by Harper Sloan
“June!” I bark, getting off his lap and pacing around the large empty space of his kitchen. I turn back to look at him and notice the confused look blanketing his handsome face. I rush to explain. “That bitch, June. I gave her everything, Axel. Every-fucking-thing that you would need to find me. My grandparents’ address in North Carolina, their phone numbers, and I wrote letters, so many fucking letters. When the ones to the base started coming back, I started writing them to June’s house. I figured if there was any way for you to get them, it would be when you came home. Oh my God, Ax! All this time. All this fucking time. You have no clue, no fucking clue what that bitch kept from us, what she told me.” My fury is a palpable thing, filling the room with its thickness and completely eclipsing the sadness that had preceded it. I am forced to stop my frantic pacing when I feel the unyielding bands of Axel’s hands close around my biceps.
“Princess, stop,” he says softly, pulling my back to his chest and closing his arms over my chest. “I can’t fix this if you don’t tell me what has you freaked out.”
I pull out of his hold and turn around to look into his eyes. I have to look into his eyes. Be able to judge where his mind is right now.
The only thing I see is confusion and maybe, hopefully, a little love.
“Do you have any idea how much I needed you? When my parents died, you were the only thing that would take that pain away, but you weren’t there. I was okay with that. Please know I never would hold that against you.” I rush to explain when I see the look that crosses his face. “I was so proud of you, Axel. Not a day went by, even through all that pain, that I wasn’t so proud of you.” He reaches up and brushes the tear that leaks from my eye. “I had so much going on the week after they died. I was hurting, lost, alone . . . I felt completely adrift with no anchor. Gram and Pop, they were good people and they loved me, but they lost too and suddenly had a depressed teenager to deal with. Sometimes I wonder if they just didn’t know what to do with me, but they tried. I had a week. One week to pack my things up and leave. Pop couldn’t leave things back home for too long and Gram didn’t want to be away. She hated traveling. That’s why you never met her.”
I walk away from him and over to the window that faces the lake, now dark with the soft glow of the moon reflecting in its rippling water. “I made sure I ran by June’s to bring her everything you would need. I didn’t know who else to give it to. You hadn’t been gone long enough to let me know how to contact you. The only thing I had was the base you were going to be stationed at.” A sob tears up my throat and interrupts my retelling. “I—I w-w-as so st-stupid,” I cry.
I turn around to face him and find him right behind me, arms stretched wide and waiting. I rush into his hold and let my sadness flow. I let him be my rock, the rock I have needed for so long.
I bring my arms around his back, pull him as close as I can get. I feel his lips against my hair, his chest rising and falling rapidly and his heart racing beneath my ear.
“Baby . . . Jesus. I wish I would have known. I wish I would have been there. You’re killing me, fucking slicing me open right now. Look at me, Izzy,” he says, leaving no room for argument.
I look up into his pleading eyes.
“I would have dropped everything to save you from any ounce of pain. If it is within my reach to do that now, know that I will never fucking let pain touch your heart, baby. It kills me to know how easy it was for the world to rip us apart. For years, baby. I have spent years thinking you left me. That you chose to leave me. God . . .” He trails off and leans down to capture my lips.
This kiss is like nothing we have shared since coming back to us. This kiss is full of the sadness of what we have lost but with the promise of what we will have. His lips make love to mine.
“Not one day went by, Izzy, that my heart didn’t belong to you. To this day, there has only been one woman who has and will ever hold it. Fuck, baby, but the love I have for you is so fucking strong sometimes, I wonder if it will crush me,” he whispers when he breaks the kiss to pull me tight against his chest.
I still with his words. Love? I know how I feel about him, but the shock of hearing him say it to me is overwhelming. He can’t love me. Not yet. Not without knowing everything.
Small panic bubbles up but I quickly squash it. I have to be strong. I have to be strong for him, because after this, I don’t know how he will feel.
