by Aria Ford
“And so, dear?” I asked, looking into those lovely dark eyes.
“So?” he smiled, cupping my face with his hand. I was nestled into his shoulder, he was lying on his side and I on my back and my one hand held his, while his other stroked my skin. I smiled.
“So, what happens with us?” I stretched and he gasped as my breast brushed his arm.
“Well,” he said breathlessly, “a lot.”
I giggled. “Yes, a lot. But what?”
“Well,” he said, his lips making a mission down the side of my head and to my lips, then moving off again, “we make love, lots of it. But during that time I look for a job in Berkeley, and we maybe think of finding you a place big enough for actual people.”
I laughed. “My apartment is big enough for actual people,” I said crossly.
He smiled, that delightful grin that won my heart. “Yes. But I’d like to find something to share with you.”
I felt a strange sensation, like my heart melted. I blinked rapidly. “Carson…”
“Yes?”
“I do love you.”
He kissed my hair. “Me too.”
Later, we talked about other things. About how he was not as he was before the army. I knew that, and told him that it didn’t matter. He could trust me. He blinked back tears.
“I always thought…I wanted to be good enough for you, sweetheart,” he said quietly. “And when I got back, I thought…I thought I didn’t want to inflict myself on a girl like you.”
“Inflict! Carson! What?” she laughed. “If you had any idea how painful it was for me when you sent all those mixed messages…all I wanted was you.”
“Really?” he smiled, unsure.
“Carson!” I giggled. “I always wanted you.”
His eyes shut. I hadn’t noticed what long lashes he had before, funnily enough. When he looked back at me, his eyes were damp.
“I’m an asshole,” he said softly.
I giggled. “No, you aren’t. At least, not a big one.”
He roared with laughter. “Thank you, sweet. I’ll remember that.”
I smiled. “Seriously, Carson. I can’t believe your reason for staying away was to avoid hurting me. When I think of how you hurt me doing it!”
I closed my eyes again. I regretted that. Profoundly.
“I’m sorry.”
She smiled. “Carson, you know what?”
“What?”
“You have nothing to be sorry about.”
We said it together. We laughed. As he buried his face in my hair I felt my heart rise fit to bursting. I knew, then, how much I had always loved him. How this would be the start of so many wonderful memories. How much my life had changed this year.
“I love you,” I said, looking into his eyes. It was the truest thing I had ever said.
“I love you too,” he whispered.
We lay together, arms around each other and looked out of the window at the darkening sky.
After a moment, he moved so he could look into my eyes.
“I’m not going to lie, sweetheart. I will need help with…with all of it,” he said, waving a hand in a way that indicated the past: his memories, his pain, his suffering.
“I know,” I said, stroking his hair gently. “I understand. All I can do is say I’m there for you.”
He sighed. “Thank you, Amelia.”
“You have nothing to thank me for,” I said softly. “I am honored to be part of all that.”
He smiled. “Thank you, dear.”
“Thank you.”
We lay there awhile, and the clock on the wall ticked softly. “You know,” I said after a long moment.
“I would love to meet your daughter.”
“Really?” he smiled. “I’d love for you to meet her.”
“How old is she?”
“Eight,” he said.
“She was born while you were away?”
“Mm,” he replied. “I met her a year later.”
“That must have been hard.”
“It was,” he agreed. “I think Macey couldn’t handle my being away. It’s no wonder she wanted rid of me.” He sighed.
“She did?” I asked. I guessed that was Leona’s mom.
“Well, she needed someone to be there. I couldn’t be.”
“Well, you’re still a good dad.” I said.
He smiled at me. “You think so?”
“I’m sure of it.” I had seen him with kids. I knew what an amazing father he could be.
“You…” he paused. “If she came to visit us, you wouldn’t mind?”
“No,” I said. I meant it. “She’s your child, dearest.”
“Amelia,” he smiled, kissing my hair. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
We lay there awhile. I tried to imagine what his daughter might look like and then gave up. I would certainly meet her. I was curious. As much as I might have expected it to hurt—that he had married someone else—it didn’t. I understood the way these things happen. I also knew the past was the past. The present and the future were ours.
I smiled.
“What?” he asked.
“If you move to Berkeley, maybe you could work for the company.”
“Doing what, sweetheart?”
“Security?” I suggested. “It’s something we need a lot of.”
He frowned. I could tell he liked the idea. “It’s a thought,” he agreed.
“Well, you know all about it,” I offered.
He chuckled. “I don’t think I know much about anything, dearest.”
“Well, you do,” I smiled, swiveling so my body pressed against his. “You know a lot about me, for one thing. And how to please me.”
He laughed. I could feel him getting aroused, though I doubted he was as aroused as I was just then. I sighed. It was almost time for me to drive home. I could delay it a bit. I wanted to.
As he stroked my hair and my body melted against his, I thought about the future. While I could still think of things besides my pleasure, I realized how exciting it was.
