A Million Different Ways To Lose You (The Horn Duet Book 2)

by P. Dangelico

  “He was never my boyfriend, you dolt. Stop trying to hurt me.”

  The erratic tick on his cheek told me I had hit a nerve. He wasn’t as far gone as he wanted me to believe. “I don’t want you here. Get the fuck out,” he growled. But I had heard it, the crack in his voice, in his resolve to push me away and out of his life.

  “I’m not your subject, darling. You can’t decree I leave you alone and expect me to obey.” His eyes finally met mine, narrowed, burning with anger. I was so grateful the Walking Dead look was gone I didn’t care what he threw at me.

  “If you’re here to ask for a divorce you can forget it. I’ll never give you one.” The pain I felt grip my chest was not for me. It was for him. He thought he was threatening me. How had I allowed it to go this far?

  “Good––because I’ll never give you one either. You’re stuck with me so you better make peace with it.” If the circumstances hadn’t been so tragic, the look on his face would’ve made me laugh. I desperately wanted to kiss the shock and confusion away, however I knew I had to go slowly or he would fight me tooth and nail. His suspicion and distrust would overrule his intellect.

  “Why not?”

  His unblinking gaze held mine. I could’ve sworn he stopped breathing. It took me a minute to figure out what he was asking. In the pause I gave his question serious thought.

  “Because you’re the only one that’s ever really understood me, who’s ever cared enough to climb the walls I hide behind. Because you’re the other half of me––sometimes the better half. Because I love you all the more for the faults you don’t hide from me, not in spite of them. Because I never realized who I was until I met you. Because I can’t sleep without you, I can’t think without you…there are a million different reasons I want to be with you, and I can’t think of a single one to justify being without you.”

  His devastated gaze darted away to the drape clad window, blinking repeatedly.

  “How much have you had to drink today?” I kept my voice as gentle as possible.

  “What’s it to you?” he forced out through a clenched jaw.

  “Everything,” I answered. Reaching out very slowly, I brushed the long, dirty hair out of his face and tucked it behind his ear. He flinched. At first I thought he was going to slap my hand away, put distance between us, but then his eyes fluttered and his jaw trembled and I couldn’t stop myself from crawling onto his lap, wrapping my arms around his neck, and holding him tightly. Something inside of him broke loose. No longer able to contain all that toxic emotion, his entire body shuddered and didn’t stop. His arms lay limply by his side while the rest of him shook, as if he didn’t have the strength to hug me back.

  “You know what else I won’t let you do? Destroy yourself. This has to stop.”

  His chest heaved as he grappled to measure his breathing. When he finally managed to gain some control, the words that were log-jammed in his throat came out all at once. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry,” he said, sounding like he’d swallowed broken glass. I felt the words on my skin, on the lips tasting me. I felt it when he buried his face in my hair and inhaled deeply.

  “I’m the one that’s sorry,” I murmured in his ear, his face now resting on the curve of my neck. “I let my pride get between us.” His arms slowly snaked around my waist. Once secured, he crushed me to him with a force that would leave a bruise. “Both of us have a lot to make amends for, and I intend to start right away.”

  We sat like that for hours, neither of us wanting to break the intimacy, frightened that the connection would disappear if untethered––that it was all just a dream. “Don’t take this the wrong way, my love, but you smell godawful. I’m going to get a bath started. Try to get some rest meanwhile.”

  He didn’t rest. Instead, his eyes followed me around the room while I worked quickly stripping the bed and tidying the destruction. It was as if he was scared I would disappear somehow. By the time I had the drapes and windows open, night had fallen. The air was warmer than usual for this time of year. A wind kicked up, carrying with it the scent of wood burning and pastries from the bakery in the building next door, the sound of people strolling on the street below.

  Slowly, I undressed him, his eyes never leaving me for a moment. He barely blinked when I pulled his t-shirt over his head and his sweatpants down over his lean hips––much leaner than they were only a month ago. Realizing just how much weight he’d lost made me nauseous.

