If It's Only Love

by Ryan, Lexi

  “I’ve been thinking about you all day,” he murmurs as he kisses his way down my stomach. “I don’t know if I actually slept last night. I wanted you in my bed.”

  I slide my fingers into his hair and tug him up. “Easton.”

  He lowers his smile to my mouth and kisses me until everything else falls away. He only stops his touching and kissing—his worshipping—long enough to put on a condom and position himself between my legs. He pauses there, so close to where I need him, and frames my face with his hands. “We’re really doing this,” he says softly, reverently.

  I lift my hips, seeking him, needing him. One last time.

  He slides into me and moves so tenderly that tears sting the backs of my eyes. “I love you.”

  “I love you.” All I can do is bury my face in his neck and hold on, because it’s only love, and that’s never been enough.

  And when we’re spent and breathless, once my tailbone feels tender from the hardwood floor, he rolls us over so I’m on top of him and wraps his arms around me.

  “Sorry about that,” he says.

  I close my eyes and focus on the rise and fall of his chest with his heavy breaths. “Why sorry?”

  “I was thinking about you, and then there you were.” He chuckles. “I don’t know, Shay. After years of thinking about you, of missing you and wanting you, it’s going to be hard to pace myself now that you’re mine.”

  Emotion clogs my throat at that, and I can’t reply. I can hardly even breathe. Now that you’re mine. But for how much longer?

  He rolls us to our sides before standing and helping me up. He scoops our clothes into a big pile in his arms. “Coffee?” he asks with an arched brow.

  I bite my lip and shake my head. “I’m good.”

  He smacks my bare ass. “Then go get in bed. We have three hours until Abi gets home, and I want to spend it all naked with you between my sheets.”

  I try to smile, but this morning’s news weighs heavily on me and I can’t quite make my lips obey. This is all a preview of what could have been, and I’m being sliced apart from the inside.

  “Hey.” He cups my jaw. “Did I hurt you? Are you okay?”

  “You didn’t hurt me.” But I’m not okay. “Come on.” I don’t want to share my news while we’re standing naked by the front door. “I’m going to go upstairs and clean up. I’ll meet you in bed.”

  His eyes flare hungrily again and his gaze dips down and back up, but I turn away before he can meet my gaze. This feeling in my chest when he looks at me like that and I know what I have to tell him? It’s a little bit like heartbreak.

  Easton

  Something is wrong with Shay, and I think I know what it is.

  I open the curtains in my bedroom to expose the picture windows and the floor-to-ceiling view of Lake Michigan. I wasn’t kidding when I said I wanted to spend the afternoon in bed with her. While she cleans up in the bathroom, I run downstairs to grab a plate of fruit—grapes, fresh strawberries, a few mandarin oranges—and a pot of coffee in case she changes her mind about it.

  When I return to the bedroom, Shay’s in my bed. She curled on her side with her head on my pillow as she reads the back cover of the military suspense novel from my nightstand.

  “I liked this one,” she says.

  I smile. I’m going to love trying to keep up with her. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d have time for pleasure reading while you were working on your dissertation.”

  She huffs out a laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “Maybe if I hadn’t made time for pleasure reading, I would’ve finished a couple of years ago.”

  I set the plate of fruit and carafe of coffee on the dresser before climbing into bed with her. “You’re really here.” I pull her back to my front and press my hand flat against her breastbone.

  “I am,” she says. “It’s unreal. I didn’t think we’d ever . . .”

  I press a kiss to her bare shoulder. She didn’t believe we’d make it work. One night in Paris then a night in my hotel room in Chicago before her dad died. I want us to have a chance, and it’s always been yanked away from us before we could settle in.

  “We’re going to make it,” I say. She stiffens in my arms, and I instinctively hold her tighter. “I know you’re scared. I know you don’t trust this to work, but . . .” I force myself to relax my hold. “I’m struggling to not be selfish. I want you in my arms all the time, but I know you have other things to do this week.”

