Page 84 of Rome
I shifted and pulled her into my arms, partly to comfort her, and partly because I couldn’t stand even one more second without touching her.
“I’m tired of being half-alive, baby girl. I’m just existing because the other half of my soul is missing. Please, give me another chance. Cut Grant loose, and try again with me,” I begged, tightening my arms around her, and dropping my head down to rest against hers.
She resisted my touch for a moment, then I felt her relax against me.
“I broke it off with him last night.” Her voice was muffled against my chest, and I wasn’t sure I heard her right.
“What?” I held my breath as I waited for her to repeat herself.
“I told him last night that I wasn’t ready for a relationship. I ended it.”
The breath left my body in a deep sigh. The relief I felt was mixed with hope that she might actually be willing to try again.
I kissed the top of her head, then asked if she was OK. I held my breath again as I waited for her answer.
“Yeah, I am. I shouldn’t have tried to jump into dating so soon. I think I was just kidding myself that I was ready to move on.”
I pulled back a little and put my hand under her chin, lifting her face to meet my gaze. “Do you see any possibility for us to try again?” I forced my voice to be steady, and my jaw clenched as I waited for her answer.
Her eyes roved over my face, and I braced myself for the worst, the longer it took her to speak.
She nodded slightly, and the tightness in my chest eased immediately. Before I could say anything, she said, “I want to try, but I’m so afraid. There’s so much baggage to sort out, Caleb, and I don’t want to get Ethan’s hopes up, or confuse him if we just can’t make it work. If we try again, we need to take it slow until we’re sure it will work this time.”
I cupped her neck with both hands, rubbing my thumbs back and forth over the soft skin along her cheek and jaw. I pressed a kiss to her forehead as I whispered, “We’ll make it work, baby girl. I know that without a shadow of a doubt, as long as you’re willing to give me another chance.”
My chest was heaving as I tried to control my breathing. I wanted nothing more than to pull her onto my lap and kiss her, but I instinctively knew that wouldn’t be the best move right now.
“You’re my wife, Abby. I don’t care what that fuckin’ divorce decree says. I’ve never stopped being your husband, and you will always be my wife.”
“When did you decide you wanted me back?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked in confusion. I gripped her chin again so that I could try to read the expression on her face. She looked unsure of herself, almost wary, and I didn’t understand why. “I’ve always wanted you back. I never wanted the divorce to begin with, you know that.”
She nodded a little. “I know you didn’t, in the beginning, but then you signed the papers, so I thought you had changed your mind. Then, after I…after that day with the bartender, you told me you wanted me to find a good guy to move on with.”
I thought back to that afternoon in the kitchen when I’d begged her not to do something so reckless again.
I smiled sadly. “Oh, baby girl, I didn’t want you to find anyone else, and I sure as hell didn’t want you to move on, but I thought that’s whatyouwanted. I controlled so much of our early relationship, and never gave you any damned choice in the matter. I figured I needed to step back and let you take control of your own life. I just needed to make sure that if you did make a life without me, that the next guy was worthy of you, and would make you happy. It would have fuckin’ killed me, though. It almost did kill me when I saw you in that back room of the bar, but even that wasn’t as bad as last night.”
She flinched and looked away, so I pressed a kiss to her temple. “I’m not saying that to make you feel bad. I’m not trying to make you feel guilty for trying to find happiness again. We need to work through our feelings, though, right?”
She nodded, and I debated asking my next question. I was afraid of the answer, but I had to know.
“Did you have feelings for him? Grant, I mean. Did you…love him?”
Abby shook her head, and her eyes flew to mine so I could see the sincerity there. “No. We had only been dating for a few weeks. He’s a nice guy, and I thought that maybe I could start to care for him in time. I think I knew deep down that I couldn’t ever love anyone else though, because I’ve never stopped loving you.”
I crushed her to me, burying my face in her hair and breathing her in. “I love you, baby girl. Despite everything, please believe me when I tell you that you’ve held my heart since the day I first saw you, and it will be yours until the day I die.”
She wrapped her arms around my shoulders, and we held each other as we cried together. We shed tears of pain for everything we’ve gone through, and tears of joy for the chance we had to make it work this time. Once the tears subsided, I started telling her about my recovery.
“Kim and I have worked hard to get to the root of my issues, and what led me to using alcohol as an escape. I told her about hearing Christy tell my dad that she should have had an abortion when she got pregnant with Jag and me. You know that I never told King what I heard, because he’s always felt guilty enough that we had such a fuckin’ lousy mother, and I never told Jag because I didn’t want him to feel as shitty as I did.” Abby rubbed her hand over my chest in a soothing motion. I brought her hand to my lips, before placing a kiss on her palm and placing it back on my chest.
“Kim thinks that I worked so hard to bury my emotions that I never learned how to deal with hurt, or anger, or frustration properly. Then I couldn’t act on my feelings for you. She said that it’s likely that I may have started drinking as a kind of pressure-release valve. It was a way of allowing myself to lose control without feeling guilty about it. Part of that was because of the other women. I told you that I always had to be drunk to touch them, and Kim said that tracks with her theory that I used alcohol to escape my feelings, to avoid dealing with them entirely.”
“So, what do we do about that?” she asked softly. Her head was lying on my shoulder as we were nestled against each other.
“Well, we start by doing this. I’m learning to talk about my deepest, darkest feelings – which Jag loves, by the way,” I joked. “I’m supposed to quit keeping things bottled up. You aren’t the only one who’s been told to ‘find your voice’. I tried to explain to Kim that big, bad, bikers don’t go around spewing their feelings all over the place, but she called bullshit on that.”