There was not a cloud on the horizon. I could see it all so clearly. Our apartment together, his job—I was sure our company could get him on board—and his healing. I would heal too. I would learn to trust, to be gentler with myself and others. To love again.
As he kissed me and my body melted in his arms, I was more grateful than I could ever have been for the Christmas that had brought us finally together.
EPILOGUE
I slid out of bed to the scent of coffee. It was my day off, but Carson had evidently been busy. I looked at the clock. It was ten am. I yawned and stretched.
“Honey?” I called.
He appeared in the bedroom door, a shy smile on his face. “Coffee?”
“You are wonderful,” I said fervently. He laughed.
He had a tray with two cups and he came and put them beside me. He sat down on the bed and I kissed his shoulder.
He was dressed already and had been out. I knew where. I stroked his hair, not wanting to pry. At length, he turned to me.
“It went well,” he said gently.
“Good,” I said.
He had agreed to go for counseling with a trauma specialist. It made me so happy that he was willing to take that move, to free himself. This was his first appointment. I was so pleased, and I didn’t want to do anything to upset the process. If it was going well, that was wonderful.
“He’s a good guy, Doctor Hepburn,” he offered. “Kind. Not fussy.”
“Good,” I said. I held him in my arms while he sipped coffee, my head on his shoulder.
“You slept well?” he asked, kissing my cheek.
“Mm,” I agreed. “Though a bit of coffee was what I needed now.”
He chuckled, low in his throat. “You need something else?”
I smiled. “My dear, you know.”
As he kissed me and pushed me onto the bed, I felt a bubble of joy well up in me. I was laughing with delight
as his lips moved to my chest and my fingers stroked him.
As we made love, the coffee forgotten, my heart filled with a deep, rich joy.
We were together. We were well and whole. As far as I was concerned, life was as I wanted it.
The End
PREVIEW OF ARIA FORDS BOOKS
UNBROKEN
PROLOGUE
My mind fed me images of his hard, muscled body. I remembered him pressed against me. His arms were draped around me as he crushed my lips with his, and my breasts were flattened by his weight.
I eagerly drank the images. Him pushing inside of me. His hard cock filling me, satisfying me.
“Where did he go?” I asked my reflection, since there was no one else in the room to ask.
Big brown eyes, red lips, straight nose. I looked way more confident than I felt.
My reflection was assured and strong. I snorted. She’s on magazine covers and centerfolds? What does she have to fear? If only the girl in the mirror could share my confusion and pain.
Nope. She was refined and polished. That was my job, after all. I modeled makeup for the breakaway brand Petals. Not for the first time, I wished my confident appearance matched up with the real me. In magazines and in my portfolio, I looked aloof, confident, stylish. Inside, I was the total opposite: the insecure, shy girl from a strict home. The girl who stuttered in interviews and whose legs went wobbly in front of an audience.
No one knows about that.
My crippling fear of people was my weak spot. Only the people I really trusted knew about it. That was only two people: my brother Lance, and him. The guy who I had loved and lost. Lost, as in really lost. I didn’t know where he was.
I sighed, blowing a strand of dark hair away from my lips and reaching for my hairbrush. I had a shoot this morning. No wonder I was getting a bit nervous. As it usually did, being nervous led to thinking about him and the electricity he coursed through my body. He was the only person who could replicate my fears and make them into something good. Now, there were only nerves and no electricity, no fire.
I turned my back on my reflection. I needed to get dressed and ready for my shoot at ten this morning.
For some reason, even as I dressed, I couldn’t shift him from my thoughts. I remembered the way his mouth pressed on mine, sweet and strong and tantalizing. The way he touched my body. The way he was so passionate and strong, but also gentle and tender. More than ever, I remembered that last day I saw him. When the mystery happened.
I had been at home, trying to forget it was Jay’s big game. You see, he was a football player. Big deal stuff. You wouldn’t think we were that similar, him being an NFL football player and me being a cover girl. But they were.
I never attended his games—we both promised each other we wouldn’t risk bringing bad luck. It was silly. One of those superstitions like not saying “Macbeth” in theaters. But we stuck to it. He never accompanied me to shoots, I never went to games.
I wished I had been at the one that changed his life.
My brother told me he’d been injured, and, sure enough, there had been news about it. I recalled the game. I hadn’t seen it, of course, just on TV, later.
He’d been running for a touchdown and someone tackled him from behind. He’d fallen but I could see from the footage that something was wrong. He’d been in real pain. He’d rested there motionless on the turf, his handsome face wrinkled with agony. Then the camera panned off and the referee came up. He’d been shouting something. The field had cleared soon after that, the game curtailed.
I had no idea what had happened.
The press, uncharacteristically, had been quiet. Commonly, they never shut up about him, but this time there had been silence, which would have been good for him, I was sure.
