AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He started the car.
Headlights entered the deserted street.
I dug my fingers into his thigh. “Oh, God!”
He stretched his arm across my chest, pressing me back into the seat, and wrapped his hand around my outer thigh. I grasped his arm crossed over my breasts with my other hand, curling my fingers into his bicep. I squeezed my eyes shut. My chest cavity emptied of everything but the pounding of my heart.
“You’re okay, Ruby-mine. I’ve got you, koukla mou.”
“Don’t let go,” I gasped, clinging to his limbs and closing my eyes against the outside world. I shuddered as the oncoming headlights registered across my closed lids.
“Never,” he affirmed, his voice gruff. “Never, Ruby-mine.”
I pulled in half a breath, then another, and another, until I filled my lungs.
Vander pulled back onto the main road, then the highway.
The smooth rumble of the familiar highway, bringing me closer to home with every passing second, slowly eased the panic inside me. When it abated to a tolerable level, a familiar, bone deep weariness took hold.
I leaned my head on his wide shoulder and slightly loosened my death grip on his limbs. His solid presence steadied me.
Twenty minutes later, we crossed the city border into Milltown.
“I’d like to stop somewhere and talk. Is there somewhere that you would consider safe for us to do that?”
My heart skipped in my chest. “If you take me home, I promise, I won’t get out of the car until you’ve had your say. Please take me home.”
He rubbed his hand up and down my thigh. “Okay, Ruby mou. Okay.”
In the driveway, he rolled the windows down a bit and turned off the ignition. I stayed where I was. Still feeling exposed, I did not want to sit close to the car door, but my breath came easy.
Still stroking my thigh, he asked softly, “What happened there?”
I leaned my head back on the seat. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“What do you want to know, Ruby? I’ll tell you anything or everything. Whatever you need to know to move forward. There is only one truth I want you to know right now if you’ll let me give you that.”
“Okay,” I murmured tiredly. “Tell me.”
“Twenty years ago, I honestly believed you didn’t love me enough to make a life with me, and that was why you weren’t coming for the summer. Nothing else made sense to me.”
I stayed quiet. I promised I would hear him, and I would, but that didn’t mean I would be willing to open myself up again to the soul-destroying pain only he was capable of inflicting on me.
“I failed three courses that first semester back,” he stated.
I flinched and he continued.
“I nearly flunked out of my program entirely. In hindsight, I wish I had transferred here, but I truly believed you didn’t want me. I moved on because I didn’t know a different choice existed for me.”
I closed my eyes, swallowed down the tears struggling to rise in my throat, and nodded. I could understand that.
“After the conference, I didn’t look back because I knew if I didn’t leave right that second that I would abandon my son. I thought of nothing else that whole weekend and came perilously close to doing just that. I couldn’t live with that.”
I understood that as well. I nodded.
“I didn’t contact you because I was stuck there, you were stuck here, and I wanted you to have a chance to build a life with a man who could put you first. I felt I owed it to you.”
That.