  He remained completely still while my fingers traced the lines of his throat, over his Adam’s apple. It rose and fell on a nervous swallow. I glanced up and found his gaze burning brightly as my fingers traveled down over the muscles of his chest and abdomen, carved in frightening relief with the absence of a normal amount of body fat. When my hand skated over his thigh, he stopped me, his hand resting gently over mine. He exhaled harshly, his jaw pulsing. I wasn’t sure whether it was in pleasure or pain.

  “When was the last time you ate?” I asked, my frustration abundantly clear.

  After a beat his shadowed eyes moved away and he mumbled, “I don’t remember.”

  I fought to rein in my temper. “First bath, then food. Did you take any pills?” With his history, it would’ve been irresponsible for me not to ask. A tide of relief washed over me when he shook his head, the breath I was holding hissing out. “Sebastian, how much did you have to drink?” Taking his hand, I pulled him up out of the chair and wrapped my arms around his waist. My shoulder wedged under his armpit, he leaned his two hundred pound frame onto mine.

  “I finished the last bottle this morning… I was about to order more when you showed up.”

  “Are you nauseous?”

  “Yes,” was his quiet reply.

  Once I had him in the tub, I undressed. His eyes, large in his face, devoured the flesh each article of clothing I peeled away revealed. When I was done, I slipped in behind him. He hummed, his eyes drifting closed. I wrapped my arms around his waist and washed his chest, his stomach, between his legs. He gripped the sides of the tub when I pushed him forward and soaped his back, lathered and rinsed his hair.

  “We still have a lot to talk about,” I said softly, running my fingers through the hair at the base of his skull. I stroked down the back of his neck and followed the long, elegant line of his now more pronounced spine. Melting into my touch, he leaned back into me. Quiet. So quiet it worried me. “Not now though,” I clarified. “Now I just want to hold you and take care of you…and show you how much I love you.”

  It was like watching the same horror movie twice, except without remembering where all the scary parts were. That’s what it felt like. I spent the next few days emptying vomit filled buckets, changing sweat soaked t-shirts and sheets, and holding him when his body shuddered uncontrollably. By day three the cold chills had largely dissipated, though all the other symptoms remained.

  “Can you forgive me?” His quiet voice found me in the darkness, the question cautious. Well past midnight, I was curled up in the stuffed armchair I’d pulled up next to his side of the bed. Although my eyes were closed, I couldn’t sleep. “Please.”

  My eyes blinked open to find him lying on his side with his arm tucked under his head, watching me as if the fate of his life was in my power. I stroked the side of his hip and thigh, the body parts within reach, and answered him. “For what?”

  “For treating you the way I did. For saying those things to you.” His scowl was directed at himself. “Nothing happened with Caroline. Nothing,” he adamantly repeated, his expression tortured. His growing agitation galvanized me into action. I crawled out of the chair and over him, straddling his hips when he rolled onto his back. With my face inches from his, I placed my hands on his lean cheeks and said, “Hey, I believe you.”

  “Marianne said that you thought––”

  I shut him up with a gentle kiss. “I did. And I’m sorry I didn’t give you the benefit of the doubt. Do you forgive me?” I rolled off of him and lay beside him, rising up on an elbow where
I could get a better read on him. Sifting my fingers through the hair at his temples, I waited.

  “There’s nothing to forgive.” His eyes jumped all over my face. It was clear he was working up to say something. “I––I don’t know why you want to be with me.”

  I knew what it took for such a proud man to make himself vulnerable. My body was no longer capable of containing all the love I had for him. “Because being without you is intolerable. We’re part of each other, for better or worse. There’s a reason they put those words in that little speech we had to recite. Let’s not kid ourselves, this isn’t the last time we’ll hurt each other. Just don’t ever stop fighting for us.”

  His jaw pulsed, his eyes blinking rapidly. He wrapped a large palm around my neck and brought me down to his mouth. “There’s nothing on this planet more important to me than you. Don’t let me fuck this up.”