I press my hands against his chest and give a small shove. He looks down at me, confused that I’m pushing him away instead of pulling him closer. Or maybe the shock is because I didn’t return his sentiments.
Oh, if he only knew the love that burns for him.
“I didn’t finish, Ax. You have to let me finish,” I desperately say, resuming my pacing just out of his reach.
I look over at him standing beside the window I left him at. He’s leaned back against it, crossed arms over his chest. I can’t read the emotion in his eyes. I know he is confused but he seems almost agitated with me.
“God . . . this is so hard,” I whisper to myself. I should have known his stupid empty house would aid the words into his ears.
“Izzy, I don’t know what else there could be. I already know about him,” he spits out.
I stop my pacing and look back over at him. My heart is breaking all over again, remembering the night of my eighteenth birthday.
“I wanted it so bad,” I whisper again.
“What?” he questions, pushing off the window and walking over to me, taking my arms in his hands again and forcing me to still in my fidgeting.
I choke down the nervous sob that starts up my throat but I am helpless to clench the tears that flow lightly down my cheeks.
“I wanted it so bad, so fucking bad,” I choke out, trying desperately to communicate my pain.
“Princess, serious as shit right now, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says, his frustration causing him to give me a small shake.
I look into his handsome face, picturing for what has to be the millionth time, what our child would have looked like. Unable to take the vision of angelic perfection that crosses my mind, I crash my forehead into his chest and sob. Sob for everything we have unjustly lost.
“The baby,” I cry into his chest. “The baby I loved with every fiber in my body and every single ounce of love for you I had. The baby that I wasn’t able to even protect from my own body!” I scream hysterically into his chest.
My body gives out with the amount of agony and grief that invades my mind and I crumble to the floor before he can catch me. Emotions I have worked so hard to push back and lock away are flooding my system, causing great big powerful wails to escape me.
“No, baby . . . no!” I hear him cry over my breakdown.
I feel rather than see his body drop to the floor next to me. He wraps me tightly in his arms and begins to rock me, my cheek resting on his shoulder and my nose buried in the warm shin of his neck. I don’t know how long we sit like that. It feels like hours but it could only be minutes. He just holds me to his body, his arms and legs wrapped tightly around me.
It wasn’t until I feel the warm drops of his tears hitting my face that I look up to meet his eyes, eyes that must mirror my own right now. He is doing nothing to hide the evidence of his despair. Never in all the years I have known this man have I ever seen him shed one tear besides the one I felt when I was in the hospital. There are only a few tears that escape before he seems to pull himself somewhat together. His body is heaving with the effort of his control.
“Baby, fuck . . . Princess, I had no clue, no fucking clue.” I take his face between my hands and wipe his tears away with my thumbs. “What happened?” he asks. I know what he is asking; he wants to know what happened to our baby.
I take a deep breath and finish what needs to be said. “I had just marked the end of my first trimester when I miscarried. Three months along and I lost our baby,” I whisper, keeping my eyes on his while I tell him. “The doctors said there wasn’t anythi
ng I could have done. It was just God’s will.” I shake my head and look back down, pressing my head against his strong chest. “It was my birthday,” I say almost as an afterthought.
He stills at that. I can hear the wheels turning in his head, the pieces finally fitting together. “The club? That’s what Greg was talking about, wasn’t it.” A statement. He knows. There really isn’t any question about it. Of all the days he could have walked back into my life; that was the worst.
“Yeah. The club,” I reply.
We sit there, him holding me in his arms, my legs brought in tight against my chest, and my arms thrown tightly around his body. His arms are around my neck and his legs are stretched out on either side of my balled-up form. We sit there and silently offer the only thing we can.
Each other.
It’s hard for me to put myself in his shoes. I don’t doubt that he is feeling the heaviness of the situation, but he hasn’t had any time to even process the fact that there was a baby. We would have had a child, made out of love. Even with our young hearts, we both know that any child we would have made would have been our greatest accomplishment. A joy we would have welcomed, even being babies ourselves.