  “You’re the least selfish person I know,” she says softly.

  “Maybe I just hide it well.” I mean it as a joke, but it doesn’t sound like that. “I’ve been pretty selfish with you.”

  “Not with Abi. Not with Scarlett.”

  I shrug. I don’t particularly want to talk about my ex-wife while Shay is in my arms, but there’s still so much of our pasts we haven’t hashed out. If she wants to talk about this now, we will. “I’ve had my moments, but don’t paint me as a martyr just because our situation is unconventional.”

  Turning in my arms, she presses her palm to my chest, as if trying to measure the beats of my heart. “When did you find out Abi wasn’t yours?”

  “When Abi was sick, I wanted to see if I was a match to donate bone marrow. Most of the time, parents aren’t a match, but I wanted to try anyway. Scarlett panicked that it was like a DNA test or something and they’d tell me I wasn’t Abi’s father.” I close my eyes as I remember her stopping me on my way out the door. Her panic. Her tearful confession. The way she begged me not to leave her. “She told me she’d lied because she’d wanted to give her child the best, and she believed I was meant to be Abi’s father.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I grieved a little, I guess. Now it truly doesn’t matter to me. She’s my daughter, but when I first discovered she wasn’t biologically mine, I had to rearrange my perception of everything. Including my marriage and how hard I was willing to bend to make it work and how long I was willing to continue what felt like a ruse at that point. Scarlett and I were married in name only. When she moved back in after Abi’s diagnosis, I insisted she sleep in a different room until we figured out what we really wanted. The day of her confession, I went from wanting to stay married for my three-year-old daughter’s sake to wanting to stay married because I was afraid she’d take Abi away from me if we divorced. What claim did I have if she wasn’t even my blood?”

  “That’s awful.”

  I stroke Shay’s hair and twist to press a kiss to her forehead. “I don’t think she would have. Hell, she barely fought me for primary custody when we finally did divorce.” I sigh. “Scarlett knew—knew before she even held Abi for the first time—that I was the best choice she could make for her daughter. While I resent the lies and manipulation, I understand that Abi was always her priority. Just like she was mine.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  When she doesn’t immediately ask, I say, “Of course.”

  She worries her bottom lip between her teeth and watches me for a long time before speaking again. “Do you ever think about the decision you made when you found out Scarlett was pregnant?”

  My breath catches in my chest. Painful. I think about my decision to stay with Scarlett a lot, but in the context of Shay, I think about it almost compulsively. If I could rewrite the past, I would’ve found a way to be Abi’s father without marrying Scarlett. But even from this vantage point, I can’t see how that would’ve happened. Scarlett didn’t want to be alone, and if I’d known Abi wasn’t mine before she was born, I wouldn’t have felt so determined to make us a family.

  Shay studies my face. “I’m not judging your decision either way,” she says, misinterpreting my silence as defensiveness. “I just wonder if you’ve ever considered how you could’ve handled it differently if you’d known the truth. What would you have done if you’d known Abi wasn’t yours?”

  My chest tightens.

  “I don’t mean about us,” she says in a rush. “I mean, do you thin
k you would’ve married Scarlett?”

  I pull back so I can see her face. “But there was an us.”

  “Barely.” She looks away when she says the word, and I wonder if it feels like as much of a betrayal to her heart as it does to mine.

  I take her chin in my hand, guiding her to meet my eyes. “Not barely.”

  “It was one night in Paris, Easton.”

  “Does that make it any less real?” I take her hand and press it to my chest. “Does what I felt here not count because I only got one weekend to touch you? To hold you? What we had was real. Maybe it didn’t last long, but it was the most honest thing I’ve ever felt for any woman. Even when I thought Abi was my daughter, you were part of the equation. It wasn’t an easy choice.”

  “But what if I hadn’t been in the picture and you’d known she wasn’t yours? Would you have stayed? Would you have wanted to be Abi’s father?” Her face falls. “That’s not a fair question, is it?”

