by Jen Andrews
Jeremy pulled my panties off, licked between my legs, and continued kissing upward until he reached my mouth. I pushed his boxers down with my hands, and he kicked them the rest of the way off. I took his dick in my hand and caressed him while he centered himself between my legs.
His mouth was on mine and his hands were in my hair, then all over me, stroking, gently squeezing, and rubbing every part of my body. He was everywhere all at once, my body, my heart, and my mind.
Letting go of him, I wrapped my arms around him. His weight rested on me as I stroked his bare back. We kissed frantically for what seemed like forever before he pulled away to tease my nipples with his mouth and tongue. I wrapped my legs around his thighs and pulled him back up to kiss me again.
I needed him closer.
Over the last month, I had fallen in love with him, and desperately wanted to be with him.
When he finally came to rest on top of me, his hand traveled down my stomach, between my legs. He massaged tight circles on my clit as he slid his fingers in and out of me.
“Teagan, you’re so beautiful. You make me so happy,” he said quietly before crushing his mouth to mine again.
My legs instinctively squeezed and pulled him closer. Close enough so the head of his dick was pushing against me. He rocked his hips so the tip of him slid through my wetness.
“Jeremy,” I whispered, unsure of whether I should tell him now how I felt about him.
“Hmm?” He hummed in response against my neck.
“I love you.”
He pulled back and looked me in the eyes briefly, before smiling and devouring me again. His hips slowly thrust against me, and within a second, he was pushing himself inside me. My mind and body instantly went into a frenzy because this was finally happening. I tilted my hips up to meet his and take him in. Once he was fully inside, we moved together, our bodies already connected and well acquainted with one another. Our soft moans and whispers filled the quiet room.
As we made love, all the bad memories from the past left my mind, and Jeremy’s sweet words and soft caresses took their place. My life never felt as right as it did in this moment. Jeremy stilled long enough to take my hand in his, entwining our fingers.
“Teagan,” he murmured repeatedly, thrusting slowly and gently. His pace picked up after a few minutes and the familiar tingle began low in my belly.
“More,” I pleaded, and he thrust harder, pushing me to my release. My body constricted around him, and he hardened inside me. His breathing quickened and the sexy moans I loved to hear from him became louder. As my orgasm subsided, Jeremy let out a ragged breath, and his body shuddered with his release.
Neither one of us moved afterward.
Waking up less than an hour later, nearly sober, with Jeremy sleeping curled protectively around me, I really needed to use the bathroom. Knowing he wouldn’t wake up, I untangled myself from his arms and legs.
As soon as I stood, I felt the wetness between my legs and realized we hadn’t used a condom.
Oh, crap.
I ran into the bathroom and cleaned up. I’d been completely horizontal for nearly an hour after he came inside me. I woke up Jeremy to tell him.
“What’s wrong?” He sat up and rubbed his eyes.
“We didn’t use protection,” I said as I paced next to the bed.
“Teagan, I’ve never had sex without a condom before and I’ve been tested.”
Granted, I’d been tested too because of Gary’s cheating ways. And because I’d always made him use a condom, I hadn’t bothered with birth control pills. I shook my head and sat on the bed next to him.
“Jeremy, I’m not on the pill . . . God, how could I be so stupid?”
“It’s not your fault, Red, okay?”
What if I get pregnant? I took in a deep breath and let it out, unable to form a coherent response.
Jeremy moved close to me and began rubbing my back. “Shit, I’m sorry. Neither one of us was thinking properly. If you get pregnant, we can take care of it.”
Take care of it?
“Jeremy, I don’t believe in abortion,” I whispered, and moved away from him to look him in the eyes.
“Hey, that’s not what I meant,” he corrected. “I meant take care of the baby, Teagan. Together, as a family.”
“You’d really want to do that with me?” I asked, surprised at his admission. He’d really give me the family I’d always dreamed of?