“I bet she would have looked just like you, that round, beautiful face with the softest of skin and the palest eyes you ever saw. Hair that would catch fire when she ran through the yard, laughter that would make even the surliest of bastards smile—the picture of fucking perfection,” he says against my ear. The lightness in his tone does nothing to blanket the sadness. He’s trying to reassure me when it should be me reassuring him.
“No, he would have been the spitting image of his handsome father. The strongest face you ever did see on any child. Hair so dark it would give midnight a run for its money and eyes so green you would have sworn we robbed a jewelry store. He would have been so brave and strong. Just perfect. And I would have loved him just as much as I love his father,” I whisper, ending on a soft catch that gives me away.
We can try and lighten our sadness, but there is no getting around the fact that we both have lost and lost hard.
“Never again, Izzy West. I will never again let anyone take you from me. Or anything from us.” His words hang between us both as a promise and a threat.
I know in this moment that this man would fight to the death to keep me by his side, protecting me from the world.
“I don’t want to be anywhere else but here.” I lean off his chest and give him the softest of kisses. It doesn’t take long before we are using our desire for each other to erase the pain we still hold heavy in our hearts.
“Come on, Princess. Let’s go to bed, yeah?” He helps to pull me off the floor and then, to my shock, lifts me into his arms and begins to walk through the house.
“I can walk, you know?” I joke, leaning into his neck and inhaling his intoxicating scent.
His arms tighten around me before he replies, “I know, but right now, I need this. Just be quiet and let me lead.”
I can give him that.
I lean up from where my head was resting on his shoulder and look at his strong profile. This man, this incredible man, I never thought I would have again, is hurting. I can tell by the clenched jaw and the focus determination in his hard lines. Rightfully so, it isn’t every day a man learns that he was a father. Even if the child never made it past a much-loved fuzzy ultrasound image—an image he didn’t even know existed five minutes ago. A sharp pain shoots through my heart when I think of how much he would have loved our child. We had always talked about how much we wanted children.
“You okay?” I whisper when we hit the landing on the second floor. He ignores me for a while, and I have almost convinced myself that he didn’t hear my question until he breaks the silence.
“No. But I will be. We will be.”
He stops when we reach his room and gently lowers me onto the bed. I look up and meet his sad eyes before he breaks contact and pushes his sweats down his lean hips. I sit up, and pull the tee off my body, and throw it to the floor seconds before he presses his weight into my body, pushing me into the mattress. Every inch of our skin from shoulders to toes is touching. I open my legs and welcome his weight, his hips sliding against my arousal.
He presses his forehead to my own, his breathing fanning my lips and dancing with my own heavy pants. His hands, which are holding my head reverently, warm my cheeks.
“I need you, Princess,” he softly whispers against my lips.
“You have me,” I reply.
He lifts his hips and I help guide his heavy erection into my waiting body. He doesn’t move his hands from my face or his weight from my body. His forehead comes off of mine so that he can press the most loving and tender kisses to my lips.
This isn’t the heavy, fast sex we had earlier. This is pure lovemaking. This is two souls that have been adrift for too long finally coming home to each other. This is healing.
I bring my legs up, circling tightly around his hips. My arms curl up and around his shoulders and I hold on tight.
There is nothing fast about this moment. His breathing against my lips is coming in heavy pants, mirroring my own.
He rocks against me, not breaking his slow and steady rhythm for what seems like hours. It isn’t until our tears start mingling together down my cheeks that he releases my cheek with one of his hands and brings it behind my knee to hook my leg higher up his side.
“Oh, God . . .” I cry as lights explode behind my eyes and my toes curl. My fingernails are digging into his shoulders, anchoring me against his powerful movements.
“Never. Going. To. Let. You. Go,” he rasps out, punctuating each word with a hard thrust into my wet core. His pelvis is grinding against my clit in the perfect friction. I cry out once again when another orgasm hits me so close to the first.
