His anguish hit me straight in the heart and almost brought me to my knees.
My husband could kill so easily, but this…between us, was still so foreign to him. I’d never been in a relationship either, but our problems would never make me run.
“Cian,” I whispered, “I’m not leaving. I’m never going anywhere.”
He shook his head.
“Just because we don’t agree, or one of us gets mad, doesn’t mean it’s over. Would you leave me?”
He made a pained sound in his throat.
It seemed to come from my heart.
I was so wrong for treating him like he was just a man who could, maybe, understand my feelings, even though I hadn’t shared them with him. I thought I could figure it out on my own, but it was time to be completely honest with him. My anger wasn’t all anger. It was hiding fear.
“I’m so sorry, Cian,” I whispered, looking away from him.
He released one of my wrists and turned my face toward his. I almost sobbed. It was like this was causing him enough turmoil to set him on fire.
“I just…I missed you so damn much earlier. I wasn’t expecting that. To feel like you were too far away from me in the same house. We’ve grown so close, so fast. And I never felt like I had to keep up. I was letting the flow take us wherever. I loved the rush of it. Being with you all the time. It honestly felt like heaven to me. Not the painful secrets of the past but a better future. But that was in Ireland. Here…” I took a deep breath and sighed it out.
“I see life for what it’s going to be. Your time is not mine…not nearly as much. And I don’t want to feel lonely when you’re gone, so…I thought I still had the bookstore, my old life, to depend on. I don’t. Life is changing fast here, has changed while I was gone, and I’m having a hard time keeping up now.”
Tears slipped down my cheeks. He made another one of those pained noises. He let me go when I wriggled my locked wrist free, and as soon as he did, I wrapped my arms around his neck and sobbed into it. He held me to him like he could fuse us together. I breathed him in while I cried. His bones shook underneath my palms.
He slid his fingers underneath my messy bun and pulled my head back so I was looking up at him. “You need a purpose,” he said, his voice full of grit.
I sniffed. “That’s not it. You’re my purpose now.” How to even explain this without making a liar out of me? It took me a second. “I just can’t sit around and redecorate an already perfect house. While you’re out taking care of business…I’ll be here, nothing really to do, worrying all the time. I need busy work.” More tears fell from my eyes.
He said, “Fuck, Maeve,” and kissed me. He kissed me on the side of the lips while I told him I was sorry, and he told me he couldn’t live without me. How he loved me more than he could almost deal with. His heart was burstin’, and he didn’t know how to lessen the ache. I didn’t either.
It was a messy display of beautiful truths and fearsome realities. It was moments full of what it meant to live and feel. It was being cruelly human and hopefully everlasting.
I’d worn a long-sleeved bodysuit with a low-cut back under my cardigan, and his hands found my bare skin, his fingers curling and almost scraping against it, like he was desperate to get to the heart of what was going on between us. To truly understand it.
He shivered when my cold hands roamed underneath his sweater and found the warmth of his skin. I tucked my face in his neck and just held on. “I never want to fight again,” I whispered against his racing pulse. “It’s not us. Not who we are.”
“Talk to me, Maeve. Make me understand if I don’t.”
“I will.” I sighed. “It was just hard to put into words what I was trying to understand.”
“We’ll make sense of it together then.”
“Yeah,” I whispered. “We’re both learning.”
After a minute or two, I pulled away some, and he let me. I looked him in the eyes.
“I meant the vows I made to you, Cian O'Callaghan. It’ll be life and death for us.”
“I’ll never let you go,” he repeated. His voice was like iron, though the words didn’t feel like shackles to me. They felt like a delicate ring on my left finger.
“We do this life together, or not at all.”
“You gave me a heart, Maeve O'Callaghan, and you break it.”
I moved toward him, and he moved toward me. We came together, our fingers hungry, our mouths thirsty, and undressed each other. He released my hair from the bun and watched as it tumbled down my shoulders in insane waves.
“So fuckin’ beautiful.” His voice was hoarse as he gazed over my body. “Mywife.” He scooped me up from the counter and brought me to the bed.