Gary had made it clear he’d never wanted children and now this man next to me, who I’d only been with a short time was telling me that if I ended up pregnant, he’d stick around and take care of me and our baby. He was so much more of a man than my cheating prick father and Gary.
“Yes, I would. Without a doubt,” he said, twisting a lock of my hair around his fingers. “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted, Teagan, and a family with you would be an added bonus. Until you, I never pictured a future with a family, but now I do.”
I stared in awe at the man who’d just told me he would never do to me what my father had done to my mother when he’d found out she was pregnant with me. Jeremy wouldn’t leave if we’d happened to make a baby together just now. Those realizations made me love him even more. And I was everything he’d ever wanted—I was his—and he was mine. I crawled under the covers with him and we entangled ourselves together once more.
“Thank you, Jeremy . . . I love you,” I whispered against his neck.
“Me too, pretty girl . . . me too.”
The next day before I headed off to my new, crappy shift at the hospital, I gave Jeremy very firm instructions to go to the store and buy condoms. Lots and lots of condoms.
Later in the day, I received a text from him. He’d sent a picture of several boxes of condoms set out on the bed, and his text simply said: enough?
I counted six boxes in the photo. After laughing my butt off, I texted him back.
That might get us through the weekend.
I laughed, but then felt bummed as I dropped my phone back into my pocket. John and Eric had convinced Jeremy to let them throw a Halloween party at his house tonight since it was Friday, but I was going to miss it because I wasn’t off work until midnight. In fact, I was working swing shift for the next couple of months. I was still applying for jobs in hospice, but hadn’t caught a break yet.
Throughout the night, Jeremy sent me random texts so I’d know what was going on at the party. Reese was there as were Nat and Jackie, which made this shift a quiet and lonely one.
A little after eleven, Jeremy sent me one last text telling me he was going to bed to wait for me and he would have plenty of condoms on stand-by for when I arrived home. I laughed at his text, but truthfully, I was just as excited as he was to make love again. Sober this time . . .
Once my work shift ended and I made it home, I let myself inside, setting my purse and keys on the table. The house was dark except for the light he’d left on for me.
The bedroom door was open, and I entered quietly because Jeremy might have fallen asleep. But, when I heard a familiar moan and heavy breathing, I froze. The words that followed broke my heart and shattered my world.
“I love you,” Jeremy murmured in the dark room.
It took me a second to gather my senses and flip on the light. While my eyes adjusted to the brightness, I heard shuffling from across the room.
“What the fuck?” Jeremy yelled, pulling the blankets up to cover himself and the girl who was in bed with him.
The girl who wasn’t me.
Oh God . . . not again.
He hadn’t even looked over yet to see who’d turned on the light. He was still trying to cover himself and his friend.
“Jeremy?” I said, barely loud enough for him to hear me.
His head whipped around to face me. “Teagan, what are you doing over there?” His face contorted in confusion and a second later, it morphed into an expression I’d never seen before. “Oh fuck, no! No, no, no . . .”
His usual olive color
ed skin turned as white as the sheet he held in his hand. Jeremy looked down at the bed and tossed the sheet off him.
The girl on the bed was still giving him a blowjob.
“Cammie!” he growled. “Get the fuck off me! What the hell are you doing? How did you get in here?”
So he was going to play it like that? My hand went up over my mouth and I choked back a sob as my eyes filled with tears. Cammie sat up on the bed and smiled over at me.
She wins. I give up.
I needed to get the hell out of here. Turning around, I ran down the hall and out the front door as I heard Jeremy calling for me. I’d never run so fast in my life. When I stopped at the gate, I fumbled with the latch because it was dark and my eyes were too full of tears to see. Knowing Jeremy was going to be right behind me, I kicked the gate hard instead, completely unhinging it.
I took off running again. In my rush to leave, I realized I’d left my purse and keys on the table. I wouldn’t be able to drive away so I hauled ass running down the street. I was a block away when I heard Jeremy calling me, yelling at me to stop.