He buries his head into my neck and, with a strangled cry, empties himself into my body. We lie there, covered in sweat and connected in every way possible, for the longest time. His body feels wonderful against mine.
My breathing slowly returns to normal and I feel like I am able to speak. Turning my head slightly so my lips kiss his ear, I whisper as softly as I can the words I have longed to speak to him.
“I love you, Axel Reid. I have loved you forever and I will never stop. Made for me, baby. You were made for me. Don’t ever leave me. Never again. I would rather die than be without you again.”
He tenses for the smallest of seconds before rolling our bodies so that he is taking my weight, my legs straddling his hips and my arms still wrapped around his shoulders. He brings his arms up and pulls me even closer to his body. I can feel our joint orgasms leaking between us, reminding me that we are still intimately connected.
“You wouldn’t be able to get rid of me if you tried.” I lean up and look into his face, memorizing each feature before rubbing my cheek against his. “It feels like my heart has been ripped from my body knowing everything that happened to you. I can’t even begin to process all that we lost. This is our second chance, Izzy and nobody is fucking it up this time.” His voice is soft against my cheek. His lips are warm when he presses a soft kiss against my ear before he rolls me back over and slowly slips from my body. I cry out weakly at the loss of him.
“Princess, that’s twice now I haven’t used protection. Promise you, I’m clean, but I can get you papers if you don’t believe me. Is this going to be an issue?” He says this lightly, but I can tell by the way he is staring at my stomach he isn’t talking about anything I can catch. “As much as I would love to have you carrying my baby inside you, we aren’t there yet. We will be. But not until my ring is around your finger,” he adds almost as an afterthought, leaving me stunned.
“Um . . .” I clear my throat a few times and look back up into his smiling eyes. “We’re okay. I’m on the pill,” I whisper.
“Good. Then I guess I don’t need all those boxes of condoms, huh?” He laughs as he walks to the bathroom and shuts the door behind him.
I can’t help but wonder what the hell just happened here. Was that some weird marriage proposal? No, surely not. We might have agreed to see where this goes, but marriage?
I am silently freaking out when he returns to the bed and tenderly cleans me off. He throws the towel off in the direction of the bathroom before pulling me into his arms and holding me tight. My head is resting against his chest and I can feel his heart beating slowly under my ear. I wrap my arm around him and hook my leg over his hip, brushing his still-hard dick in the process.
“Easy there, Princess. You might want that in working function later.”
I laugh before I allow his warm body and steady breathing to pull me under into the most peaceful, dreamless sleep I have had in twelve years.
CHAPTER 17
I woke up feeling the most delicious soreness between my legs and an ache in muscles haven’t been used in years. Stretching out, I reach over expecting to find Axel’s warm body next to mine but only meet cold sheets.
I open my eyes and look around the room. Empty. Climbing out, I pick up the shirt from last night, pull on a pair of yoga pants from my bag, and continue my search for Axel. The bathroom is empty and so is every room I check after. Not in the kitchen, not in the garage, but his truck is still out front.
I’m standing on the back porch, looking off across the lake at the sun just barely peeking over the tips of the trees. The lake is calm in the early morning hours, and the world seems to be asleep. I am about to give up my search when I see a slight movement down at the end of the dock. The path to his dock is covered slightly by a line of trees, and in the early morning hours, I am worried my eyes might be playing tricks on me. When I see the movement again, I realize I have just found him.
Tiny pinpricks shoot through my feet when I hit the cold pebbled walkway on the way down to the docks. I keep my eyes on his naked back. He is sitting at the very end of the dock, his legs are folded up, and his arms are resting against his knees. It isn’t until I get a little closer that I realize his head is resting against his arms and his back is heaving with deep breaths. He has to have felt my footsteps against the wood of the dock, but if he did, he didn’t change his posture.