  “She’s my daughter in every way that matters, Shay. I cannot imagine what my life would be like if I didn’t have her, and I don’t want to.” I swallow the lump in my throat. She’s asking me a serious question and she deserves an honest answer. “No. If I’d known she wasn’t mine, I wouldn’t have stuck around. Raising another man’s child is a heartache I wouldn’t have signed on for if I’d known.”

  She nods slowly.

  I wrap my arms around her because I can feel her pulling away. “Does it bother you? The idea of getting involved with a man who’s already a father? Does it bother you that Abi remains my priority despite our DNA?”

  “No. That doesn’t bother me.” I see the truth in her eyes, but it doesn’t explain the stiffness in her body.

  “What about Scarlett? Will it bother you that she’s around sometimes?” I blow out a breath, realizing I should address the possibility of Scarlett moving to Jackson Harbor now and not later. “Will it bother you if she decides she wants her second home to be here and not Chicago?”

  She blinks at me. “She’s thinking of moving here?”

  I nod slowly. “I was trying to talk her out of it, but I’m not sure what’s going to happen now.”

  “Oh. I guess that could be good for Abi.”

  But not for her? Is that what she’s thinking? “Scarlett can live right next door if she wants to, and it won’t change the fact that I want you.”

  She curls into my chest and closes her eyes.

  I stroke her back. “Hey, Short Stack. Talk to me. Are you okay?” Please don’t panic. Please don’t give up on this before we even have a chance to begin.

  “Will you . . . just hold me for a while?”

  “Of course. You’re talking to the guy who wants to hold you forever, remember?”

  Shay

  Dr. Merritt Reddy

  Associate Professor of Anthropology

  Office Hours, MWF 2 to 5

  I hold my breath as I stand in front of Dr. Merritt Reddy’s office. I’ve questioned my decision to come here dozens of times and nearly turned my car around on the interstate. I should’ve gone to George first, told him and let him decide what to tell his wife. But can I trust him to tell her the truth? If I leave it to him and he doesn’t tell her, I’ll walk around feeling guilty forever. She deserves to know about me as much as I deserved to know about her.

  I hate him for putting me in the position he did, but I refuse to hate myself. I need to do this.

  I lift my fist to knock on the wooden door, but it opens before I can, and I’m suddenly standing in front of the woman I saw George kissing in his front yard. Her long blond hair is tied back today, and the glasses on the tip of her nose rise higher when she scrunches up her face in a frown.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Um, yes. I’m . . . Yes. Dr. Reddy, my name’s Shayleigh Jackson. I was wondering if we could speak privately?”

  Sighing, she rolls her shoulders back and presses her office door open, gesturing me inside. “I was going to get some coffee, but I suppose that can wait.”

  “Thank you.” My voice shakes and I fear I might throw up on the lovely blue and gray rug covering her office floor. So, this is what it feels like to destroy a family. I’m a walking, talking time bomb, and she’s just invited me into her office.

  She waves to the gray armchairs just inside the door and waits for me to sit before she takes the one opposite me. “You’re George’s PhD candidate, is that right? I understand you’ve really blown away the whole committee with the work on your dissertation. George is very proud of you.”

  Bile rises in my stomach. She’s not making this any easier. “I’m surprised he talks about me at all,” I admit.

  “Oh, of course he does. George lives and breathes for his graduate students. You’ve been a bit of a passion project for him the last couple of years.”

  You have no idea. “Have you and he . . . been together long?”

  She smiles. “It’s all relative, I suppose. We’ve lived together for ten years or so, been married for five. Our daughter is four.”

  I feel lightheaded, and the room feels like it tilts sideways. I gulp in air.

  “You look a little pale, darling. Can I get you some water?”

  “No, I’m fine.” I just want to get this over with. “I’m really sorry to come here like this, Dr. Reddy. I want you to know that I thought a long time before I decided to come.”

  She arches a brow. “Okay.”

  “Before I say anything else, I want you to know that regardless of what you decide to do, I don’t like being in this position. Family is everything to me. But I had to come.”

