by Leddy Harper
I gasped and covered my mouth, feeling attacked by his random question that had been asked with an angry tone. His hardened facial features sent a chill through me. I immediately grabbed the shirt he’d given me and yanked it over my head.
“If that’s what you came here to tell me, just get it over with now.”
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head in rapid, jerky movements. “No, I’m not pregnant, Bentley. Why would you think that?”
His shoulders dropped and his chest fell with the heavy sigh that left his lips. Then he stepped back and sank against the edge of his mattress. His eyes closed, the relief at my response evident in his entire reaction.
“Why would you think that, Bentley?” I moved closer to him and asked again when he hadn’t given me an answer the first time.
He finally turned his attention to me, releasing long, relieved breaths. “We didn’t use protection, and I didn’t pull out…”
“We did use protection. I told you I was on birth control.”
“I know, but it still worried me. I told you that.”
My feet moved one in front of the other until I stood in front of him. I held his face in my hands, forcing his eyes to meet mine. “There has to be some other reason why you thought that. If it had you so worried, it would’ve been one of the first things you asked when I knocked on your door. Or you would’ve at least sent me a text before now.”
“I don’t want to upset you.” His soft words fanned through the space between us and landed on my cooled skin, heating me up at the first sign of emotion from him since arriving.
“You won’t upset me, I promise. Just tell me.”
He pulled his hands to my waist and held onto my hips, his fingers lightly digging into my flesh. “You’ve gained some weight. Not much, but it’s noticeable—it looks good on you.”
My lips split into a hearty smile and set a deep ache in my cheeks. “Yeah, I have. But it’s not baby weight, Bentley. I swear. A lot has changed over the last few weeks, and that’s the real reason why I came here.”
He dropped his hold on me and pulled his face from my grasp, averting his gaze away from mine. “It’s really late, Sarah. I don’t think I can have this conversation right now.”
I understood, but that didn’t mean I was ready to give up. Instead of walking away like I knew he wanted me to do, I reached around him and pulled back the covers. He glanced at me with narrowed eyes, not voicing his question. “Get in bed, Bentley. You’re tired. I woke you up in the middle of the night. Just lie down and get some sleep. We can talk about this in the morning if you’re up for it.”
Reluctantly, he relaxed and leaned back against his pillow, his eyes following my every move. I pulled the covers up, placing them over his chest, and then turned off the lamp next to his bed, shrouding the room in darkness once again.
He remained silent, motionless, as I made my way around the bed, pulled back the covers on the other side, and then slid in. But once I moved across the mattress, curling up next to his warm body, he said, “Sarah…what are you doing?”
“I’m going to sleep, Bentley. You should do the same.” My arm fell over his stomach as I pressed my ear to the center of his chest, curling into him like I’d done so many times before.
But his body remained rigid, his breaths short and shallow. “I don’t think I can do this…”
“Why?” I tilted my head, catching the reflection of moonlight in his wide eyes. “Because you’re worried you won’t be able to hate me anymore after you wake up?”
“I don’t hate you.”
“Maybe not…but you don’t want to give in, either. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t slept well in the last three weeks. Can you please just let me have this one night of sleep?”
His chest finally deflated and his body relaxed, but his arm remained resting against the mattress behind me instead of around me like it used to. I couldn’t think about that, though. I had to focus on the fact that I was with him, his heartbeat lulling me to sleep. And just as the warm tingles of slumber began to pull me down, his hand came around to rest on my hip.
I awoke the next morning, my cheek still pressed comfortably against Bentley’s chest, and found him staring down at me, uncertainty shining in his hard-set eyes. I moved away from him slightly, giving us room to face each other without craning our necks, but he didn’t budge. Instead, he simply laid there, his narrowed eyes never leaving mine.
“Good morning,” I said with a smile, hoping it might soften his mood. But he only responded by blinking rapidly, as if he couldn’t remember the night before and didn’t understand why I was there. “Did you sleep well?”
