Authors: A. L. Jackson
Her legs began to shake.
Forever
.
I drove into her.
And I could feel it when she came, could feel her pleasure as she clenched around my cock. That pleasure rose in waves, lifting her back from the bed as she cried out my name.
I slammed into her, devouring her, taking what had always been mine.
Hooking her legs over my arms, I gripped her by the back of the waist, would do anything to get her closer. Leaning back, I lifted my face toward the ceiling and let myself go.
Forever
.
Ecstasy hit me. Intensely. Wholly. I throbbed as I poured into her, this bliss that spread out to saturate every cell of my body.
Forever
.
Elizabeth was my forever.
I twitched and jerked. Inhaling raggedly, I sucked air into my empty lungs. I attempted to loosen my fingers anchored in her flesh.
Elizabeth gasped for a breath of her own. I slumped down on top of her, feeling an absurd grin spread across my face as I did. But I couldn’t stop it. I was happy. So happy, it contented every cell within me, erased every dark night I’d ever spent without her.
I kissed her on the mouth and leaned up on my elbow to brush back the sweat-dampened hair matted to her forehead.
She smiled, her eyes all alight with the love that would never let us go.
My pulse stuttered.
Elizabeth would never stop stealing my breath.
Because she possessed my soul.
Her brown eyes blinked up at me, and a soft, sleepy smile spread across her full lips.
“What are we waiting for, Elizabeth?” came as an unstoppable request from the depths of my soul. I pulled back. One hand gripped her hip as I searched her face.
Softly her lips parted, her presence invading my space, stealing my senses.
“What do you mean?” she asked. Her expression worked to grasp my meaning, a hunch clearly taking hold in the line that dented her brow.
“Waiting to get married…waiting to add to our family. What are we waiting for? This is what we both want. It’s what’s good for us. What’s good for Lizzie. I know we planned on waiting, but…”
After everything we’d been through in the last year, me making contact with my daughter for the first time in her life, just days before she turned five, the way Elizabeth and I had struggled through the months as she’d tried to shut me out, the disaster we’d created in the wake of this passion that could never be contained. And our reconciliation that had finally cut through all the shit that had held us back. We’d thought it best to wait. To give ourselves time to adjust to this new life, to learn how to be the family we were always meant to be.
But that’s what we already were.
A family.
I wanted it in name. I wanted it in reality.
The words rushed up my throat, flooded from my mouth. “I want it all, and I want it now. I want it with you, Elizabeth.”
“Christian—”
“Please, don’t say anything right now. I just want you to think about it.”
She grabbed my face. “I don’t need to think about it. I’m ready for this. I’m ready for you. I’m ready for
us
. There are no questions left.”
Then she smiled, a twist of her mouth that said it all.
Relief and joy escaped me in a throaty groan. It was all I wanted, to spend my life with her, to spend it with our daughter, to live for my family, to watch it grow.
Loving fingers trailed down my back, before she wrapped both arms around me in a tender embrace.
Rolling onto my back, I grabbed for her and tugged her flat onto my chest. Everything thrummed between us, the spastic beat of our hearts, our love, the trust that had once again bonded us together.
And I silently swore I’d never do anything to break it again.
I gentled my fingers through her hair, and her breath left her in a contented sigh. We laid like that for what seemed like hours, both of us silent as we stared out the window at the blanket of winter that held in the city lights. Snow still flitted across the sky, and the deepest calm settled over us.
Elizabeth’s fingers played at my collarbone, and she ran lazy circles over my skin as her heart began to slow and find rest with mine. “I’m so happy, Christian.” Her voice bled into the dimness of the room like a declaration, a profession made.
Her confession took root somewhere deep inside me and swelled within my chest. I cupped her face and tilted it up so I could look at her, my tone tightened in emphasis.
“You make me happy. You always have. There’s something about you, Elizabeth, just being in a room with you, that brings me joy.”
She trembled an impassioned smile and ran her fingertips along my bottom lip. “I get to spend my life with my best friend.” That smile strengthened with emotion. “There’s nothing more perfect than that.”