We both felt way too much pressure sometimes, which was why it was nice to be able to slip away together and take time alone. I had been starting my career then, a hectic schedule of small shoots for smaller companies, each demanding a lot of work but not too willing to pay for it. He had been at the height of his career as a football hero.
Where are you, Jay?
The tabloids had been even more silent after that. There had been a tiny article to state he was recovering from his injuries, but no more information. And he’d never contacted me or my brother, or anyone we knew.
As far as I was concerned, he had vanished.
That was three and a half years ago now. I had moved on. I’d even dated someone after him—Dean, a sweet guy who was studying media and photography. But he’d never really clicked like Jay had with me.
He understood the shy me as well as the confident me. In that way we were so alike.
Well, now he’d gone too.
I checked my watch, feeling sad, and ran my fingertips down my tired, clean face. I stood and headed to the door. I didn’t want to be late for this shoot—it was important.
Nothing else really mattered, did it? After all, my heart had been broken by Jay. I wasn’t about to go searching for anything more after that.
CHAPTER ONE
JAY
I woke from a delicious dream of a girl, passionate and amazing, pressed against my chest. Her thighs parted as she took me inside her, her body writhing against me. I could just see her face. It was a pale oval, framed with dark hair.
I pushed a hank of black hair out of my eyes and sighed as the late-afternoon sunlight made me blink. The dream image vanished, leaving me alone and cold and with the same damn pain as ever.
“Man, does this ever end?” I said it aloud, since there was no one else around to hear me. I didn’t need anyone else to know how wrecked this made me, after all. I’d been living with it for three and a half years.
Damn leg. Damn crutch. Damn fool that I am.
I caught sight of myself in the window, a square-jawed, blue-gray-eyed miserable man. I turned away. There were times I just hated the sight of myself. I could barely walk.
My career had gone with the leg, along with my sense of self and my reputation. My identity, I guess. Without both legs, what was I? Nothing.
I stood again and hauled myself back to the wardrobe. I might as well make a last check that everything I needed was in my backpack. I was in the hotel in Hancock, Michigan, heading off for a week back home.
I laughed. “Not for my enjoyment.”
I used to never talk to myself. Those days were long gone. All my pent-up energy needed to go somewhere, and I used it to hate myself.
It seemed I had everything I needed to take. Even so, I wasn’t planning to enjoy this. I was heading back to Wisconsin for my dad’s birthday. I wanted to go home about as much as I wanted spinal surgery.
I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime.
Spinal surgery and family, both. Where there was family, there were memories. And where there were memories, I was haunted by a ghost of myself.
I just wanted to stay in Houghton, where no one knew my story. Where I felt safe to be what I am. Not haunted by what I was. And my family were not going to let me forget who I had been—they never let up about that.
“I don’t know why they think it helps.”
I guess the reason why I felt safe in Houghton, MI, was because there I was just the guy with the shoulders and the funny leg. Not the crippled ex-football hero. I was sick of people feeling sorry for me. Sick of guys my own age looking uncomfortable around me. Sick of girls staring at me with pity and then walking away.
They just see my leg, not me.
I guess I could relate: I couldn’t think of much besides that when I thought of myself. My leg. My stupid, unmoving leg.
I recalled the aftermath of the accident. Remembered waking up with that strange sensation that all was not quite right. It had taken me about ten minutes of lying there, my mind in the fog of anesthetic, to realize what the trouble was. I couldn’t feel my leg below the knee.
The surgeons said my spine was damaged after that tackle. The nerves were unable to be repaired. It was al
l stuff I could understand now that I had a degree in sports science. They all told me it was amazing I was as sound as I was: I could still feel my abdomen and upper legs. Still had the ability to regulate my bladder. They acted as if this was a great thing and I should appreciate it. I did, I guess.
But I would really like to be able to walk.
I heaved a sigh and went through to the living room again. I had two hours to kill before I left for the airport. I sat down heavily on the sofa, lowering my body into the leather-bound softness. Being off my leg was a relief. I still tried to work out regularly, but with only one leg it was hard. A college buddy and I had figured out some work I could do from the chair, so that at least my shoulders and torso stayed fit. And the one leg.
I hate my damn leg. I hate it.
I chuckled. It was a bit crazy, I guess, to feel like that. But that leg had robbed me of everything that mattered to me. My career, my pride. The woman I loved.
I heard my phone make a noise and checked it. Mom. She wanted to know if I was going to be there by ten this evening. I sighed.
Yes, Mom. The plane should touch down at nine. See you soon.
I sent the message, feeling confused. And sad. Being in Milwaukee again was something I could barely imagine. I had left a month after my injury, first staying with my uncle in Ann Arbor, then heading down to Houghton for college. At least, given my past as a football player, the college was really happy to have me attend sports science courses. Being there didn’t really help them much, though—I didn’t intend to let the press know where I was.