But I wouldn’t.
I had to get as far away from him as possible.
He was catching up to me, so as soon as I rounded the next corner, I ducked into the secret walkway between the houses.
Jeremy was getting closer, so I dropped down behind a trashcan. By that time, I was sobbing uncontrollably.
I’d been cheated on.
Again.
So here I was hiding behind a gross, smelly trashcan from the man who just shattered my heart by doing something he promised he’d never do to me. I covered my mouth to silence my sobs as Jeremy came to a stop less than ten feet from me.
“Teagan!” he yelled out. “Oh God, what the fuck happened?” He bent over and rested his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.
“Jeremy, come back to the house. She’s gone,” a female voice said to him. “We can pick up where we left off.”
Fucking Cammie.
I squeezed my eyes shut as a fresh wave of tears spilled down my face and anguish rolled through me. I wanted to cover my ears too, so I didn’t have to overhear them, but I knew if I took my hands off my mouth, they would hear me crying.
“Why did you do this to me?” Jeremy growled at Cammie.
“We can be together now, Jeremy. You said you loved me, so I know you still want me,” she said.
“You make me sick, Cammie. There is no way in hell I knew it was you and you know it. I thought you were Teagan, you stupid bitch. I would never touch you because I love her. I love Teagan, not you. I will never love you. I will only ever love her.”
“You don’t mean that,” she whined.
“Yes, I do. I wish I’d never fucking met you. You’ve ruined my entire world.”
Jeremy pushed past her and made the trek back to his house, with Cammie hot on his heels, begging him for forgiveness.
As soon as they were out of range to hear me, I pulled my phone from my pocket and called my sister.
“Teagan, what’s wrong? Why are you calling so late?” she asked as soon as she answered her phone.
“Sh-Shannen,” I cried. “Please, you n-need to come get m-me.”
“What happened?”
“Please Shannen, run over to Jeremy’s and get my purse and keys off the t-table and pack me a bag as quick as you can. I just caught him in bed w-with C-Cammie.”
“That piece of shit motherfucker,” Shannen muttered. “Where are you?”
“In the walkway between the houses, please hurry.”
“I’m on my way. Stay right where you are. I love you, Teags.”
Twenty minutes later, my Neon pulled up near the entrance of the walkway and the passenger door flew open. “Get in. Hurry!” Shannen yelled from the car.
As soon as I was in the seat and the door shut, she was speeding off down the street.
“Teags, what happened?”
“I can’t talk about it right now,” I sobbed out.
“Where do you want me to take you?”
There was only one place I wanted to be and one place he wouldn’t look for me.
“Take me to Nanna’s, please.”
9 days, 7 hours, and 16 minutes since my happy life ended.
If someone had told me how painful it was to lose the one you love, I would’ve called them a liar.
Nobody could’ve prepared me for this kind of agony.
I was a worthless piece of shit, smeared on the bottom of a dirty fucking shoe then dragged through the filthiest places on earth.
My life was now hollow. A shell of what it was. Yet, every day, I woke up alone and pretended I was living. Only I knew how unhappy I was inside since Teagan had left.
The worst part was I deserved it.
My body had committed the cruelest act of betrayal against the only woman I’d ever loved. When I said my body, I really, truly meant my body. It should’ve known the woman who’d crawled into bed with me wasn’t Teagan.
Why the fuck hadn’t I known it?
Some small part of me had to have known, right? When I had gone to bed that night, I’d dozed off willingly because I knew Teagan would wake me up when she came home. We’d had big plans for one another.
Getting drunk Halloween night had been unplanned, and I had done something incredibly stupid because of it. We’d had sex. She’d told me she loved me, and I hadn’t said it back.
Why hadn’t I said it back?
Please tell me why I didn’t say it back.
Because I do love her.
I loved her more than the stars loved the night sky.
I loved her more than every breath I took.