My eyes dropped closed.
My best friend
. They fluttered open to meet with hers. “Perfect.”
Everything was perfect.
Present Day
God, I missed her. Missed her so much it paralyzed me, left me without a will. Because this wasn’t about betrayal, not something she or I had caused. This was something that neither of us could control. This was unfair, unjust. This was torture.
“Hey, man, we’re getting ready to close up.”
Jarred from my stupor, I scrubbed a palm over my face to wake myself up, swayed a little as I tried to find my footing. I struggled to focus as I signed the tab he slid my way.
“You okay?” Kurt asked, eyeing me as he gathered the receipt.
The laugh that escaped me was humorless. “Yeah, I’m fucking
perfect
.”
Chapter Three
Christian
Present Day, Late September
Remnants of our devastation simmered just beneath the surface of my skin. A constant, nagging reminder of what I had lost. I’d do anything to purge them from my mind. Yet, at the same time, I clung to them. I clung to the memories that haunted my heart because they somehow comforted me. Those months that I’d been favored enough to spend in Elizabeth’s arms, with Lizzie by my side, those days we’d laughed and loved as we’d lost ourselves in expectation—I wanted to hang onto them.
God, I wanted to hang onto Elizabeth.
I rammed the heels of my hands in my eyes.
Fuck
.
This wasn’t the life we were supposed to be living. I just didn’t know how to get through to her, how to break through the pain. How could I make her see?
The residual of last night pounded my head, spun with the overwhelming urge that burned inside to
make this right
. I thought I finally had.
I was so wrong.
The traffic light turned green, and I accelerated as I traveled the seven-point-three miles to Elizabeth’s house.
Bitter laughter bounced around the cab of my car.
Seven-point-three miles.
When I came to San Diego more than a year ago and found out just how close Elizabeth and Lizzie lived to me, the short distance had seemed like an affirmation that everything was as it should be. Like maybe things had shifted as they slowly aligned. Like if I just reached out, I’d be close enough to hold Lizzie and Elizabeth in the safety of my arms. That I’d be able to protect them. Love them.
Maybe I was a fool to think that after everything I’d done, I could somehow deserve what Elizabeth had promised.
Because now I knew better.
Seven-point-three miles was a greater distance than I could ever fathom.
God
.
Remorse shook me as I glanced in the mirror and changed lanes. We’d come so close to making it. Only one day and Elizabeth would have been my wife. Then one brutal lash of fate had cut us deep. Shattered us in a way that neither of us could have anticipated. That wound had festered. Rotted and decayed. Built and burned until it’d erupted. Elizabeth had cut me from her life just as harshly as the trauma had struck her down.
But it wasn’t as if I weren’t broken, too.
I crossed those impenetrable miles. Steadily my heart began to pound harder and faster with each second that passed by. Not with the stirring of hope as it’d done all those months when I’d first returned, when I’d done everything I could to
make amends for the greatest mistake I’d ever made. Definitely not like it’d done with the overpowering thrill of excitement I’d had when I traveled here after the modest house had become my home.
Now it thudded with the deepest resonance of pain.
On a heavy sigh, I made a left into the quiet neighborhood. I pulled into Elizabeth’s driveway, killed the engine, and forced myself to climb out. A cloak of early morning fog sat like an oppressive weight in the gray sky, blanketing me in a heaviness I couldn’t escape, even if the sun were to somehow manage to shine. In disinclination, I stuffed my hands in my pants pockets and plodded up her sidewalk to the front door. Drawing in a deep breath, I rapt twice on the door, then turned to study the loose threads of the tattered and worn
welcome
rug placed strategically in front of Elizabeth’s door.
Welcome
.
Right
.
Nerves wound me tight, a vise constricting the base of my throat. I fought to put up those walls of protection, desperate to guard my heart against what I would find inside.
