by K. L. Kreig
“You just want me to be happy,” I finish for him when he trails off.
“Yes,” he chokes.
“No matter what?”
“No matter what, Swan.” I’m silently sobbing as he continues, “Follow your heart, and if that leads you back to me, know that I will spend every one of my days smothering you with love, but if it leads to Killian…” He pauses to take a deep breath. “If it leads to him, then I know he will do the same.”
Follow my heart.
My fingers drift over the ratty box in my hands. The one I’ve kept hidden with memories of old and a pulse I swear has never stopped beating. I trace the heart I drew on the top. I outline the M loves K in the center of it. I draw a nail along the arrow I drove straight through. I set it back down on the rock next to me.
Tipping my head back, I close my eyes, letting the heat of the sun drive into me. It feels good. Strengthening me for what needs to be done. I draw in a long breath and blow it out just as slow, delaying the inevitable.
My soul has been searched until it’s raw.
I have my answers.
Now I have to do something with them.
Today is going to be both the hardest day of my life and the happiest one. I have to tell one man good-bye, crushing him, while I make the other the happiest man on earth when he finds out he’s my forever.
It’s true with every breath I’ve taken over the past twenty-six years I’ve tasted Killian Shepard. But with every heartbeat of mine, I’ve felt Kael’s drumming in synch.
Opening my eyes, it’s so bright I’m forced to squint as I let my gaze drift over water that sparkles with the sun’s rays. I haven’t been back here for a few years now, but it feels like coming home, even if it is different.
My swans are long gone and other than a few frogs croaking on the lily pads across the lake, the pond seems lifeless. But I know it’s not. I know underneath the surface, it swarms with vitality. Life goes on, even if it changes. And while I know I’m about to change a man’s life, a man I will always love, I truly believe his life will move on and he’ll allow himself to change with it. He has the strength and resilience to do it.
Killian has given me time, just as Kael has. With this being the biggest decision of my life, it’s time I’ve needed. Choosing between two incredible men who have both made me happy is not a decision to be made on the hood of a car in the dead of night.
But as I stare off into the distance, my heart’s racing faster. She’s known the answer all along. His presence has always surrounded me, even when I didn’t think it did.
I stand, wipe the dirt sticking to my shorts, and leisurely make my way back through the woods. I walk straight to my car and get in, bypassing a trip inside to make pleasantries with either my mother or Jillian.
Once I really thought about it, it was easy to forgive Kael and Killian. They were protecting family. Mine should have done the same, especially Jillian. I’ll forgive them both in time. But that clock’s still ticking fast and loud and I need to wait for it slow and quiet before I’m ready. Through it all, they’re family. The only one I have. At some point we’ll talk and hash things out, but that day isn’t today.
With singular focus, I drive through town, stopping restlessly at all the red lights. Finally I pull into Killian’s driveway. Killing the engine, I sit there for a few moments, gathering my thoughts. As if in synch, the second I open my car door, his front door opens, too, and there Killian stands in all his manly glory.
He’s so beautiful it hurts to look at him. Plaid board shorts hug his trim hips and thighs. A baby blue tee stretches across his broad shoulders. It drapes down his cut torso perfectly. He’s all man, of that there is no dispute.
“You’re here.” The smile on his face ignites him brighter than the Northern Lights.
“I’m here.”
Heart throbbing against my ribs, I make my way slowly up the sidewalk, up the stairs and slide easily into his arms the way I’ve done so many times before.
I bet and lost.
I kept an unforgivable secret from Maverick and I’ve lost her for good.
I knew what I was doing when I asked her to marry me. I knew she still loved my brother. I knew Killian and Jillian would eventually divorce. And if that happened, he would come for her. I just thought…fuck. I thought if I loved her hard enough, it wouldn’t matter. That she’d choose me. Love me. Want me when the time came for her to decide. Because I always knew that day was coming. There was no way Killian was letting her go without a dogfight that ended up with one of us on the other side of despair.
