That wasn’t love. That wasn’t a relationship.
I wiped the corners of my eyes.
I had the way to Brice’s place memorized just from driving there once. Everything about Brice was locked tightly in my heart and there was no escaping.
When I parked my SUV next to his truck, I finally took a second to think about what I was doing. What was going to happen if I knocked on that door in the middle of the night.
I couldn’t stop now.
I left my clothes scattered across the back seat as I walked toward the front door of the cabin. No coat on. Wearing a hoodie over a t-shirt with no bra and flannel looking pajama bottoms. The definition of a complete and total mess.
I knocked on the door as my chin quivered. I only had seconds left until I would be unable to control the total breakdown.
When the door opened, and I saw Brice standing there, I let go.
He stepped forward and threw his arms around me, pulling me into the warm cabin, slamming the door shut.
His strong arms holding me tight.
He kissed the top of my head.
“I know, Kins. Fuck, love, I know.”
Those were the words I had been waiting to hear.
I cried harder than I had in a long time.
Today was the day our daughter was born… and today was the day we lost her…
I sat on the edge of the couch with that ugly blanket wrapped around my shoulders. Ugly as it was, it was maybe the most comfortable blanket I’d ever felt in my life. My eyes stared at the fire in the fireplace as the flames moved in all directions, eating up the wood, throwing off heat.
“Here, have a drink,” Brice said.
He slowly sat in front of me on an old coffee table.
It was hot tea in a white mug with a weird looking bird that was half chipped away.
I touched Brice’s hands to get the mug from him. My eyes met with his eyes. He looked like he had been crying too. Probably standing there in the kitchen, alone, pinching the bridge of his nose, doing all he could to hold it back. Just like he did years ago. Never wanting to show that kind of raw emotion in front of me.
I knew I looked like hell. My eyes were swollen and it hurt to blink. My chest ached from gasping deep breaths as I cried with anger. My knuckles hurt from clenching Brice’s shirt so tightly as he held me. There wasn’t a moment when he tried to stop me from crying either. He just held me, rocked me, kissed the top of my head. He knew exactly what to do and knew exactly what I needed.
“Where did you get this blanket?” I asked.
“What?”
“This blanket. It’s comfortable.”
“I know. It was here. Same with the furniture. Even that mug.”
“So, you don’t know what kind of bird this is?” I asked.
“Sorry, I don’t have my bird book readily available.”
I laughed. “Jerk.”
Brice touched my face. “Hey. I’m happy you’re here.”
I nodded. “Me too, Brice.”
“I was up. Drinking. Trying to convince myself not to drink too much. I was sitting right where you are when you knocked on the door. I couldn’t get it out of my head.”
“I know,” I whispered. “It’s always hard. Never this hard.”
“What do you mean this hard?”
“I’m usually able to push through. Not this time.”
“Because of me.”
I sipped the tea and shut my eyes.
Brice stood up and walked away.
With my free hand, I gripped the blanket around the front of me, holding it like a cape.
“It’s too late to start this right now, Kins,” Brice said. “But I can’t get things out of my mind.”
“Like what?”
“Like you sitting on my couch. You showing up the way you did. You’re in your pajamas, love. The look in your eye… what happened?”
“I just had to leave.”
“Yeah, but why?”
I leaned forward and put the mug on the table. “He doesn’t understand.”
“Did you tell him?”
My head slowly moved left to right.
“Right,” Brice said. “So, you just stood up and walked out.”
“It wasn’t that simple,” I said. I stood up from the couch and kept the blanket tight around me as I walked toward Brice. “Does it matter? I’m here. With you.”
“Which is everything I’ve ever fucking wanted,” he said.
“Nobody knows what today means but us.”
Brice touched my arms over the blanket. “I know, Kins. I shouldn’t have said anything else. Thank you for coming to me. I needed you. I still need you.”
“And I’m still standing here in front of you.”
Brice slid his hands down my arms and brought them forward, cutting open the blanket that surrounded me. I let it go, letting it fall to the floor around me. I was still wearing the hoodie as his hands touched my sides, inching himself forward until our bodies were pressed together.
I stared up at him as he lowered himself down to kiss the tip of my nose. It left me tingling from head to toe, my emotions colliding and exploding in a dangerous way.
His lips touched mine and I shut my eyes.
The kiss was everything.
We kept kissing, each passing second between us blurring the lines of right and wrong more and more. I didn’t even care at that point. What I had said to Ben stood true. I tried to tell him the truth and he looked at his phone. I tried to give myself to him and he was worried about a meeting. So what incentive did I have to let him in on the worst moment of my life?
Brice kissed me hard. His hands began to move. Inching up slowly, moving around to the front of my body. Over the hoodie, his hands began to ease over my breasts. Touching me through two layers of clothing and it sent a surge through my body as though it were bare skin to bare skin.
I let out a shuddering breath as he started to kiss down to my neck. My hips gently bucked forward at him, wanting him. All of him. Right there on the floor. Or on the couch. Or in his bed. Or three times, once in all three places.