For three months it’d been like this. But there was no getting used to it. I mean, God, I hadn’t gotten over Elizabeth in those six years I’d been away. There had been absolutely nothing I could do to cover up the love I had for her, no desires or goals or bodies dense enough to bury the need that had consumed me since the first time I’d glimpsed her. She’d stolen something from me that I’d never gotten back, something she kept hidden deep beneath the surface in places I doubted either of us could see, in places neither of us could define.
Did I really think I’d be able to strip her from my spirit now?
Metal scraped as the deadbolt was set free. The door slowly swung open to reveal Elizabeth standing there.
Unable to stop myself, my eyes sought out the
one
. The one who owned me, heart and soul. Looking at her crushed me anew. It was a punch straight to the gut, hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.
No. There wasn’t a chance in hell I would ever stop loving this woman.
She was thin. Too thin, her cheeks sunken and her arms frail, her skin ashen and pale. But it was the warmth that had been snubbed from her eyes that absolutely killed me.
Broken.
There was no other way to describe her.
Every part of me ached to step across the threshold, to take her in my arms and promise her that I would somehow help her heal, that in time, it really would be okay, and that one day, it wouldn’t hurt so bad.
But I had no fucking idea how to gather the scattered pieces, no clue how to put her back together.
For a fleeting moment, my eyes locked with hers, and I thought maybe I glimpsed it, a transient flicker of her own longing, like maybe she was wishing I was strong enough to save her, too.
In clear discomfort, Elizabeth dropped her gaze and fidgeted as she looked to the floor. “Lizzie, honey.” Her voice was weak. “Your daddy is here.”
“Coming!” Lizzie called back from upstairs. The muted echoes of my child’s movements in her room above filtered down to where I waited for her in the entryway below.
I shifted in the unease, attempting to study Elizabeth from where I pretended my focus was on my shoes. Gauging her, I tried to get some sense of whether she was really okay.
What a ridiculous notion.
Okay
. What did that even mean? Because okay in itself seemed impossible. Unattainable. She was most definitely not okay.
Fuck
.
And neither was I. Not even close.
I knew she could feel me, the severity of my hidden stare, even when I was doing my best to conceal it beneath the suffocating tension that ricocheted between us every single time we were in the other’s presence. She tucked her chin deeper as if she could deflect my concern, curled and clenched her hands.
God, seeing her engagement ring on her left hand killed me.
I wanted to shake her. To beg her to snap out of it.
To plead with her to open her eyes and
see
. To remember exactly why she’d allowed me to place that ring there in the first place. I wanted to demand to know why she didn’t take it off.
But me pushing her was exactly what had cast the fatal stone, what had driven the last nail into splintering wood. The fracture between us was so profound, the pressure so intense, there was nothing we could do to stop the break. A separation of hearts when they just wouldn’t hold.
My gaze jerked upward when I heard footsteps above. Lizzie ran out of her room. She bounded downstairs, her inky black hair set free. Soft wisps and bangs framed that precious face. Her backpack bounced on her shoulders with each urgent step.
The pain in my heart ebbed. Just a fraction. But it was there.
This little girl was my light.
She smiled when she hit the last stair and hopped down into the foyer.
“Morning, Daddy.” She smiled through her haste.
“Good morning, princess. How’s my baby girl this morning?”
“I’m good, Daddy. I’m all ready for school and my backpack is all full, too,” she said with a distinct sense of pride and a resolute nod of her head.
“How about your lunch, sweetheart?” Elizabeth asked.
“I already packed it, Mommy. I’m all ready to go.”
“Well, I do believe you’re forgetting something, Lizzie,” I said, forcing myself to find a smile, to continue to show her how much I loved her.
Lizzie frowned, her little nose scrunched up in question. “What?”
“My hug, you silly girl.”
A roll of giggles escaped her, and she rushed in to hug me around the waist. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders, leaned down to bury my nose in her hair, breathed her in.
When she started first grade a few weeks ago, she told me she was
too big
for me to hold her anymore.
God, did I ever disagree.
All I wanted was to pick her up so I could feel the weight of my daughter in my arms.