, then says carefully, “I don’t know the details of what happened, Kennedy. If you had to make an educated guess, do you think there’s a better chance Jonathan would be the father, or…?”
“Only Jonathan came inside me,” I say, even though the words make me want to die. “No one else finished, but there was contact. I just wanted to be abundantly safe.”
I don’t want to say more, and he doesn’t make me. I feel him nod over my head, then he murmurs, “All right. Well, we’ll deal with that if we have to.”
My stomach feels a bit sick thinking about it. He probably doesn’t want to think about it, either, so he lets me go and grabs the washcloth.
Once my stomach stops hurting, the shower is nice. It’s tender and intimate. Milo washes my hair for me, then pulls me back against him and soaps up my tits. Excitement courses through me as he drags the soapy cloth down my belly, and my eyes drift closed as he runs it across my inner thighs.
It’s impossible not to get turned on with him touching my naked body like this, even if he’s only cleaning me. The evidence of his arousal prods me, too. I want to touch him and give him relief, but I’m too afraid he doesn’t want me to.
After the shower, we dry off and head back to the bedroom. We should probably eat, but I’m not hungry. Not for food, anyway.
I’m hungry for the closeness he offers when we lie naked in his bed and he reaches for me. I scoot closer, settling in with one of his arms wrapped around me, one hand lying absently on his chiseled abdomen.
I love his hands so my gaze drifts to it, but I frown seeing how red his knuckles are.
“What happened here?” I ask, gently lifting his hand to look at it.
