Unbearable (Undescribable) (17 page)

I close my eyes, thinking of my stepdad. “He was
telling the truth wasn’t he? She was cheating on Greg with my dad?” I ask,
biting my lip. She had to have been. She was still married to Greg when she
found out she had cancer. Dad must have passed before she had the chance to leave
Greg. She told me they had only divorced last year.

“I don’t know if Marie and Jack had a physical
relationship, but I know they never stopped loving each other,” he replies honestly.

“I just don’t understand why she wouldn’t tell me,”
I say, grinding my teeth together in frustration. “You say after my dad died
she just gave up. Was I not enough to live for?” I sob out, not able to hold it
in anymore.

“Oh, Sam.” I hear him move closer. He pulls me into
a hug as I cover my face with my hands. “Your life was more important to her
than her own.” He rubs a hand down my back. “That’s why she didn’t want you to
give it up for her.”

I shake my head, pulling away from him. I stand up
and start heading for the door. “I need to go,” I cry as I try to stop the
tears. I feel the need to fall apart again and I want to do it alone.

“Sam?”

I would have kept walking if not for the
desperation in his voice. I stop with my hand on the door, but keep my back to
him. I feel his hands on my shoulders and he turns me around. I stare up at him,
into his dark blue eyes. “I’m so sorry for everything. I want to be your
friend. Please let me help you.”

“Help me?” I question, not really knowing what he
means.

He comes closer to me, and reaches up to brush the
tears from my face. “If I know you, you won’t allow Slade to see you like this.
I just want to be your friend. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you
thought she was pushing you away. I’m asking you now, let me in to help you
through this time of need.”

“Thanks.” He’s right. Slade cannot see me like
this. “You can never have enough friends, right?” I give him a small grin that
he returns.

I turn around and open the door. As I step out of
the house, I turn around and look at him. “I’m not mad at you,” I say. The only
person I am mad at is me.

“Yes, you are, but that’s okay. I can take you
being mad at me, just don’t hate me. Please don’t hate me,” he whispers as his
blue eyes search mine.

“I could never hate you.” I turn and walk to Nadia.
Right now, I hate myself. I hate the world. I hate that I feel like the past
five years of my life have been taken from me. It’s all been a lie. I was
living in a make believe world, a world that my mom created for me. If she
would have told me the truth, my life would have been so different. My mother thought
it would have been filled with darkness, having to take care of her. But now,
the rest of my life will be filled with the darkness which came from her death.
I will forever live with the guilt that I wasn’t there for her, and no words or
friends will change that. Not even Slade can change that.

I drive to the only place I can be completely
alone. I need to just cry my eyes out without someone watching me or touching
me.

I park and get out of the truck. I walk to the edge
of the hill and sit down. I close my eyes. She wanted me to live a life full of
possibilities. Those possibilities led me to Slade. I couldn’t live without
him. If he died, would I fight or would I give up? I would want to die as well,
but I would fight, because I know him. He would want me to go on with my life,
remembering the life that we had together.

I open my eyes and walk back to the truck when I
hear my cell, knowing from the ringtone that it’s Slade.

“Hello?” I try to sound cheerful

“Hey, Angel. How is your day going?”

“Great,” I lie.

I hear him take in a deep breath. “What are you up
to?”

“Heading to the mall,” I lie again, as I look out
over the beautiful city from on top of the hill that he once brought me to.

“That sounds like fun. I only have a few minutes to
talk. I just wanted to call and tell you I love you.”

“I love you too, baby. What time will you be home?”

“I should be done in about an hour.”

“Okay. Would you like me to cook you some lunch?”

“How about I pick us up something on my way home?”

“Chinese?” I ask.

“Chinese.” He laughs.

“Okay, I’ll see you when you get home. I love you.”

“Love you too, Angel.”

I look down at my phone and shut it off. I toss it
in the truck and walk back to the edge of the hill. I sit down and let the
tears fall. I have got to stop this. This is going to destroy my life. I’m
lying to Slade but what other choice do I have? He will just continue to coddle
me. I need to let it all out and move on with my life.

I close my eyes and see Mom smiling in that picture
of her and Tate. “I love you, Mom,” I whisper into the afternoon air. “I miss
you so much, but I know you’re no longer suffering. I would never want you to
be in pain.” Tears slide down my face as I bite my bottom lip. “I hope you’re
with Dad,” I sob out. “I miss you both so much.” I pull my legs to my chest,
place my head on my bare knees, and let the city watch me cry.

This is it; I will not cry anymore. I will not feel
sorry for myself. How could I when I think of all the things my mother went
through? At least now I know she didn’t go through it alone, she had Tate.

I open my eyes and lift my head. I smile as I wipe
my face. In a way, I guess I owe him a lot. How could I be mad at someone who
was there for my mom until the end?

CHAPTER TWELVE

I pull into our garage and
reach over to the passenger seat, grabbing the Chinese food.

I walk into the house and come to a stop when I see
Angel pacing the hallway outside the kitchen. She has her head down and her
arms crossed over her chest.

“Angel?”