  “I won’t,” I whispered. He sealed the promise with a kiss. And for the first time since I walked back into his life, he slept soundly through what remained of the night.

  By the end of the week the color had returned to his face and he could actually keep solid food down. Our midnight heart to heart may have dispelled any lingering hurt between us, but it also pushed us into what I like to call ‘the polite’ zone. It drove me crazy. I wanted to shake some feeling other than contrition out of him. He constantly wavered between staring at me as if he’d seen a ghost, to not meeting my eyes at all when we spoke. With each day that passed and his health improved, the need to clear the air and discuss what had happened hung over us like a blade, the tension steadily rising.

  Lying on the living room couch, I was reading when he walked in. Hair disheveled from his afternoon nap, jeans hanging low and revealing the absence of underwear. He was ridiculously handsome, much too handsome for someone who had recently been to hell and back. He stood in front of the couch with his hands stuffed into the front pockets of his jeans, shifting awkwardly.

  A desperate need to erase every cubic square inch of air between us came over me. I held up my hand and he took it without hesitation, his much larger one engulfing mine. I pulled him down on top of me. The minute his body blanketed mine, his heat soaking into my bones, all the tension I was feeling gave way to comfort. He settled between my thighs and hugged me, placing his face on my chest, over my heart.

  “How do you feel?” I asked, as I brushed his hair back with my fingers.

  After a deep exhale, he said, “Better––because you’re here.” The suddenly hard appendage pressing against the inside of my thigh validated that statement.

  “I would say so,” I added, swallowing the laughter bubbling up. He looked up sporting a crooked smile I hadn’t seen in ages.

  “I missed you. I miss that smile,” I murmured.

  Moving with intent, he crawled up my body and kissed me, his hands holding my face in place while he devoured my mouth. A slew of different emotions were on the lips that met mine: passion, relief, love––apprehension. He pulled back and his eyes traveled over every salient point on my face. From my cherry-stained lips, to my eyes filled with love and regret for all the reasons that had kept us apart.

  “We need to clear the air.”

  “Nothing happened with Caroline. I drove her home because she said her limo was stuck in traffic.” We both sat up on the couch then, side by side. Judging by the expression on his face, he looked like he was about to shatter waiting for my verdict. “You believe me, right?” In his eyes was the indisputable truth. I could always find it there.

  “Of course I do. But that’s not the issue, my love.” I straddled his lap and held his face. “You asked me to trust you and I have, I do––but you never gave me yours in return.” I watched him wrestle with those words, arguments coming to the forefront and receding. I knew exactly the moment he capitulated in his mind because his gaze fell down between us, a deep v insinuating itself between his brows. “Stop doing that. I don’t want your shame or regret. I want your trust––and your love.” I lifted his face, forcing him to meet my eyes.

  “You’ll always have that,” he quietly replied.

  “It didn’t feel that way this past month.”

  “I don’t know why I said those things.” He looked away again, his mouth pinching in discomfort, his head shaking. “I didn’t mean any of it. My anger got the best of me. And by the time you left my office, when you came to see me for my birthday, I realized how badly I’d fucked up––” His voice descended to a low murmur. “I couldn’t deal with the look of disappointment I saw on your face.” Closing his eyes, his head fell back on the sofa cushion. “I’m just like her,” he added, his voice ruled by derision. I’d never heard him sound hopeless before that moment. That fueled my temper.

  “Your mother? Are you? Because if that’s the case then we might as well go our separate ways now.”

  His head snapped back up, eyes wide, a moment of fear followed surprise. Almost immediately it morphed into determination. By now, I knew that nothing centered and propelled him into action quicker than a challenge.

  “Give me another chance. You don’t have to move back in––if you don’t want to,” he said, his face twisting in agony on the last few words. “Just let me show you that I trust you. Let me prove it.”

  Unconditional love––I never believed in it. I’d always thought it was rubbish. Love was completely conditional on how one person treated the other. I looked into his eyes and I understood it. Apparently I needed the lesson as much as he did. He didn’t have to ask for my forgiveness because he already had it, he didn’t need to prove his trust because I already believed him. Regardless of what happened, I would always love him. Conditions be damned.

