by L. A. Witt
I winced, that ball of lead in my stomach getting bigger and colder as I felt Scott slipping even farther away from me than when he’d walked out. “What happened that night was my own damn fault. I was . . . distracted. Let someone get the drop on me.”
“So did Nathan,” Scott whispered. “It’s just . . . hard to imagine you going out every day to be a human shield.” He swallowed. “I’ve been haunted for twenty years by what can happen to the person who gets in front of someone who wants to hurt someone else. I don’t know if I can—” He cleared his throat. “You’re the only one I’ve ever loved like I loved him. I don’t know if I could handle losing you too.”
The words hit me square in the chest. “Anything could happen to either one of us, though. I know, there’s a certain amount of risk involved in my job, but life is full of that risk. Hell, Jackie took the kids grocery shopping when they were little, and some idiot racing another car put all three of them in the hospital.”
Scott’s eyes widened. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah. I worried every day about something happening to any of them, and when it did, I worried even more, but . . . it isn’t like any of us is ever completely safe, you know?”
He exhaled. “I know. I . . . I get that. Intellectually.”
“There’s no preventing every possibility.” I watched my thumb run back and forth along the side of his. “But if being with you has taught me anything—and hopefully not too late—it’s that I’d rather take the chance of losing you than not be with you at all.”
Scott put his other hand over the top of mine. “I get it. I do. But I also get that whoever said it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all has never had a couple of cops show up at the door with their hats in their hands.” He stared down at our hands. “You said it took you four decades to get here. I’ve spent two of those decades avoiding this. I’ve . . . I don’t know what to do right now because I’ve got almost half a lifetime of instinct telling me to run, and a few months of knowing you telling me not to move.”
I shifted my gaze from our hands to his eyes. “You’re still here.”
“I know.” He looked at me. Barely whispering, he said, “And I’m fucking terrified.”
“Me too. I’m just . . . I’m sorry I gave you any more reason not to stay.”
“I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have given you an ultimatum over something like that. Especially when I knew damn well you were in a bad, bad place, but even still, it wasn’t my place to—”
“But you were right. I guess that was what I needed in order to realize just how fucked up my family’s gotten and that I can’t fix it on my own.”
“Still.” He met my gaze. “I, um, probably could have approached it differently.”
“Well, I think we both said some shit we shouldn’t have. Me more than you. But in the end, if you’re willing to give it a go, and I got the wake-up call I needed to bring in some outside help, then I can honestly say I don’t think it did any lasting damage. Not so much that we can’t start over now.”
Scott searched my eyes, and then a smile slowly came to life on his lips. “We’ll just have to do this like every relationship since the dawn of time.” He reached for my face and ran the pad of his thumb along my cheekbone. “One day at a time.”
I smiled. “I think I can do that.”
“Me too.” He drew me in, and just before our lips met, he murmured, “I love you, Jeremy.” And then he kissed me. Hard. Like he meant it.
Like neither of us was going anywhere anytime soon.
We didn’t lose a stitch of clothing before I dragged Scott down onto the bed with me. Fully dressed, shoes and all, we held each other close, kissing and grinding and breathing each other in. Jesus. This was more of a relief than the first time I’d fallen into bed with a man after my divorce. It was the same realization—this is right, this is everything I’ve been missing for too damned long—but so much more profound. Back then, I’d nearly broken down in tears after finally finding myself where I needed to be after denying it for so many years.
This time, my eyes stung and my heart raced for entirely different reasons. How had I been so stupid? And how close had I come to missing out on this for the rest of my life?
It didn’t matter. I’d come to my senses, and thank God, I hadn’t pushed him away forever. He was here. I was here. This was . . . this was so right, I could barely fit it into my head.
I ran a shaking hand through his hair. Scott moaned softly, tilting his head as he deepened the kiss, and when his cock rubbed against mine, it was my turn to moan.