“Are you going to tell me the real reason why you came here? Or are you gonna keep pretending like nothing happened and this is just some vacation? Keep in mind, I’m fully aware that your sister got married yesterday.”
The deep, rich rumbles of his voice first thing in the morning rolled over me, but before I could wrap myself up in it, his words registered in my hazy mind. “I’m not pretending anything. For the first time in a very long time, I’m not pretending.” I sat up and faced him, settling into the mattress to give him the answers he sought. “Luke told me about you getting sick after I left.”
He flung the covers off his body in haste and then climbed out of bed. His posture was rigid as he stormed out of the room, not once glancing back at my frozen form in the middle of his bed. Shock and surprise kept me from moving, prevented me from chasing after him as his bare feet padded through the house until I could no longer hear him. But then reality set in. Watching him walk away sparked a fight in me, and I ran after him.
I found him in the kitchen in front of the sink, staring through the window. His shoulders were pulled tight and his hands gripped the edge of the granite slab, his body coiled tight with emotions I couldn’t comprehend. I slowly dragged my feet across the cool tile until I stood at his back, and then I placed a hesitant hand against his hard shoulder blade.
My touch seemed to surprise him, because he jerked suddenly, yet he didn’t bother to turn around. Instead, he remained facing the window and spoke, his voice so deep and full of pain that every agonizing word felt like a dull knife being plunged into my chest. “You didn’t come here because you missed me or because you wanted something more. It wasn’t because you realized what we had and needed it back. You came because I was sick. It’s why I didn’t want you to know. Because I didn’t want sympathy to lead you back to me.”
I closed my eyes and allowed myself to feel his pain, understand the ache he must’ve felt. But I knew the truth—I knew why I came back to him. And now I needed him to see that it wasn’t for the reason he thought. His assumptions were valid, but all wrong. I grabbed his arm and gently pulled until he turned around, my line of sight directly at the center of his chest. Without thought, I gripped the bottom of his shirt and slowly lifted it until the long scar became visible. I’d never seen it before, but often thought about it after learning the truth. Seeing it, though…seeing it right in front of me stole the air from my lungs.
A sigh slipped past my lips as my forehead fell to his bare chest, his body heat coming off his skin in waves that warmed my face like a thousand blazing suns. He didn’t move, barely breathing. He just stood there as I became lost in the moment. But as soon as my lips pressed against the dark-pink scar, he pushed me away, stepping past me and pulling his shirt the rest of the way off. He turned in the middle of his large kitchen and faced me, his shoulders rising and falling with each heavy breath he took.
“Is this what you wanted to see?” His finger traced the vertical line on his sternum. “Is this the reason you came here? Huh? You wanted to see the proof of what beats inside me?” He threw his shirt on the floor and glared at me with fiery pain in his eyes. “This is why they say we should never know where donated organs go. This is why they don’t tell us the names of the people that saved us.”
His reaction angered me, filling me with fury that coiled
tight in my muscles until I stood directly in front of him, my hands shaking violently at my sides. “And what exactly is this, Bentley? What is the reason why I shouldn’t know you?”
“Because this is unhealthy—the attachment you have to me.” When he took his next breath, it trembled and caught in his throat. His eyes became soft and full of sorrow, his voice barely above a whisper when he said, “Because when you look at me…you don’t see me.”
Instinctively, I reached up and placed my hand on his cheek, the short hairs along his jawline pricking my palm and lighting a fire beneath my skin. “What do you think I see when I look at you?”
“A vessel. The warm body that holds a piece of your mom.” When I started to shake my head, letting him know he had it all wrong, he took a step back and reached out to the wall next to him to hold him up. “You can’t deny it, Sarah. You may think I’m wrong, but I see it in your eyes. It was there when you looked at my chest, when you touched it.”