Meet misery. That’s me.
Being without her is sheer, utter fucking hell. Like a vital part of me has been cut out and the hole is gaping open, grief oozing from a wound that won’t ever close. I reach out in my sleep and she’s not there. My arms feel cold and empty, my life pointless. I wake in the morning and can barely force myself from the bed to my new job. I can’t eat. I can’t think. I can’t function.
I can’t anything.
I’ve been kicking my own ass daily for words that I forced out of the back of my throat with every ounce of power in me. But had I not…had I begged her to come back to me instead of cutting her free, I would never know if she was doing it out of obligation to our vows or because she truly loved me enough to choose me. It’s the same reason I didn’t circle her ankles and hang on for dear life the first time she chose Killian.
I want her to want me for me. Period.
There’s nothing wrong with that, I suppose. I deserve it, even. But now…now I’m questioning if begging wasn’t the way I should have gone instead. I may only have half of her, but half is better than nothing at all.
I shift around in my hotel bed, trying to get comfortable.
Impossible.
Every move sends shards of agony zinging through me. There aren’t enough painkillers that can dull the pain of knowing she’s with my brother.
Unable to deal with the reality that’s become my life, I escape inside myself, immersing into a particularly salacious memory of our weekend in Minnesota when we were happy…
“What exactly is it you plan to do with those?” she asks, nodding to the packet of Pop Rocks in my hand, her laugh husky and enthralling. It winds around my cock, tugging mercilessly.
“I told you, Swan, we’re going to make our own explosion.”
I climb up the bed, admiring the perfection of her luscious naked curves sprawled out for me. Jesus, she is ethereal. Most days I can’t believe I have her. I pray nightly I can keep her.
I hope she forgives me for keeping this from her, but we have to get out of Dusty Falls if we’re ever going to survive as a couple. My only hope is that when the time comes, she sees I’m doing this with the best of intentions, not subterfuge.
“Hey,” her voice draws me back.
“Hey, what?”
“I was just wondering if you’re going to actually take advantage of me or if you’re going to stare off into space all night? I mean, you did promise to keep up with my book boyfriends earlier.”
God, how I love this woman. I grin, latching my mouth to the inside of her thigh. She squawks when I bite a little too hard. “Definitely take advantage. Although if you’re that easy, I’m not really sure I’m taking advantage.”
I laugh when she swats my shoulder, pretending to be mad. “I’m not easy.”
“Don’t worry, Swan, I like you easy.” I spread her legs wide, groaning as I run a finger through her dripping slit. “But I love you like this,” I gruff, inhaling her scent as though it’s my lifeblood.
“Like what?” She squirms when I shove a single finger inside her, testing how tight she is for me. So fucking tight. My cock throbs with the need to have her wet heat glove me.
“Needy. Your body writhing,” I reply. Ripping the bag of Pop Rocks open with my teeth, I dump a pile on my tongue, the tiny blue crystals starting their crackling party already. I watch her watch me, wondering what I’m going to do next.
I think she already knows.
Dipping back down, I sweep her lips open with my fingers and set my tongue on her sensitive labia to the left of her clit. The rocks crackle and melt even faster. She whimpers and squirms at the sensation, but I wrap an arm around her hips and hold her still. “Tell me how it feels,” I demand, dumping more in my mouth to assault the opposite side.
“I don’t know…weird, I guess.” She gasps when I go in again, moaning, “Kael, please.”
This time, two fingers enter her and she cries out as I finger-fuck her, hell-bent on coaxing a quick orgasm out. Mavs is so damn responsive, she’s already clenching around them.
“Please what?” With the candy now all gone, I suck her clit between my teeth before clamping down lightly.
She grabs a handful of hair and yanks upward as she sits and gets nose to nose with me. “Please everything.”