Brice paused for a moment as he rested his face in the crook of my neck. His hands eased from my breasts to my back, his fingers spread wide, encompassing me as he held me. I touched his back and felt his breathing. I realized I was then holding him.
“I can’t lose you again, Kins,” he whispered. “If I have you right now, I have to have you forever. You’re the only way I believe in forever. The only way I know it exists is when I’m with you.”
Then there was silence. We stood there holding each other, nobody else in the world able to truly understand what it felt like and what it all meant.
I finally broke away from Brice, but not before I touched his face. Feeling the roughness of the scruff on it. I jumped to my tiptoes so I could kiss him again. His hands were at my ribcage, squeezing enough to tickle me a little, but that spot and that move turned me into goo. My thighs trembled as the need for him burned worse than ever.
Brice put his forehead to mine. “She probably would have been like you. Beautiful and stubborn.”
I swallowed hard, slowly smiling. “You think?”
“I know. When I… when I saw her… I knew. I was going to be outmatched for the rest of my life.”
Tears filled my eyes. “Brice…”
“I’m sorry. It’s good to talk about it. I normally just sit and think all these thoughts.”
“Okay. Like what else?”
“Come here,” he whispered.
He walked me to the couch. He turned out the lights, leaving us with the glow of the fireplace and nothing else.
When he sat next to me, it was instinctive to bring my legs up on the couch and cuddle up against him. Like nestling up in my favorite spot. Even though I hadn’t been there in years. My head on his chest. His arm around me. I put some of the blanket over him as we just sat there in silence again.
“One thing that hit me was what else wou
ld have happened,” Brice said. “Not just with her… but us. I had this vision of us as a family on Christmas morning. An obnoxious amount of decorations. Like we used to always talk about doing.”
I smiled. My eyes were glossy. I wasn’t going to even attempt to hold anything back. This was my safe place to be and get lost.
“And it’s not just thinking about her,” Brice said. “Seeing her face light up when she saw the presents. That look of believing in Santa and telling herself that there was no way in hell her parents could have done all that for her. Or us sitting on the floor in matching pajamas and all that cliché stuff you see on TV.”
“What else then?” I asked.
“What if you were holding a baby? A son? Another daughter? What if that was the next part in our story?”
I had no words. I’d never let my mind go that far.
Tears fell from my eyes as Brice held me.
He kissed the top of my head and took a deep breath. “I’m glad you’re here, Kins.”
“Me too,” I said.
“I can’t stop saying it. I don’t want to go to sleep because I can’t stomach the idea of you not being here in the morning.”
I lifted my head and looked at him. The bouncing reflection of the fire hitting his gorgeous face.
“Brice,” I whispered. “I’m not leaving. I promise I’ll be here when you wake up. It’s already morning anyway.”
“Okay,” he said. “Kins?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you. I’m sorry for everything. The way you feel right now. Everything that happened. The decisions you have to make. The words I’m saying that are making that decision harder. I just can’t let you slip through the cracks. I can’t.”
“I know,” I said. “I swear to you, Brice, I love you.”
“But not with all your heart,” he said.
I didn’t respond.
I couldn’t respond.
If I did, I would have lied.
He leaned down and kissed my head again. He slowly turned and leaned to put himself against the arm of the couch. I rested on him, staring at the fire. I knew he wasn’t sleeping. Just as he knew I wasn’t sleeping. We were thinking the same thoughts. Those intense moments when I knew that something was happening inside me. Not knowing that it was something wrong. Those moments of rushing to make sure we had everything we needed for the hospital. The nerves and anticipation. The pain on my end. Pain I thought was normal…
I took a deep breath, my body shaking with grief.
Brice squeezed me tighter, reminding me he was there. And we were together.
And everything he said about forever was true.
The only way to feel a sense of forever was to be with him.
20
New Kinds of Words
Ben
I didn’t exactly know what to do in that moment. Of course, I wasn’t ignorant enough not to see the writing on the goddamn wall. My job depended on seeing steps ahead of others. The moment I met Kinsley, she had been standing in the parking lot of the office building I had been renovating. My plan was to split it into two parts to collect two payments on rent. It was a good piece to have in my portfolio, for business reasons, but the second I saw her standing and staring at the building, something inside me changed. I vividly remember talking to her, noting how beautiful she looked without even trying.
We talked, ended up at dinner, she had an extra drink or two, and I stole a kiss on that first date. That’s where our whirlwind started.
In some way, we ended up silently agreeing to just let our pasts go. I knew in my heart that it wasn’t the smartest decision to make, but I couldn’t stand the notion of telling her everything that had happened in my life. I didn’t need the sad eyes. The pity, shaking lip. I didn’t need the extra hugs or attention. I wanted Kinsley for Kinsley. Not because we were both secretly sad about something that had happened.
When I knew she was gone, I put on a shirt and went downstairs.
She was running right back to him.