She looks up at me and her eyes are bloodshot, but
they look hard. Her face looks to be dry but I can tell she has been crying. I
don’t know what I can do to help her move on and be happy. She may never get
over her mother’s death. She may forever feel this way…brokenhearted.

“I need to tell you something,” she says sternly.

“Okay, Angel. Are you—”

She puts her hand up. “Don’t speak, just listen.”

I nod my head, wondering what the hell is going on.
Why does she look pissed?

“I’m fine.”

I stand there staring at her, waiting for her to
continue, but she doesn’t. “You keep saying that, but—”

She cuts me off. “I told you to listen,” she snaps.

I swallow.
Fuck!
This must be a test. She is
throwing my ass into the deep end, and I am going to fail miserably, because I
don’t have a fucking clue what’s going on.

“What do you see when you look at me?” She places
her hands on her hips.

Yep!
Going to sink to the bottom like a
motherfucking cinderblock.
I never know what the hell is going on in her
head. So, I start to say ‘the love of my life’ when she speaks.

“You don’t even have to say it. I know exactly what
you see. You see someone you need to coddle. Someone who breaks down all the
time.” She rolls her eyes dramatically. “I keep telling you I’m okay, but you
don’t fucking listen.” She starts to pace again as she runs a hand through her
dark hair. “My mom passed, Slade. It hurts, it is hard.” She stops pacing and
walks up to me. “But I will be okay. I
am
okay. I feel most of my life
has been filled with secrets and lies. I want neither of those between us. I love
you and want us to be honest. Even if we have to have a yelling match right
here in this hallway.”

She stares up into my eyes, waiting for me to
answer. I nod my head, not knowing if I’m allowed to speak yet, and wondering
why in the hell we would have a screaming match.

“I saw Tate today.”

Now I know why she said we might scream. “Why the—”
I start to demand, only to be interrupted yet again.

“I tried to tell you this morning, but you brushed
me off and told me to sleep all day,” she interjects sarcastically as if that
was an absurd idea.

“He came into the bar last night and told me he
wanted to talk. I decided I wanted to hear what he had to say.” She turns away
from me, starting to pace again. “He had pictures of my mom. She was in the
hospital, Slade. She had checked herself out to come see me at the house. She
didn’t want me to know what was going on before she could explain it. Tate was
supposed to take her back the morning we left but she called him and said you
had talked to her.” She spins back around to face me and places her small hands
on my face. “Thank you.”

“For what, Angel?” I ask slowly.

“For making her see how much I wanted her. How much
I loved her. She may no longer be here, Slade, but I know if she was, I would
be spending time with her.” She smiles and it’s the first real one I have seen
on her face in a long time. “I know it may sound crazy, but that’s my closure.
My mother was stubborn.” I grin. She’s just like her mother. “But she finally
wanted to let me in after a five minute conversation with you and that is all I
need to know.”

I pull out of her hands and place the take-out bags
on the floor, then step up to her. “I love you.”

The smile drops off her face.

“Another thing.”

Shit!

“Why do you keep pushing me away? Do you not find
me attractive anymore?”

I swear some of the shit that comes out of her
mouth has me thinking she is crazy. “I always want you.”

“Well, you haven’t had me,” she states, playfully
hitting me on the arm. Then she lets out a breath, getting serious. “Why do you
keep pushing me away?”

I’m not going to try to explain how I thought she
needed more from me than sex because I have a feeling she will just roll her
eyes again. I lean into her and drag her to me. I kiss her as if I have never
kissed her before, taking both of our breaths away.

 I pull away and she places her hands on my chest
and takes a step closer to me. “I know you love me, Slade. But lately you
haven’t acted like you still want me. I’ve been trying to show you that I need
you.” She lowers her eyes for a second and then they are back on mine. “Show me
you need me too.” She nibbles nervously on her lip, waiting for me to respond.

The only way I can think to respond to her is to
show her. I reach down and pick her up. I walk to our bedroom and toss her onto
the bed as she giggles. That sound fills my ears and I smile, lying down next
to her.

“That’s it.”

“What?” she says through her laughter.

“That laugh, I don’t know how I ever survived
without it.” I run my thumb over her bottom lip. “The world could be ending and
it wouldn’t matter, nothing matters but that sound.” That sound has given me
hope for us plenty of times in the past, and it just reassured me that she is
still here with me. “I thought I had lost you,” I say, honestly.

“I know, I thought I had lost myself too. I tried
my hardest to let it go. And I would wake up in the morning feeling great,
knowing I had you.” She smiles slowly. “But by the end of the day I couldn’t
help but feel like everything would come crashing down on me. Tate showing up.
Courtney wanting to move here. You always seemed to make me feel like I had
more of a reason to be depressed than happy,” she says sadly.

“I never meant to do that, Angel. I’m sorry. I will
listen to you from now on.” I feel bad that I thought I was there for her but
instead I was only making it worse.

“I was telling you the truth when I said I don’t
want any lies or secrets between us.” She takes in a deep breath. “I’ve lied to
you a lot lately.”

My hand stops running through her hair. “About
what?” I ask cautiously.

