Heartbreak girl.
The armor around my heart grew a little thicker; already it’d been blinded and bound with bad defense mechanisms after Dr. Grady’s office.
Dr. Grady.
I hated that his memory kept attaching itself to these moments. Tainting the time Bastien and I had. We were holy, for lack of a better comparison, and what I had with the professor was muddied with innuendo and blind groping behind locked doors.
I couldn’t stand the pain of staying any longer, and Bastien would, without a doubt, suffer the longer I stayed in his life. His comment about first dances only solidified my resolve to end the pain for both of us.
“I…” The words choked my throat. “My mom sent me to college with a sleeping bag and a birth control implant in my arm.” I rubbed the small scar from its insertion out of habit. “Her way of not repeating bad cycles, I guess.” I caught his eyes. “I just thought you should know you don’t have to worry about me getting…” The word was lodged, an immovable feast in my throat.
Pregnant.
Shame twisted my intestines painfully.
“Tressssa.” He hissed my name like a quiet mantra, hands cupping my face and whispering words to me in Spanish. “I never thought…” He trailed off, dark irises rich with emotion. “I need you to know you deserved more than that.” He pressed his forehead to mine so intimately, I had half a mind to run. “And that nothing could happen, not asingle thing,that could cause me to regret what we found right here.Together.”
His lips grazed mine, his words, thick with pity, surged like fire through my heart.
“Lately I’ve been thinking I wish life had a rewind button.” His fingers interlocked with mine, bringing each of my hands to his lips and dotting my knuckles with chaste kisses.
Breaking my heart with every one.
“I’ve got to meet with the veterans club this morning, but I should be back by lunch. I’ll bring you and Luce something? Maybe the nursery kids too. How many kids do we usually have today?”
I clenched my jaw fiercely, unwilling to let him see my emotions. With a shake of my head and a fake smile, I managed to dismiss him, hiding my face behind my hair as I bent to pick up last night’s clothes.
Always the other woman. Why did I have a habit of getting involved with men who didn’t belong to me?
“I’ve got a bit before I have to leave. What do you say about a shower?” Bastien encircled me with his arms, pulling the clothing from my hands and locking me to him with his lips.
I almost ran out right then.
But instead, I stayed.
I let his lips linger on mine a few minutes longer.
I let his fingers slide between my thighs and work me to another orgasm.
And then I let him carry me into the shower where he fucked me with his mouth against the tile wall, my hands clutching his shoulder blades, begging for mercy with every breath.
And if I’d left a second sooner, maybe I could have stopped what came next.
Or maybe I would have made it worse.
The police reassured me we could never know.
But still, when a bomb goes off that causes the entire world to shift, it leaves a lot of people wondering.
Bastien’s cock was slipping from my body, our skin hot with sexual release, when the tiles of the shower trembled behind my back.
The torrent of emotions he’d coaxed out of me these last months rained down on me in a downpour of tremors mixed with sobbing tears.
Walking away from the beauty he brought to my life felt like cutting off the very nose to spite my face. Could I really willingly excise the happiness from my life like a bad cancer, knowing I was my very best with him?
“Tressa,” he breathed against my neck, peppering kisses across the hollows of my throat. “Talk to me.”
“I can’t live without you, and that scares me,” I blurted before thinking. A habit that happened all too often in this man’s presence.
