I pick up the pace and push us both toward the release we need. She never looks away as I make love to her. Just as her body lets go, I find my own release and we let go of the past and finally embrace a future together.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Noah
Fully making good on every single word I threatened her with, we lay in the back of my truck a few hours later surrounded by moonlight and fireflies dancing in the fields across the rolling hills. The sounds of night echo through the darkness, and for the first time in a long time, there is peace.
Lying on our side, wrapped in a blanket I grabbed from the cab of my truck, I smile at her and brush a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. My fingertips trail down her bare arm. Blushing, she smirks at me before glancing off into the night sky. She pulls the blanket higher as a chill runs over her skin.
“I know a great way to warm you up darlin’,” I tease, although I know I don’t have the strength to make good on the threat if she really wanted me to.
She giggles. “My legs are still shaking from the last time you threatened me with that line, Mr. Stewart,” she smiles, pulling the blanket closer.
“Mmmm,” I growl, remembering her coming undone on top of me. “The memory of you riding my cock in the back of my truck will stay with me, not for one, but two lifetimes, darlin’.”
Sitting up, I grab her clothes for her. Then watch as she straightens up and starts to pull them back on. Anger gets the better of me when I notice she covers up and attempts to hide some of the scars from her accident. In our haste to make love, I hadn’t noticed them before. She grimaces slightly as she pulls her shirt over her head. I immediately feel like an ass and hurry to help her, hopeful I wasn’t too rough with her over the last several hours.
“Here darlin’, let me help you,” I humbly say as the realization hits that I wasn’t there to help her like I should have been a few months back.
She smiles and accepts the help graciously. I start to help her with her pants until she starts to laugh. It’s more of a sweet gesture that entirely did not work out the way I planned as she wiggles and I try and jiggle them up her thighs, making it way harder than it needs to be.
“Noah, I’m alright,” she says. “You don’t have to help me like I’m an invalid.”
Her comment makes me still. I stop and take a moment to myself as she shimmies into her clothes before I stand and pull on my jeans. Buttoning them up, I grab my shirt and throw it over my head.
“Thank you though,” she says quietly.
Wrestling with my mind, I look at her and wonder how I could have ever acted the way I did. How I could have let the fear of being rejected again get in the way of taking care of her. How she even got through what she did and somehow still wanted to come across the country to find the prick that left her at the hospital without even a word is beyond me.
Eva notices my silence and nervously shifts in the bed of my truck. “What’s going through your mind, Noah? I’d be lying if I didn’t say you’re starting to scare me a little.”
I drop to my knees at the bed of the truck. “God, darlin’, I am so sorry. I should have been there for you. For us. I left you. I left you when you needed me most and I don’t know how you can even forgive me or even be sitting here right now after what I did to you.”
She laughs nervously. “Yeah, it was kinda shitty.”
“Kinda shitty?” I echo her. “It was more than that. I mean, I sat there in that waiting room not knowing if you were dead or alive. I watched as doctors would come and go, and paced the halls like a man who’d lost his mind.”
I stand and start pacing the space in front of the bed of my truck like I am walking the floors of the hospital all over again.
“Darlin’, I thought I lost you that day. Then, I lost you all over again a few hours later all because I was a stupid idiot. Why would you ever forgive me for that?”
“I love you,” she smiles. “Did you know that?”
“If ever I doubted it, I know now.”
Grinning, she eases off the bed of the truck and stands in front of me. “So, what happens next?”
Grabbing her close and kissing the top of her head, I release a heavy sigh. I dunno, but I know I never want to lose her ever again. My phone rings in the cab of the truck, and I grunt. It rings a second time and Eva begins to laugh.
“Are you going to get that?”
Reluctantly, I slump out of her arms and kiss the tip of her nose before walking towards the cab. Grabbing my phone, I see it’s Rex and suddenly remember the one place I forgot I told a few people I would be.
Hitting accept, I am greeted with music blaring in the background.
“Hey asshole,” Rex shouts. “You forget something?”
“Nope,” I fib. “I was just on my way.”
