My arms band around her, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other nestled across the small of her back, my need for this woman more vital than the breath I need to live. “Be mad. Yell and scream. Do what you need to do to heal. Just don’t disappear.”
She doesn’t know how much it hurt to watch her teeter on that edge. Every tear. Every time she stared blankly at nothing,like she was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere I couldn’t follow.
She closes her eyes, her forehead pressing lightly into my chest. “I tried not to, but sometimes I felt it was easier to just…fade away.” She lifts her head, and the grief that still lives there guts me—but overpowering the grief is love. Fierce, raw, and undeniable. “I didn’t mean to leave you. I know I did. Emotionally. I shut you out. And I’m sorry.”
I brush my knuckles down her cheek. “I love you, Elizabeth. All of you, even when you think you’re broken. You just have to let me love you through it.”
Her fingers find the collar of my shirt, and she tugs me closer until our lips are touching. “I love you. So much.” She kisses me then, not frantic or desperate, but deep and soul-shattering. “I don’t deserve you,” she whispers against my mouth.
I hold her tighter. “Other way around, Kitten.”
Her palms slide up my chest, my neck, and into my hair, her body arching into mine, and I can feel the shift in her—the darkness she’s been existing in for days falling away, like night right before the sun rises.
“Make love to me.”
With fucking pleasure. And when I’m deep inside her, I’m going to slide the ten-carat diamond solitaire I bought her onto her finger. I wanted the bigger one, but Aurora said Elizabeth would strangle me with it.
My hands find her thighs, sliding under them as I lift her off the counter and cradle her like she’s something precious and sacred all at once. I kiss her just as reverently. She gasps softly against my mouth as I carry her to the bedroom?—
—only to abruptly halt mid-stride when there’s a loud crash outside on the veranda.
“What in the hell?” Elizabeth says, and I set her on her feet.
“Stay here.”
Of course, the stubborn woman doesn’t listen. We both stop and look at one another when a feminine moan comes through the pressed wood, followed by a man’s muffled voice.
Elizabeth places a finger to her lips for me not to make a sound as she tiptoes over to the door and quietly turns the knob. Mischief alights her green eyes when she flings the door wide open.
“I want grandbabies. Lots of them,” she says loudly through the screen door.
Another crash. A high-pitched shriek.
“Christ, Mom! I swear to God!” Marcus shouts as he helps pick Hannah up off the ground where he unceremoniously dropped her.
Elizabeth laughs her ass off, and the sound of it is beautiful.
Chapter Fifty-Four
ELIZABETH
Reflections of You
Like the clickof a camera shutter, my thoughts fire in rapid succession as image after image flashes in front of me. Beloved memories. All our next times. The prince with the moonlight eyes who rescued his princess one day in the woods. The boy who first stole my heart with his gap-toothed smile. The boy who placed hundreds of stars in our tree for our first date and gave me a wish jar full of paper stars.
CLICK.
“Do people mix you up and call you the wrong name?”
“All the time,” they answer in unison, voices so in sync that I can’t help but giggle.
Julien leans in and whispers something in Jayson’s ear, a grin playing on his lips.
“I bet you can’t tell us apart,” Jayson smugly says.
Licking the sticky sugar from my fingertips, I meet his challenge with a smug smirk of my own.
“Bet I can.”