Teagan hated me, and I deserve it. I deserved to die a thousand deaths at her hand.
I couldn’t even try to fix this. I didn’t deserve her, or her love.
The last time I saw my girl, she had been running away from me because I’d committed the ultimate betrayal. Not on purpose, but still it had happened, and she’d witnessed it.
Before Teagan had come home that night, I’d kicked all the people out of my house, I’d cleaned up the messes they’d left then had gone to bed completely undressed after taking a shower.
My plan had been to make up for the night before the party when I shouldn’t have had sex with her when we’d been drinking. I hadn’t wanted our first time to be like that. But when she’d told me she loved me, something had changed. I hadn’t been able to stop myself. I hadn’t said it back because I’d wanted to show her I loved her.
Now she would never know how much I loved her. All she would know is that I didn’t say it back. Less than twenty-four hours after we had been together for the first time, she’d come home from work to find my dick in Cammie’s mouth and to hear the words “I love you” said in the dark to the wrong person.
In our bed. In the house I’d bought to make a home for my future wife and family. In my eyes, the house was as much hers as it was mine. It wasn’t a home without her in it.
Half the people had been dressed in costume that night. Cammie must have snuck in that way.
All I knew was that I had been asleep then woken up by a small, warm body under the covers with me. Her hands had been on me, stroking my dick as my mind had slowly woken up. My body had definitely been awake and reacting to being touched.
The scene played constantly in my mind.
Since Teagan had run away from me, I’d called and I texted her relentlessly. I’d even gone to her job. I had acted like a crazy person trying to find her, but she had been nowhere to be found. She hadn’t gone back to her parents’ house, and even if her family and friends had known where she was, they sure as fuck weren’t telling me.
Well over a week later and still no contact with Teagan, I was forcing myself to return to work. I drove in a daze. Once I arrived, I went straight to my workbench. The second I lifted the lid of my toolbox I regretted it. The images of a happy couple stared back at me. I pulled them from the lid and t
ook them out to my car.
On the way back to the shop, Z called me into her office. Not wanting to talk to anyone, I kept walking.
“Jeremy? Please don’t ignore me,” Zoey said from the doorway behind me.
“What do you want, Z?” I turned. “I’m not in the mood to talk. I just want to work and go home.”
She frowned, but the pity in her eyes pissed me off. I didn’t need anyone’s pity. I was getting exactly what I’d deserved. My past had reared its ugly head and taken a piece of my life that I’d never get back.
“Have you talked to Teagan?” Zoey asked.
“No.”
“Are you still trying, Jer? You can’t give up—”
“What the hell do you think I’ve been doing since she left, Zoey?” I yelled. “She’s gone!”
“Don’t yell at me,” she whispered. “I just want to help.”
“Yeah? Well, I don’t need your fucking help. I need you to mind your own business.”
Zoey’s eyes grew as big as saucers about one second before the shove came from behind.
Big hands slammed against my back and propelled me a few feet down the hall. The same big hands grabbed me and spun me around, shoving me against the wall.
The blue eyes of my brother-in-law came in to focus as he inched closer to my face. “Don’t you ever fucking talk to her like that again, Jeremy,” Andy growled. “Do it again, and we’ll have problems.”
I nodded. He let go of me and I turned to my sister. “Sorry, Z.” It had been a dick move, but I didn’t know what else to say to her. She gave me a curt nod and went back into her office with Andy right behind her, and I went to work.
Two days later and everyone was still treating me differently. They barely spoke to me. My own family knew what a piece of shit I was. I drove home in the darkest mood only to find Teagan’s belongings gone.
I immediately grabbed a bottle of Patrón and made him my new best friend.
My phone rang, but I let it go to voicemail. I didn’t want to speak to anyone. I opened my eyes, and my vision was blurry for some reason. Teagan’s face was in front of mine, resting on her pillow. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my vision to see her better, but when it finally cleared, she was gone.