Without even breaking the kiss, Scott twisted his hips, and a shoe thumped on the floor. He twisted the other way, and his other shoe dropped. I toed mine off, letting them fall to the floor with dull thumps. Then I tugged his shirt free from his waistband, and when my hands slid up his naked back, he sucked in a sharp breath through his nose.
I cupped his face, then slid my hand into his hair. His short hair was cool between my fingers, his skin hot against mine. We were both breathing faster now, touching each other more frantically, and suddenly the clothes were in the way. I pulled at his shirt. He lifted himself up and fumbled with my belt.
Something ripped, and I didn’t care. Clothes were coming off, though I was barely aware of whose clothes or what article, only that we’d bared more skin. God knew how, but we kicked everything off, and finally, his body was against mine with nothing between us.
Our eyes met. My breath caught. Just having him here was more than I could get through my head. I’d known before he came over tonight that I was in love with him, but that fact burrowed deeper now, and cool panic swept through me—the same oh shit feeling that followed a near miss with another car.
This could have been so bad, a hysterical voice in my head screamed. It’s okay now, but it could have been bad!
I slid a hand around the back of his neck, pulled him down, and kissed him again. Then, still holding on to him, I rolled him onto his back and started kissing my way down his neck to his collarbone. Scott groaned and swore, combing his fingers through my hair and running his hands all over my neck and shoulders. I trailed light kisses down his chest, and when his abs contracted beneath my lips, I could barely breathe. I’d missed him so much it hurt, and now he was here, and seeing, feeling, hearing him this turned on was mind-blowing.
I flicked my tongue across his hip bone. Scott ground out a curse, and goose bumps prickled my shoulders.
“Come . . . come back up,” he breathed. “I want . . .”
Oh hell, like I was going to say no. I’d had every intention of going down on him, but the hunger in his voice brought me right back up to him, and he lifted himself onto an elbow, threw an arm around me, and kissed me. Hard.
We were moving again, though I didn’t know who initiated it. I didn’t really care, either, but I was sinking onto the bed on my back, tangled up in him and lost in the kind of kiss that made things like gravity and control about as relevant as the weather outside. All that mattered was being this close to him.
And damn it, I wasn’t close enough.
He was on top again. Then I was. I freed myself from his embrace and leaned to the side. I pulled a condom from the drawer, but before I could even tear the wrapper, Scott plucked it from my fingers.
My heart skipped.
He arched his eyebrow. “This okay?”
“Yeah. I just . . .” Forgot how to think. Because I want you. Why aren’t we fucking yet? “How do you want me?”
He nodded toward the headboard. “Turn around.”
Didn’t have to tell me twice. As he put the condom on, I got up on my hands and knees. Anticipation was driving me crazy. Without his body touching mine, the cool air against my skin nearly made my teeth chatter.
Scott didn’t keep me waiting long, though. He knelt behind me, and his hand drifted up my spine, then back down again. “For what it’s worth, not having you like this has been killing me.”
“Me too. It’s—” Words? Fuck it. Speaking was too complicated.
He rested a hand on my hip and guided himself to me. I was so fucking wound up—is this even real?—but I made myself pull in a breath, and I made myself relax, and as he pressed against me, I heard myself curse.
He pushed in slowly, until my body yielded to him, and then . . . fuck. He was inside me. My vision blurred. We’d done this plenty of times before, but this time I was already overwhelmed by the fact that he was here at all, that this was really happening. Adding that intense stretch nearly made me pass out—it made this all too damned real.
I could barely breathe as he worked himself deeper. By the time he was all the way inside me, his hips pressing against my ass just before he withdrew again, I was in orbit. This wasn’t sex. This was a rainstorm in Southern California—too much too fast, and still not nearly enough and not a moment too soon.
“Oh Jesus, Jeremy,” he moaned. “You feel . . . so . . .”
I tried to tell him he did too, but all that came out was a long sigh.
“Feel good?” he asked.
“Uh-huh. It’s . . . I missed this.”
“Me too.” Scott sped up, fucking me deeper and harder.