  She folds her hands in her lap and studies me with a tilt of her head. “Maybe you should start at the beginning. You’re not making much sense.”

  Another wave of nausea slams into me, and sweat breaks out on my forehead. I close my eyes and focus on my breathing. In and out. In and out. “George and I have been . . .” God. I cannot say it. I can’t be the reason this family falls apart. Can’t be the reason this woman loses her husband or their child loses her father.

  Too late for that, Shay.

  She holds up a hand. “Before you do this, I want you to ask yourself if you really want to be the kind of woman who lies and manipulates to steal a married man who doesn’t even want her.” The kindness from her voice earlier is gone now.

  “What?” Heat blazes in my cheeks. She thinks I’m here to tell her lies? In an attempt to . . . steal George from her? Does she know we slept together?

  “He told me you were being rather immature about everything.”

  What exactly did he tell her? I feel like they’ve been laughing at me behind my back, and it feels . . . ugly.

  Her lips quirk. “Darling, I’m not sure what kind of man you thought George was, but he’s happily married with a daughter he adores. He doesn’t want you.”

  “I’m so sorry. You have no idea how awful I feel, and I regret what I’m here to say, but it’s nothing but the truth.”

  She holds up a hand. That’s when I notice the ring on her finger. The ring I thought he’d gotten for me. The one he told me he was taking to his safe deposit box. Such a liar. “Stop. Please. My husband already told me that you threw yourself at him and he turned you down. And now you’re trying to rewrite history so I’ll—what? Step aside and you can keep him for yourself? Stop while you’re ahead. I’m embarrassed for you, and this whole scene is insulting to me and to my husband.”

  “I’m sorry. I . . . What?”

  “What do you want from me? Pity? Poor little grad student fell in love with her professor and doesn’t want to let him go.” She shakes her head. “He told me about you. How you’re so scared of what’s next that you’re looking for a man to take you under his wing. I think he made it clear that he will not be that man when you tried to take him to bed.”

  I feel like I’ve been slapped, but at the same time, anger makes my nails bite into my palms. That fucking liar told his wife I tried to sleep with him. Is th
is some crazy dream? Am I still in bed with Easton? Maybe I fell asleep and only dreamed about making excuses to leave. Maybe I haven’t actually left for Chicago yet. But I swallow, lift my chin, and say what I have to say as clearly as I can. “I don’t know what your husband told you, but I’m only here because I thought you deserved to know the truth. George and I have been sleeping together. Until last week, we were in a relationship.”

  “Sure you were.” She sighs. “You’re a lovely girl, and I know why you’d be interested in my husband. I wasn’t surprised when he told me you came on to him. You’re not the first student to get romantic delusions.”

  My face is so hot, and I can’t decide if I’m embarrassed or angry or some other emotion that strikes in the middle of this Bizarro World alternate universe I’ve found myself in. She truly believes that George turned me down and I’m here because I’m jealous.

  “I know it can be intense to finish a dissertation, and I’m sure you’re dealing with a lot of emotions right now. But I’m not sure what you hoped to accomplish by barging in here and trying to ruin a good marriage. Do you think this will make him want you?”

  I grab my purse off the floor and slip it onto my shoulder. “I’ll leave now.” I stomp toward the door but stop when my hand is on the handle. Slowly, I turn around. “If you knew the truth, if you’d listen, you’d be as angry with him about this as I am.”

  “Child—”

  “No. You don’t get to treat me like a little girl. I’m thirty years old. This isn’t about me having some crush on your husband. The problem here is that he never told me he was married. Not when he started sleeping with me. Not after. I didn’t know about you until last week.” Her jaw drops, and I think I’ve finally shocked her, but I push past my mild satisfaction at that and keep going. “If you were wise, you’d hear me out. We both deserved to know the truth, especially considering he and I were having sex without condoms. By keeping the full truth from me, he denied me the choice that should’ve been mine to make, and now I’m pregnant with a married man’s baby.”