That hits me in the very center of my chest. I love her so much I ache. Never losing my rhythm, I now start feathering that small knot that bends her to my will. In just moments, she shatters and before she’s had a chance to come off that high, I lift her and plunge her onto my straining cock, declaring as I fuck us both into oblivion, “I’ll give you anything you want, Mavs. Just ask. All you have to do is ask.”
I awake abruptly, working to slow the race of my heart. I want to dive back into another memory of her, a place I don’t want to leave, a place I now want to live in permanently, but something woke me.
I blink into the darkness listening for sounds out of place when I hear it.
Slow, even breaths to my right.
And then I feel them, too. Washing over my arm. Diving into my very soul.
It can’t be.
I lay still for several seconds wondering if my imagination is in overdrive or if she’s really here, beside me. I almost want to drift back off so I can keep feeling the trueness of the moment but I have to know. Is it me or is it possible she’s real?
Gathering courage I don’t have, I manage to twist my head on my pillow, praying the whole way.
It’s then that I start to weep like a fucking baby.
Maverick is curled up beside me, fast asleep. Her hands are tucked under her face. Her eyelids flutter slightly with her dreams. She looks peaceful and happy and so fucking gorgeous I lose it, sobbing harder.
What does this mean? Has she come back to me? Or has she come to officially ask me for a divorce? Fucking hell. At this point, I don’t want to know. I can’t stomach the answer.
I sit up just to take her in, but either the movement or the hitches of my breath stir her. Then her dark eyes are blinking open. The second the fog of sleep clears, she’s up and in my arms. Clinging to my neck. Sobbing into my cheek. Cutting off my air supply.
And then I know.
She’s come back to me.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her over and over.
“Me too,” she replies for each apology I give.
“God, I love you, Maverick. Tell me you’re staying.” I sound needy and pathetic. Countless fucks couldn’t be given. I am needy and pathetic. I’m a twisted mess of raw emotion right now. My body is trembling, but my soul is finally at peace. It’s a weird combination to experience at the same time.
“I’m staying. I’m staying,” she keeps repeating until our air is caught and our quaking subsides.
I don’t want to let her out of my arms, but I need to see her face when I ask her this, so I sit back against the headboard and pull her astride my lap.
“Why?”
Jesus, I have to know why she chose me over a man she’s loved her entire life. The one I practically pushed into her arms the other night. I wanted her to choose me, yes, but I am in complete shock right now that she did.
Her face is just as tearstained as I imagine mine is, but that smile. God damn. That breathtaking smile she gives me puts me under every single time. “I know you want me to say something profound and romantic—”
I cut her off. “I don’t need lyrics or romance, Swan. I just need to know that you’re mine. Forever. Just the two of us and no one else.”
“I am. I choose you.” She stops to inhale and I know I’m not gonna like what she has to say, but I know I’ll listen. I owe her that much. My suspicion is confirmed when her eyes drop fast to my lap. When they rise back up, my fingers curl around her hips, reminding her that she just committed to being mine. Or maybe it’s to remind me because I know the next words out of her mouth will hurt.
“I love Killian. I’m not going to deny that.” Fuck, that hurt like a mother. “But I realized that love all by itself isn’t enough.” The warmth of her hands covering my face is pure bliss and so damn needed right now or I may crumble. “And this last year I also realized there are different kinds of love. There’s the dreamy kind you always thought you wanted and then there’s the steady one you never understood but the second you let yourself feel it…it’s nothing like you could have imagined in your wildest dreams.”
Maverick dips down and fastens her lips to mine. I want to ravage her. Throw her on her back and make love to her until we’re both rippling with emotion we can’t keep inside. But this is her time. I want her to have it. There’s more she needs to say. I feel it and I need all the words.
“I love you, Kael. There just is no me without you. There never has been,” she whispers against my wet mouth. “I realized that the one person who has always, without fail, been there for me is you. And the thought of not having that—of not having you beside me every day—killed something inside of me.”