My elbows nearly buckled. A few more thrusts, and I couldn’t hold myself up anymore, so I didn’t try. I sank down to the bed, and Scott came down with me. He couldn’t slam into me as hard in this position, and his long, slow strokes drove me insane.
“Oh my God,” he slurred behind my ear.
“Yeah.” I grabbed a handful of sheets. Then the edge of the mattress. I couldn’t move—not to rock with him, not to thrust back. All I could do was hold on.
Every stroke was more intense than the one before it, and he pushed me down into the sheets, putting just the right amount of friction on my cock.
My vision blurred, and then my eyelids slid shut anyway. His jaw grazed my shoulder, making my breath catch and my skin prickle. Then he sank his teeth in, just like he had the very first time, and I couldn’t make a sound. My whole body tensed, and though my lips parted, no air moved. All I could do was silently tremble while Scott rode me through an orgasm that seemed to go on forever.
With a grunt, he forced himself as deep as I could take him. He swore, he shuddered, and for a split second, I regretted that I couldn’t see his face, but then he kissed my neck and murmured, “Oh fuck . . .” and I didn’t care about what I couldn’t see or couldn’t feel. Scott was coming apart behind me, on top of me, inside me, and it was perfect.
He stopped, but didn’t get up. Cool breath rushed across my sweaty skin, and he held himself up on his arms just enough to let me keep breathing.
He touched his forehead to the back of my neck. “God, I missed you.”
“I missed you too.”
Lying in bed afterward, the sheet draped over us, and Scott’s arm draped across me, we didn’t talk for a long time. There was nothing that needed to be said right now, and I was afraid anything we did say would ruin the moment.
For the first time since my divorce, I’d stopped resisting. I’d let myself fall for Scott, and here beside him in my bed, I didn’t feel guilty for it. There were things in my world that still needed to be fixed, and there were mistakes I still needed to atone for, but this wasn’t a mistake. For once, something was exactly the way it needed to be.
“I’m glad you texted me,” he said after a while.
“Me too.” I turned on my side, facing him. “And you’re sure about this? Being with someone like me . . . it’s not exactly putting the game on the easy setting.”
Scott laughed and patted my leg. “That goes both ways, I think. I’ve spent a lot of years avoiding relationships.” Sobering, he ran a hand through his hair, the bedside light catching the silver strands. “This is new territory for me too. I’ve dated a little, but I’m not kidding when I say I haven’t had an actual relationship since Nathan died.”
“I know. And I’ve never had any relationship to speak of with a man.” I caressed his face, his stubble coarse beneath my fingertips. “Just means we’ll need to be patient with each other. Because it’s going to be a learning curve for both of us.”
“Yeah.” Scott sat up, so I did too. He put a hand on my knee. “We should get something to eat.”
“Yeah. We . . .” I chewed my lip. As hungry as I was, my stomach was still knotted so tight anything that went down would probably come back up in a hurry.
Scott touched my arm. “Hey. You okay?”
“Yeah. Listen, um, before we figure out what to eat, I think I need to make a phone call.”
His eyebrows rose slightly. “Ex-wife?”
I nodded. My phone sat on the nightstand where I’d left it after I’d talked to Scott earlier, and I eyed it like it was a stray pyrotechnic that was going to go off at any moment. Cautiously, I reached for it. Cradling it in my hand, I tapped my thumbnail rapidly on the dark screen. “I’m not sure I’m ready for this.”
“You don’t have to do it tonight.”
“No, I’m going to. I’m just . . . not sure I’m ready.” I took a deep breath. “But this has dragged on too long already.”
He took my hand in both of his and kissed my fingers. “Do you want some privacy?”
“Actually, I . . .” I swallowed. “I think it would be easier with you here. If you don’t mind being—”
“Of course. Anything you need.” He leaned in and pressed his lips to mine. “I love you, Jeremy. I want to be there for you.”
“Thank you,” I whispered and drew him in for a longer kiss.
We separated as gently as we’d come together and got up to collect our clothes off the floor. Then, phone in hand, I led him into the living room, where we sat on my couch.