  “Do you know how I feel about you?” I asked, my eyes trained on every slight nuance of his expression.

  “You love me.” His answer sounded more like a question.

  “Beyond measure.”

  Large eyes full of regret studied me. “After everything?”

  “Forever,” I told him, my voice emphatic. “Don’t ever doubt it.”

  The wonder in his expression made it hard to say the next few words. However, I knew unequivocally that if I didn’t our marriage would never survive. “I’m not moving back in––not immediately.” Crushed by the weight of disappointment, those impossibly wide shoulders sagged. “You will have to prove it. To yourself, not to me. Otherwise we don’t stand a chance.” Brandy colored eyes connected with brown ones. And after a curt nod, an agreement was reached, a challenge issued.

  Something woke me in the middle of the night. On my left, his side was empty. I ran a hand over the Pratesi sheets and found it cold. His scent, sandalwood and something else, something subtle and rich, drifted up from the ivory super fine cotton.

  It’s a credit to my steely nerves that I didn’t instantly go into full-blown panic; I was starting to become as paranoid as he was. The remnants of sleep evaporating instantly, I jumped out of bed in search of him. The empty spare bedroom made a small nervous flutter in my stomach kick up. So did his empty study and the den. I breathed a loud sigh of relief when I found him in the main living room, facing the wall of windows that overlooked the lake. Naked, he stood with his back to me staring out the window.

  The light that the harvest moon cast outlined the angular edges of his body in silver. With his head resting on the glass, he was lost in thought, a million miles away.

  “Sebastian,” I called out softly.

  He turned and watched as I walked up to him. In his gaze was a lifetime’s worth of longing. We stood before each other frozen, neither one of us brave enough to make the first move. Gathering the U of Texas t-shirt I had worn to bed, I pulled it over my head and dropped it.

  A switch flipped. Lips crashed together, almost painfully so. His body, unbelievably hard, pressed between us. He moaned. A broken little sigh came afterwards. Fingers shoved through hair. He tugged my head back, exposing my neck. It was my turn to sigh with relief. I melted into him, off
ering myself to him without reserve. He nipped the delicate skin of my neck, and placed a string of kisses down to my collarbone. He grabbed my lacy panties in both hands and pulled them apart. Then he wrapped me in his arms, lifted me, and held me effortlessly against his body.

  “I’ll buy you another pair,” he said with a half grin.

  “You owe me ten,” I teased.

  My back was pushed against the cold glass. A shiver shot up my spine. In front of me, his skin was on fire, my nipples hypersensitive to the heat coming off of him. Under different circumstances I might have checked for a fever. Leaning into his chest, I took the warmth and safety he offered. His heart, beating strongly, gave me everything else I needed and wanted.

  While he made love to the side of my throat, his erection pressed against my body exactly where I needed him. I hooked my heels into the beautiful, round muscles of his rear end rubbed against him. His hands left my face and burned a path down my body, squeezing breasts, skating between the cheeks of my rear end and lower. He pushed his pelvis into me. Spread me wider. His fingers, slick from my arousal, rubbed all the way down between my cheeks to where our bodies met––teasing me into a state of sexual madness. It had been too long since I’d had him inside of me.

  When I couldn’t take anymore, he pulled back far enough that the broad head of his erection breached my entrance. His supplicating eyes connected with mine. “You’re the only reason I keep breathing,” he murmured in a rough-hewn voice. He watched me closely to make sure the words sunk in, that I understood the gravity of his admission. The harvest moon wouldn’t let us keep any secrets, didn’t allow us to hide any of our most intimate thoughts and feelings behind the cloak of night. It cast a spotlight on the tears welling at the corners of my eyes…and his.

  Without further delay, he drove his hard body into mine, filling me so completely that I felt a twinge of pain at first. Tangled up in each other, he held me securely while he pumped into me over and over, pushing me faster and faster towards sweet oblivion.