Page 109 of Fifty First Times (Sharing You 0.40)
“I don’t want to give this up yet,” I said, breaking the silence after.
“I know, but your dad will kill me if he finds out where we’ve been.”
Pulling out of his arms, I propped myself up on my elbow, and studied Jace’s face. Like I wanted to commit the way he looked at this exact moment to memory, so I would remember this for the rest of my life. “I want this. I want to spend mornings in bed with you, I want more time alone where I can have you just like this. I hate that I don’t know when we’ll have this again.”
Jace cupped my cheek in his large hand, and moved down the bed until he could press his forehead to mine. His gray eyes still holding mine as his gruff voice filled the small space between us. “Kinlee Ann Atkins, I’ve told you a million times already, but I’ll tell you a million more . . . I’m gonna marry you someday. We’re going to have our whole lives to do this. I’ve waited for you for over ten years, we can make it for a couple more until this is our reality.” Kissing me soft, and yet still firm, he growled against my lips, “Screw it. I’m going to figure out a way for this to be our reality as soon as fucking possible.”
I laughed loudly, and he pushed me onto my back as he settled his body over mine.
Jace
Present day
“JACE, MAN, I think you need to at least try. I know talking to her earlier didn’t go well, but you’ve both had time to cool off, and I can’t watch you give up on you and Kinlee like this, regardless what she’s said. If you’re right, if she did do this on purpose so you would get mad and leave . . . show her it’s not going to be that easy. Show her you love her and you’re going to fight for the two of you as long as you can.”
I knew he was right, but if Kinlee did want out, I didn’t know how I’d be able to handle that. Before I could respond, Aiden’s eyes snapped to the left, and a deep voice so much like my own came from next to me.
“Do you want to tell me why Lee just called me sobbing, begging me to find you?”
I looked at my older brother, shocked to see him out of his house and away from his wife. “Brody, what are you doing—how did you sneak out?”
Brody looked away before sitting down beside me. “Liv went to the country club with her parents tonight, and came home trashed. She won’t know I’m gone. But that’s not why I’m here.”
Groaning, I glanced at Aiden before dropping my head into my hands again. “I don’t want to go through this all again with you. I don’t want this to be happening.”
“Well all I know is she called me, fucking hysterical, and you’re sitting in a bar. So tell me what you did.”
“Jesus Christ! Why is it I had to have done something? She told me to leave! She went fucking crazy on me, accusing me of lying and cheating on her.”
Brody just sat there staring at me, never once looking shocked or fazed by my outburst. “All right. Well, while that doesn’t sound like the Lee we grew up with, she’s panicking because you’re gone and she can’t get ahold of you, or you,” he said, gesturing toward Aiden.
“I left my phone in my truck,” I whispered at the same time Aiden said, “I put my phone on silent. Didn’t think interruptions would be good when Jace was going through all this.”
“Lee doesn’t sound like a woman who is worried about what her man may or may not be doing, she sounds like a woman who is worried that her man won’t be coming home. So, whatever happened, put your stubbornness aside, and go to your future wife. Fix this, Jace.” When I didn’t make a sound, or an attempt to move him out of the booth so I could leave, Brody shook his head. “Unless you don’t want this to be fixed, then at least call her and let her know so she isn’t going crazy worrying about you all night, and she can start to move on with her life without you.”
Thinking about Kinlee having a life without me . . . with someone else, was enough to make me want to punch Brody for suggesting it. I’d been in love with that girl since I was five years old, I’d been doing everything to make sure my life consisted of us together. I wasn’t about to let seventeen years go out the window, and I wasn’t about to let Kinlee have the option of finding someone else. She was mine.
Forcing my brother out of the booth, I glared at him and stepped close. “Kinlee’s life is, and will only ever be, with me.”
“Then get your ass in the fucking truck, and go fix it.”
I was already running out of the bar and fumbling for my keys before he could finish his demand.
Tearing out of the parking lot, I raced all the way home. My phone went off when I was less than a minute away, and already knowing who it would be, I answered it without looking. “Kinlee—”
“Jace! Oh my God, please—”
“Kinlee”—I spoke over her—“a year and a half ago, I took you out to one of your dad’s orchards, and walked you to the exact same spot where we’d spent part of our first date. The same spot where I’d touched you for the first time months before. The same spot where you’d first told me you loved me a year before that.” She’d stopped talking, but I could still hear her muffled sobs. “I told you how much you meant to me, how much I loved you, and how I knew I couldn’t live my life without you by my side. I promised to take care of you for the rest of our lives, and I promised to spend the next seventy years beside you.”
By that time, I was standing in front of our apartment door. Pausing to push the key into the lock, I heard her breathing hitch, and pulled the door open. Kinlee was scrambling off the couch, dressed in nothing but one of my shirts, and when she paused a dozen feet away from me, I took slow steps toward her as I continued talking.
“I can’t keep those promises if you push me away. And I sure as shit can’t keep them if you suddenly stop trusting me.” Grabbing the phone from her hand, I ended our call and dropped our phones, not bothering to make sure they hadn’t broken when they’d hit the hardwood. Cupping her cheeks in my hands, I pressed my body close to hers, and lowered my head at the same time I tilted her face back so I could look in her water-filled eyes. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No.”
“Do you honestly think I would ever cheat on you?”
Her body tried to hunch in on itself, but I kept her straight. “No,” she sobbed. “Never, I’m so, so sorry.”
