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He was caught between two worlds. The one where he had married Charity, and she was his wife, and the one where that darker part of him pressed down on him. He didn’t like that it had spilled over onto her; he didn’t like that she knew about it.
He should apologize to her. Flat out. Just tell her that they needed to forget that it happened. That would be the best thing to do.
Suddenly, he came to that spot. The sun shone across the pathway, around the big tree where he had first seen her. All those years ago. And then suddenly, she was there. Her blond hair was loose, and she was wearing a floral dress, demure as ever, demure as she had once been.
“What are you doing?”
“I was thinking. I was thinking that I can’t demand total honesty from you unless I give you total honesty back.” He didn’t like that. He didn’t want it. Because it would compromise what he was working to protect. But she went on anyway. “All of me. I’ve been working on it. But in some ways I didn’t even know what that was. I’m still figuring out who I am, Lachlan. Because for so many years I just... My dad was such a good dad, so when I say this I don’t want you to think that I’m saying he wasn’t. I just think that even the best of parents give us issues. He loved me. He sacrificed for me. And I internalized that. I wanted to be like him. Whether I actually was like him or not. Does that make sense?”
Yes, it did. Because he knew the flipside of that. He wanted to be nothing like his dad, even though he knew that he might be.
So yeah. He understood.
“There are a lot of reasons that I suppress certain parts of myself. To not get hurt is really the primary one. But some of that was to not hurt Dad, to not get hurt by him, to not have him be disappointed in me in any way. Some of it was to avoid having a crush on you that was impossible, believe me. But even down to choosing Byron. I wanted Dad to be proud of the man that I chose. So I chose one that was like him. That was staid and steady, but I realize that that wasn’t all there was to my dad. He was a whole person. He had a whole life. A relationship with my mother. And if he hadn’t, then I wouldn’t even exist. So the idea that he somehow... I didn’t really ever want to think about it. But of course he had a sex life. As horrifying as I find that. What he chose to do or not do with that once he had me is another story entirely. But he was a real person. With all those aspects to him. Why I thought I wasn’t allowed to be, I don’t know. I just wanted to be perfect. I wanted to be the girl that he got stuffed animals for. I wanted to be easy. I wanted to be something he understood, because I knew that he had difficulty with people.”
“You’re everything,” Lachlan said. Before he could even think about what it meant. “And you can be anything.”
“You make me feel that way. I don’t need to be the kind of good that I always thought I had to be. I don’t need to be embarrassed for wanting to do this.”
She reached behind her and pulled down the zipper on her dress, letting it drop there in the woods. Leaving her body exposed to him, under that golden sun.
She had on a white bra and a pair of white cotton panties, and a less provocative set of underwear didn’t exist, but it fired his blood like nobody’s business.
He didn’t deserve to touch her. He was supposed to protect her. From the world, from himself. But he wanted to touch her all the same. And there she was, offering herself to him. Not in exchange for anything. Not in exchange for a resolution to their fight. For a resolution to the things that he said he wouldn’t tell her. It wasn’t a trade. It was just a gift. It was so far beyond anything he had ever dared hope for he didn’t quite know what to do with it.
She was so beautiful and lovely and giving, his Charity. He didn’t deserve her.
He didn’t deserve her, and that made this moment feel fraught. Because he wanted to receive it with fully open arms. Wanted to receive it with all that he was, and he felt like a part of him still had a door slammed firmly shut. Because what else could he do? What else could he do when he didn’t know if that part of himself was even redeemable.
He wanted her. He knew that much. And he wasn’t strong enough to turn her away.
She reached behind her back and undid her bra, letting it fall down to her feet, and then she slipped out of her panties. She was like everything he had fantasized about then, and everything he wanted now. She encompassed every dream, every hope. The moment of their wedding; the moment of their first kiss. The moment of their first meeting. The woman who had stitched him back together in so many ways.
He didn’t have the strength to refuse her. To refuse this. He just wanted. Utterly and completely. He couldn’t deny either of them.
But he let her come to him. And she did. Her feet were bare, and she took dainty steps across the forest floor toward him. She reached up, her breasts rising with the motion as she gripped his face and brought his head down for a kiss. “I’m yours,” he said.
Whatever she wanted from him, he would do that. He would be that. He just needed to keep that door closed. He needed her to never know. He needed her to never change the way that she looked at him. Because she had always looked at him like he was something special. She was the first person ever to do that. She didn’t know. She couldn’t know. What it meant to him. How it had changed him. How it had taken all the things inside him and made him new, in that moment when she had first laid eyes on him. She might’ve stitched him together after, but she had looked at him and healed him in that very first moment.
He had loved her then.
He truly had.
He had done his best to keep himself back from her. To keep himself from hurting her, but he had wanted her all the same. He had loved her all the same.
He had never been strong enough to leave her life. He wasn’t now, either.
So he kissed her. With everything he had. With everything he was. She took him by the hand then, and led him behind the tree. She had laid out a blanket there, in the small patch of grass that was bathed in the sun, and she laid him down and took off his clothes as if he were a picnic that she was putting before her as a treat.
She stood above him, and he took in the sight, the way the sun made her golden hair seem to catch fire, the way it highlighted the rosy crests of her breasts.
The way the air kissed her bare skin. She was naked out in the full light of day for him. And that felt like something.
A gift.
She lowered herself down slowly, the slick heat of her coming over the top of his aching shaft. She rubbed herself over him, her lips parting as she pleasured herself using his body. She let her head fall back, her hair a shining curtain of gold.
“Lachlan,” she said. She said his name like that with ease, and it had become his favorite sound. She had said his name so many times over the years, but this was new. Different. The way that she said it as he pleasured her... That was a gift. She was a gift.