I couldn’t stand to hear the pain in his voice or the debilitating sadness in his eyes. He’d convinced himself of things long before I came here, long before I stood in front of him. I wasn’t sure how I’d ever change his mind, but I wouldn’t give up until I’d done so.
With careful and deliberate steps, I moved to stand in front of him again, showing him that no matter where he went, I’d be right there. I’d be at his side, have his back, and stand in front of him. Nothing he could do or say would ever make me walk away from him again. I placed my flat palm over his scar, locking my eyes with his. His breathing became shallow, but his eyes lit up, the dark green shining like treasured emeralds in the sun. That was all I needed to see for hope to ignite inside.
“You have my mom’s heart beating inside your chest right now. That’s fact. We can’t change it, we can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. You can’t blame me for recognizing it. The last piece I have of my mother is in here.” I pressed my hand gently against his warm skin, reiterating my words. “However, that’s not who you are to me. You aren’t a vessel of any kind.”
“Did you come here because you were worried that something would happen to her heart?”
I held on to his neck with both hands and stepped into him more, making sure he could see the truth in my eyes. “No. I came here because I was worried something had happened to yours. It doesn’t belong to her anymore. It’s yours now. It was gifted to you, and if I’ve ever doubted fate before, I don’t anymore. After meeting you, after I found out about Luke, but before you told me about your heart, I struggled with a lot of unanswered questions—questions I never thought I’d never be able to have explained. But they are now. And everything is so clear, makes so much sense, that there isn’t one ounce of me that doubts fate.”
“What questions? What answers?” he asked, sounding out of breath. It made it seem like he physically couldn’t breathe until I gave him what he wanted.
“I needed to know the reason my mom died. Why she left without getting to say goodbye. But I have that answer now. I no longer question it…or fate.”
“Tell me. What answer did you find?”
My thumb traced over his bottom lip. It quivered at my touch as he held my hips, keeping me in place. And even his hands trembled as he held me, but not once did I feel the slightest tremor within me. My insides were calm, my resolve strong, my decision firm. “She died to save you. And had she known about it, she would’ve planned ahead. She would’ve already had those donor papers signed, which means I would’ve had no reason to be in that room where Luke saw me.”
“Why does it matter if Luke saw you or not?”
“Because if he hadn’t seen me, he would’ve never told you where your heart had come from. And then you never would’ve sought me out. I would’ve never met you, yet I’m able to live again because of you, Bentley. I have my life back because of you. Everything happened exactly the way it was supposed to. There were no circumstances…only fate.”
He reached up and grabbed my wrists, pulling my hands away from his face as he took a step back again, adding cold space between our bodies. “You have it all wrong,” he said, holding my hands in front of him while staring deeply into my eyes. “You saved me. You signed those papers, and saved me. You kept me in town longer than I’d planned to be there. Had I not seen you that night, I would’ve been here, six hours away from my doctors when I got sick. I would’ve been alone in this house, unable to get the help I needed. It was because I was still near the hospital that I was able to get the care I needed to fight off the infection I had. So really, if you think about it, you saved me.”
I wrapped my arms around his bare waist and laid my head against his chest, whispering into him, “We saved each other.”
He stilled for a brief moment before falling into me, his arms wrapping securely around my back as we fell against the wall behind me. It was as if the intensity of the moment stole the strength from his legs, and he couldn’t stand on his own anymore.
“I didn’t save you, Sarah.” His throaty, emotion-filled voice consumed me and left me weak, making me lean further against the wall to hold us up. “I broke you. I hurt you. I didn’t save you.”
My hands roamed his smooth back, feeling his muscles tremble beneath my palms. “That’s not true. I was already broken when you found me. You met me at my weakest point—in a bar, trying to find someone to make the pain go away.”
He released me and pressed his forehead to mine. “Regardless, I didn’t save you.”
