Page 50 of When We Had Forever
“Yes. Exactly. An angel.” My fingertips graze his side through the sheet. “Who also happens to love having mind-blowing sex with you.”
He’s thinking. I can almost hear the tick of calculation echoing in his rib cage.
“Well, when you put it like that,” he finally says, “it would probably be stupid of me to say no.”
Tension bleeds out of me. I squeeze him tight. “Incredibly.”
His arms snake around me, subduing my doubts. Iknowhe wants me here; I felt it that night on the couch. He might have forced himself to say otherwise, but the intensity of his longing nearly overpowered me then.
Now guilt must plague him, hence his reserve. But maybe framing it this way will make it easier for him. I’m not staying because he’s asked me to. It’s because I love him, because we need each other. Because what we have far outweighs some harebrained jaunt across the sea.
“That’s incredibly generous of you,” he says.
I tilt my head up. The planes of his face gleam in the sodium light, although the illumination doesn’t brighten his eyes the way it usually does.
“I try.” I press a kiss to the underside of his jaw. My desire for more sex has fled. I just want to put this bizarre day behind us, wake up tomorrow, and go back to normal. I want Michael to turn those open-ocean eyes on me again, the ones so clear and deep I can see all the way to the bottom.
I want the shadows in his face to go away and never return.
He seems to sense as much, because he eases me off and pillows my head on his chest. His fingers run along the curve of my shoulder in the silent dark. As his touch grows sluggish, I catch hold of a nagging whisper in the back of my mind.
“Don’t you get a phone call?”
He jerks, his chest muscles jumping beneath my cheek, telling me he was almost asleep. “What?”
“Don’t they let you make a phone call, from jail? Why didn’t you call me?”
His fingers tighten around my shoulder. “I didn’t know your number by heart. The only one I could remember was...my brother’s.”
“Oh. So...Oh.”Lightning flashes inside my head. Michael talked to his brother. The one who still blames him for Lily’s death.
God, no wonder he’s acting so strangely—all this remoteness is his reaction to Grayson, not me. “Did he have to come bail you out?”
He stiffens. “Yeah.”
“You saw him, then? In person?”
“Yeah.”
All at once, I forgive him everything. I sling one arm around his taut waist and tuck myself close. Once Michael recovers from the shock of seeing the sibling who despises him, everything will be fine. “I’m sorry. That must’ve been hard.”
“It was. But then I came home, and you were waiting, and...I think maybe this is exactly what I need. That you staying will make the difference for me.”
The vulnerability underpinning those words breathes new life into me. “It will,” I whisper. “And for me, too.”
Just before I drift off, he says, “I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about this in so long. I figured I never would.”
I’m too far gone to ask what he means.
In the morning, Michael outsleeps me for the very first time—evidence of just how much yesterday cost him.
It feels strange, waking up beside him. I didn’t even realize how much I’d come to relish the steaming coffee on the nightstand until it wasn’t there.
But Michael deserves a reset, so I survey his peaceful face and the arm flung up beside his head—does he always sleep like that?—then decide to tend to him the way he so unfailingly tends to me.
I sneak into the kitchen and load the French press. While the coffee brews, I rifle through the cupboards in search of alcohol to pour out. Nothing. A quick peek into the recycling bin reveals three already-empty bottles.
I give them a poke. Huh. Michael must have dumped them yesterday, before he went out.