The second I saw that guy standing at her table at the fucking thing in town, I just knew. The way he looked at her. The way she looked at him. It wasn’t a friend thing. It was a deeper thing. And hell, everyone has a first love. Or a true love. Everyone has that one person they swore they were going to be with for the rest of their lives. And sometimes it doesn’t work out. And when you see that person, you still get that butterfly feeling for a second at what could have been.
But I knew that wasn’t the first time that they had been in contact.
I saw the sudden change in Kinsley.
At first, I blamed myself.
I didn’t like Linda. I didn’t like the way she talked, acted, the way she smoked. It was a pet peeve of mine and for good goddamn reason too. Beyond that, Linda had been at a restaurant where I had been with some clients. She rushed back to Kinsley to tell her everything she saw. Of course I dealt with women. Did that mean I took them to bed? No. I was faithful to Kinsley. I loved Kinsley. I knew where my heart resided and refused to buy into the notion that I had to defend that.
Everything we had together was perfectly in place.
Until it wasn’t.
Until she suddenly looked at me differently. Her eyes searching for reason, judging my actions and my response to her advances.
I had hit a rough spot with my business, working on a deal that would have been great for both of us. I wanted to take her on a vacation somewhere, but the pieces started to crumble around me. And the last thing I needed was the same to happen with Kinsley.
But it did.
She had walked out.
I hadn’t chased after her.
And I would regret that decision.
I answered a handful of emails and made a few calls, all of them going straight to voicemail. The regret of not chasing after her stung, but I wasn’t going to chase her down yet. She was with him now. She wanted to test the waters of her heart, and that was something I wanted to respect.
Did it hurt?
Of course it fucking hurt.
Kinsley had been mine for a long time. I watched her start her veterinarian practice from scratch. I helped her with the building, the buildout, and the million questions she had. We fell in love together because of that. We only focused on the moment and thought about the future. I kept everything planned for the both of us because she had been so worried about her business failing.
I gave her comfort and I gave her a home. I showed her how capable she was.
As I leaned back in my office chair, I told myself it was time to wipe the thoughts away. I couldn’t sit there and live in the world of memories and wonders. It didn’t fucking matter. In a lot of ways, we were strangers. But being strangers was what kept us close. Now she had the first chance to run and she was gone.
And if she thought I didn’t know what it was, she was foolish.
I left my office and went into the kitchen and organized all my papers for my meeting. I wasn’t going to miss the meeting. I would be in Philly by nine, papers would be signed by ten, and I’d be back to feeling normal.
For Kinsley, it was up to her to figure out what her version of normal was.
I let her lie to me for a long time, only because it pertained to her past. The first time my lips had the chance to kiss her beautiful body, I noticed the scar. I didn’t say a word because it wasn’t my business. She was perfect with or without the scar. My mouth had explored every inch of her body throughout our time together, and she always found a way to subtly try and cover up the scar. Putting her hand over it. Trying to hide it.
When I moved her hand one time and put my lips right to it, she sucked in a breath and held it.
I whispered to her that it was okay. Of course I had seen the scar before. It was okay to have a scar.
She was quick to tell me that it was from surgery. She had to have her appendix removed when she was younger. The way she lied to me in that moment was so smooth, I just accepted it. Of course I did
. Who was I in that moment to tell her she was full of crap? That the scar wasn’t from her appendix. I knew where that scar would have been. The scar… that was from having a baby. A baby that she obviously no longer had.
It set off a chain reaction of questions that burned in the back of my mind for a long time. I wanted to ask her about it, but kept to our silent promise of never discussing the past. Part of me hoped that someday she would open that part of her life up to me. Because then I could do the same for her.
But as things often happen, time took each of us by the hand and started to run. Every time I blinked, another few months had gone by. Her business grew and thrived. She was happy with what she was doing. My business was doing amazing too. I found a house and took her to look at it. It was a bold move for me to make because I planned everything out. But this time, with her, I wanted to try something else. So I bought the house and then showed it to her. I showed it to her, gave her a key, and that’s how I asked her to move in with me.
That was the fastest we ever did anything.
Moving into the house was comfortable. It was another step forward for the both of us together.
Each time I touched her, stripped her clothes off, joined her in the shower, kissed her in places that left her breathless and moaning, I always found a way to touch the scar. The silence of the truth actually made me fall in love with her more. Because I knew she felt something similar to what I felt.
‘Are you sure you’ll be back in time for the game?’
‘I wouldn’t miss it for anything in the world.’
‘This is a big game for me.’
‘I know it is. That’s why I’m going to be there. Cheering. Yelling. I’ll probably get kicked out of the game.’
‘You’re sometimes annoying.’
‘I know I am. It’s sort of my job.’
‘I really hope you’re there. I sort of need you there.’
‘Need me there? Why?’
‘I’m nervous.’
‘Since when do you get nervous?’
‘Please…’
‘Look at me. I will be there. I will drive so fast that not even a cop could catch me if they wanted to. And if they do, I’ll tell them… I have to be at the best damn baseball game ever…’
Somebody Else (Somebody, Nobody Duet Book 1) Page 23