A smile curled my lips and filled me with contentment. “I told you that night in the diner that I never wanted to love again. And even though I didn’t want to feel that emotion, every weekend, I’d go out and find someone to offer me the illusion of a connection. I didn’t realize it at the time, but really, I wanted to be loved. I’d become so lost in life that I didn’t think anyone loved me, and the only person that did was gone. So I found men to let me pretend for a few hours. And then you came along, and I no longer had to pretend.”
“How did I save you?” His question was desperate, and it made my eyes burn with unshed tears—not because I was sad, but because the emotion that ran through him and dripped from his words catapulted through me like a lead weight, leaving a gaping hole only he could fill.
“I became stuck in my depression, living in it instead of fighting against it. I welcomed it, because I believed if I stopped being sad, that would mean I no longer missed my mom. You made me fight, but I ended up fighting for the wrong thing. I leaned on you, depended on you to get me through my sadness. And I should’ve never done that. Walking away from you was the hardest thing I ever did, but it made me realize so much. It forced me to deal with my depression. It made me take a step back and look at everything in my life. I had you…I had love. But I couldn’t appreciate it until I learned on my own how to live again. I haven’t stayed away this long because I wanted to. I did it because I needed to get myself in order first. So, when it all comes down to it…you saved me. Your love saved me.”
“Are you really in a better place?”
“Considering you called me fat last night, I would say that’s a good indication that I am.” I laughed, hoping to add some humor to ease the weight of emotions.
His hands trailed lightly down my sides until he found the hem of my shirt. Then he slowly ran his fingertips up my bare thighs, past the lace of my panties, stopping just below my bellybutton. Shivers ran through me as goose bumps attacked my skin and covered every inch of my body.
“I never said fat, Sarah,” he whispered against my lips, his breaths heavy and desperate. He hooked a finger beneath the front of my panties, but he kept it there instead of going further. “You’re so fucking hot. You were then, and you are now.”
I pushed my hips into him and whimpered, letting him know how badly I needed his touch. Yet he wouldn’t give me more.
“Tell me, how many times did you go to a bar after you left me.”
“None,” I panted against his lips.
; “Not one?” Surprise filled his voice, but I ignored it and shook my head. “What about men? Have you sought any out since you left me?”
He reminded me of the time I’d asked specific questions regarding getting laid, making sure there weren’t any loopholes in his promise—even though there was—and it almost made me giggle. But the closeness of his body coupled with the suggestiveness of his finger inside my panties silenced the laughter in my mind. “No. No men. No bars. No sex. Not even with myself.”
He growled and attacked my lips with his, his tongue hungrily taking control of my mouth. In one tug, he had my panties pulled down to my thighs, his palm covering my throbbing sex. Heat from his hand added to the fire burning between my thighs and brought me to the verge of exploding before he could even enter me.
“No one else has been here since me?” His breath fanned across my neck, hitting the moisture left behind by his lips. It caused my nipples to pebble, the material of my shirt rubbing against them roughly.
“No one, Bentley. Only you.”
Without warning, he dropped to his knees and yanked my panties the rest of the way down my legs. Then he hooked my knee over his shoulder and ran the tip of his nose up my inner thigh until his heavy breaths wafted over my throbbing clit. My core tightened with need. I fisted my hands in his hair and pulled, earning an animalistic grunt from him.
After one swipe of his tongue, I was ready to come, but the doorbell interrupted us. “No, Bentley. Ignore it…please.”
He leaned his forehead against my lower stomach in defeat, sighing against my sensitive skin. A knock came next, proving it couldn’t be ignored. Before he pulled away, he kissed my sex and gripped my hips so roughly I was sure I’d wear bruises in the shapes of his fingertips.
“I’ve waited a long time to devour this pussy of yours.” He removed my leg from his shoulder and stood up, handing me my panties back. “It will happen.”
My core pulsed with anticipation as I lazily pulled my panties back up my legs, watching in humor as Bentley adjusted his hard-on beneath his boxers. He finally grabbed his T-shirt off the floor and used it as a shield once he realized the impossibility of hiding his erection from whoever was at the door.