She closes her eyes. “I didn’t want to sell my car.
I know it was just a car, but that car meant a lot to me. About being in a
great mood when you called today, I was actually in the middle of another
breakdown. My last breakdown,” she clarifies, “and I wasn’t heading toward the
mall. I was sitting on the hill alone, just clearing my mind and saying my
goodbyes.”

I search her beautiful face and bright green eyes.
I made her feel like she had to lie to me. I was the main reason for her
feeling so badly. “Thank you for being honest with me,” I finally say.

“You’re mad at me,” she says, interpreting my pause
the wrong way.

“No, I could never be mad at you for that. It was
my fault that you felt you couldn’t be honest.” I look at her for a few
seconds. “You’re right. I would have freaked out about you going to Tate’s and
not wanting me to go, though.”

“I tried to ask you this morning to go with me.”

“Well, I’m glad you found out what you needed.” I’m
also glad that she didn’t take my advice and lay in bed all day. How could I
have not seen that she was trying to move forward? I can’t believe this entire
time I was the one bringing her down and not helping her.

She gives me a soft smile. Then she gets quiet for
a few seconds. “There’s one more thing I want to do, will you do it with me?”

“Absolutely.”

She gets out of bed, tugging on my arm. I follow
her without question. She walks me into the living room and picks up her mom’s
urn. “Will you get my dad’s down for me, please?”

I bring it over to the coffee table and then watch
as she opens them both up, before pouring her mom’s ashes into her father’s urn.

“They belong together.” She looks up to me with a
small smile on her face. “They deserve to have their forever, too.”

I feel my throat tighten up as my eyes start to
sting. How did I not see it? How did I miss when she turned the corner and was
no longer grieving for her mother?

 She walks over to the fireplace, places the urn in
the center, and gazes at it. “They were truly in love with one another. In the
note my mother left me, she said her love for me did not end with her death. I
now know what that means. My dad never stopped loving her and she never stopped
loving him.”

I walk up to her and place my hands on her face.
“I’m so sorry, Angel. I didn’t know I was the one that was hurting you.”

“Don’t apologize, baby, just show me. Show me that
you believe me. All I’ve ever needed was you. I can survive anything if I have
you.”

Her eyes roam my face and I smile down at her. “So,
what do we do now?”

“Well, you have two options.” She runs a hand up my
chest. “One, you can go get our food from the hallway so we can eat. Or two,
you can take me back to bed.”

“I choose option two,” I say, lowering my face down
to hers.

“Good choice,” she whispers before my lips crash
onto hers as I lift her up and carry her back to our room.

Her hands grab my arms and she pulls me on top of
her on the bed. I straddle her small hips and pull her to a sitting position. I
pull my lips from hers long enough to pull her shirt over her head. She falls
to her back and I go to work on her shorts. She pushes me off of her and kicks them
off as if they are on fire. Before I even have a chance to move, she slams into
me, shoving me on my back. She lets out another laugh. “Sorry, I’m tired of
waiting on you to make a move.”

I lift an eyebrow and grab a hold of her hands as
they work on my zipper. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’ve been a prude lately.”

I bite the inside of my lip, trying not to laugh at
how right she is. I push her onto her back and pin her hands to the bed by her
head.

“Well Angel, let me show you what I have been waiting
to do with that sexy body of yours.”

I awaken to the sound of my
alarm and see the back of my Angel, sleeping in front of me. I smile as I lift
my hand and push aside some of her hair, placing soft sweet kisses up her neck,
but she doesn’t even move.

“Angel,” I whisper in her ear. I want her so badly
right now. I want to take her hard and fast, just how she likes it.

“Slade,” she whispers, pushing her ass into my hard
erection.

I smile as I kiss her bare shoulder. I place a hand
on her thigh and it slowly travels upward to her hipbone. I slip my hand
between her legs as she lets out a long breath.

I lean up on my arm and look down at the side of
her face. Her eyes are still closed and I have a feeling she is still somewhat
asleep. I smile. I’m going to wake her up in the best way. I know she is still
tired and needs her rest but I can’t help it, I need her right now. I need to
take her, to possess her.

I ease a finger into her and groan at how wet she
is. God, she is always ready, and knowing that turns me on more than I can
handle sometimes.

“Wake up, Angel,” I murmur, leaning down to nibble
on her ear.

She moans again as she clamps down around my
fingers.

I take my fingers out of her and turn her gently so
she is lying on her back.

I set myself between her and slide two fingers into
her again. She moans as she arches her back. I look down at her face and see
her eyes are still closed.

I take my hard cock in my hand and gently ease it
into her. I want to wake her up slowly, not quickly. I lean down and smooth her
hair off her beautiful face and start rocking my hips.

She starts to move her head back and forth, as she
moans. “Slade,” she sighs out and I pick up my speed.

“Yes, baby?” Leaning down into her, I place little
kisses from her neck up to her ear. “Wake up and come for me.” I reach down,
place my thumb over her clit, and make little circles. Her eyes open but they
are hooded and she’s breathing heavily through parted lips. Her hand reaches up
and grabs a hold of my hair as she screams out. I feel her clamp down around my
cock as she comes.