“Well.” I pulled up my ex’s number. “Here goes.”
He patted my leg but didn’t speak.
On the other end, the phone rang a few times. It didn’t kick over to voice mail on the first ring, so that was promising, but she wasn’t picking up. My heart sank when, after several rings, it did finally go to voice mail.
“This is Jackie. Leave a message.”
Normally, Jackie was the type who wouldn’t even listen to voice mail. A missed call was all the call me back when you can she needed.
But I spoke anyway. “Hey, Jack. It’s me. I . . . We need to talk. Give me a call when you can.”
Then I hung up and tossed my phone onto the coffee table. “So much for that idea.”
“Give her time.” Scott kissed my cheek. “She’ll call.”
“Yeah, but it’s a question of whether I’ll lose my nerve in the mean—”
My phone vibrated, startling the hell out of me, and then Jackie’s ringtone kicked on.
I snatched it off the table. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she said. “Sorry. My phone was in the other room.”
“It’s okay.”
“So, you wanted to talk?”
“Yeah. I . . .” I felt around for Scott’s hand, and when he took mine, I exhaled slowly. “Look, I’ve been thinking about everything with us and the kids, and . . . I don’t think we can fix all this on our own.”
She went quiet for a moment. “What do you suggest?”
“I think we need some help.” I ran my thumb back and forth along Scott’s. “As a family.”
“Like . . .” She paused, and her voice was soft as she asked, “A counselor?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re serious? I thought you didn’t—”
“I was wrong,” I whispered. “And we’re sure as hell not getting anywhere without one.”
“That’s true.” She paused. “How do you want to do this? Skype?”
“Skype might not be enough.” I swallowed. “If it bothers the kids that I’m this far away, then maybe I need to come down there. So we can do this face-to-face.”
“Are you moving back?”
I glanced at Scott. “No. My job is still up here. But I can fly back and for
th. I can easily be down there and back in a day.”
My ex-wife didn’t speak for so long this time, I though the line had cut off.
“Jackie?”
“I’m still here.” She sighed. “That’s going to get expensive.”
“I’ll manage.” I paused, my throat tightening. “Is, um . . . is Haley there?”
“Yes.”
Closing my eyes and gripping Scott’s hand, I took a deep breath. “Can you put her on?”
Jackie was silent again. I was ready for her to argue with me, to insist that Haley wasn’t ready to talk to me, but movement on the other end ratcheted up my pulse.
“Haley?” Her voice was slightly muffled. “Your dad wants to talk to you for a minute.” A response I couldn’t hear, but it was terse. Jackie then said, “Just for a minute.”
“Fine,” came the distant mutter. More movement. Then, “Hi.”
My stomach clenched. “Hey. Look, um . . . I know you don’t want to talk to me, so I’m going to talk this time. Will you just hear me out?”
The sharp huff was almost undoubtedly accompanied by rolling eyes. “Fine.”
I swallowed. Scott ran his thumb alongside mine, as if to remind me he was there. I glanced at him, and he gave me a subtle, reassuring nod.
I moistened my lips. “Listen, I know I hurt you and your brother, and—”
“And Mom,” she snapped.
Wincing, I said, “Yeah, and Mom. And I’m sorry.”
“You’re always—”
“Please, Haley,” I said softly. “Just hear me out.”
She said nothing, but she also didn’t hang up.
After a moment, I went on. “I made a lot of mistakes. A lot. And I know I can’t go back and change them, but I want us to get help. As a family. Because we are still a family. So, your mother and I are going to find a family counselor.”
“Are you coming back to California?”
I glanced at Scott again. “No. I . . . My job is here. But I will fly down so we can all see the counselor together.” I paused, forcing back the lump rising in my throat. “I’ll be down there as often as I can be, and I’ll go back and forth for as long as it takes. Can—” I swallowed again. I would’ve wiped my stinging eyes if I’d had a free hand, but no way in hell was I letting go of Scott. “Can you meet me partway?”