Is this happening? Am I really holding on to her, listening to her profess words I’ve always wanted her to say but never thought she would?
“You choose me?”
She smiles. It’s bright and stirs my cock something fierce.
“When I thought about it, there was no choice, really.”
Her face blurs when she leans in. Warm lips skim my cheek and, fuck, I can’t help but roll my pelvis slightly when her core lines up with me perfectly.
“I want a crazy man who melts me with songs of love and who will watch North by Northwest with me a hundred times even though I know he hates it.”
Now she’s moved on to my jaw, nipping lightly as she spills. She has to feel me rock hard underneath her. I want her to.
“I want to make pillow forts until we’re too old and decrepit to get ourselves off the floor. I want to find a new Tastie’s to walk to on Saturday mornings. I want to have sex in roadside bathrooms and talk about nothing and everything with the man I know I can’t live a day without because I’ve never been without him until just recently. And I was miserable, Kael.”
I groan when she pulls back, but I’m so mesmerized by the love shining like stars from her eyes that I can’t move. Or breathe. I can hardly even think when she draws a finger down the side of my cheek. I don’t realize it’s wet again until I feel the cool moisture smear. The soft curve of her mouth is about the only thing grounding me to earth.
“I thought Killian’s love defined me, but your love changed me forever. I’m so sorry it took me so long to figure that out.”
Oh hell…that was pretty profound and romantic.
I can’t stand the space between us any longer. I band my arms around her and hang on for dear fucking life. So does she.
My Maverick.
My swan.
My wife.
Mavs and I were apart for exactly sixteen days, twelve hours, and seven minutes. I know this because I couldn’t stop counting those fuckers off as my life blurred by without her. Then, exactly sixteen days, twelve hours, and eight minutes later, she was in my arms.
I’ve called in sick the last two days—something I’ve never done. We haven’t left the hotel room. We’ve slept the days away and talked the nights through until our throats were sore. She told me everything. Some of it shocking. Some of it not.
The fact that Killian asked her to leave me for him? Not shocking.
The fact that she chose me? Q
uite frankly…I’m still trying to take that one in.
The fact that she kissed him in Harbor Park? Hurtful, but not shocking. I think in a way she needed “The End” to be written so she could close that book forever.
But the revelation that Arnie Shepard fathered Jillian’s baby? Like a Taser hit me full force in the nutsack. I did not see that one coming. I have to hand it to Killian; he sacrificed a lot—no, he sacrificed everything—to save a man who didn’t deserve it. But I understand why he did it.
Honestly, I’d like to think if I were in his shoes I’d have made the same decision, the same sacrifice. But I’m not sure I would have. He selflessly gave Maverick up. He had to know he was risking losing her forever, yet he did it anyway. And I know what a gut punch it feels like to know she’s not yours. We’ve walked in each other’s shoes too many times to count over the years, so regardless of the fact he tried to steal her out from under my nose, I will always have a certain measure of respect for him.
Maverick sighs against me, snuggling closer, mumbling something in her sleep. She’s exhausted after I spent the last three hours gorging on her. Her knee grazes my dick and he immediately starts flying at half-mast. I want to wake her and go another couple rounds, my need for her rabid after being parted for so long.
But I need some shut-eye myself. Tomorrow’s a full day. I’m taking the rest of the week off. Uncool after just a couple weeks on the job, but Gaylen insisted—very pointedly—I was to be with my wife for the rest of the week and stop pretending to have the fucking flu.
I’ve developed quite a camaraderie with my new boss, who has been wooing me away from DSC for months. We became friends after meeting in the bar at a conference two years ago. I eventually confided in him about my situation with Maverick and Killian. He was the one to make me see leaving Dusty Falls was my one and only option to save my marriage. Otherwise, I’m not sure I would have considered it knowing how it would upset Maverick. There are a lot of good memories in our childhood town, but the bad were starting to overshadow them. I started to see he was right.