Page 66 of Into These Eyes

Then he undoes my shorts, and I slip out of them, not giving a damn where he throws them. I simply can’t look away from the intensity in his eyes as he pulls me flush against him.

Wrapping my legs around his waist, I snuggle up to his erection, the cool water no match for the heat seeping through his boardshorts.

He walks us over to the large potted ficus beside the steps and rests his back against the pool wall.

Keeping our bodies low, the large planter effectively hides us from prying eyes.

I spear my fingers into his wet hair and kiss him, his tongue plunging into my mouth and stroking as his hips rock up, his hands tight on my hips.

But as my body slides against his, I realise he’s still wearing his t-shirt. And I know why. Pulling back to catch my breath, I open my mouth.

“What happened to those other swimmers,” he interrupts, gliding his fingers up and down my spine. “The ones that leave nothing to the imagination from behind?”

I let a slow, satisfied grin lift my lips. “So, you were watching.”

“Well, you’d just been spying. Besides, you wore it because you wanted me to see how fucking sexy you are. Damn cheeky of you … driving me out of my goddamn mind.”

I giggle, rocking into his erection, a little chuffed that he had that reaction to me back then. Oh so long ago. Twenty-odd dates and a few weekends ago.

“What’s going through that beautiful brain of yours?” he asks.

I hesitate, unsure if I want to ruin this playful mood. But it feels right. Sliding my fingers from his hair, I graze them over his chest and down into the water. Bunching the hem of his t-shirt in my fists, I lift a little, then pause, asking him the question without words.

A flicker of uncertainty wavers behind his eyes before he slowly raises his arms. I pull the t-shirt up his torso, over his chest and stand so I can free it from his arms. After I toss it past the planter, I straddle his lap and keep my eyes on his.

Trailing my fingers up his bunched muscles, I flatten my hand against his skin, his hard nipple grazing my palm as I move higher. Until I’m covering his tattoo.

“Will you let me see?” I whisper.

His fingers tighten on my hips before he gives a slight nod.

I press a gentle kiss to his lips and when I pull back, I ease my hand away.

Only then do I look. Really look.

A heart. Not a love heart. A real heart.

It’s not just broken, but torn apart into four pieces. A few drops of blood fall from the jagged tears and make their way down to his ribs, the red faded and dull, indicating he had this done a long time ago.

Tears spike at the back of my eyes, but I blink them away as I study every detail.

Reaching out, I touch the damaged heart and trace the wounds.

He tenses, the rapid beat of his actual heart tapping against my fingertips. I raise my eyes to his. Brilliant blue stares back, vulnerable and afraid.

“Do you trust me … with your heart?” I ask, my own accelerating wildly.

“Yeah, I do,” he answers, his voice rough and broken, reflecting the torment written all over his face.

“Why four?” I touch each quarter with my fingertip. “Why four broken pieces?”

He lets out a long breath and swallows. “Jamie … you don’t want to hear all that.”

I find his eyes again, the pain as clear as the blue staring back at me. “They’re the four things that hurt you most, aren’t they?”

He closes his eyes for a moment, then nods. “But it was a long time ago. Those wounds aren’t the same anymore.”

“I want to know. I want to know you . Even though I feel like I already do, I don’t know everything. And I really, really want to. This part of who you are is so important to you, you branded yourself so you’d always remember.”

He scoffs lightly. “Like I could ever forget.”

Touching my finger to the first piece of his torn heart, I trace my nail around its jagged edge. “What hurt you here?”

He swallows, flicking his gaze to my touch on his skin. “My father. When he turned his back on me. As if he hadn’t raised me for eighteen years, as if he had no idea who I was. How he could think I was capable of killing anyone, let alone a woman …”

“He never tried to reconnect?”

His expression tightens, and his fingers dig into my hips for a moment. “Once,” he forces out. “Took him five years to show up at the prison. I refused to see him. I just …” His throat bobs. “I couldn’t.”

A tear forms in the corner of my eye. I blink, but not soon enough, because all I manage to do is set it free.

He follows its path down my face. When it settles in the crevice between my lips, I drop my gaze to his mouth and watch the tip of his tongue appear, as if he wants to taste that tear.

And, oh God, do I want him to. But that would be a distraction.

That would be easy. This is hard. And it’s the difficult things that have the deepest meaning.

I force my attention back to the tattoo and move my finger onto the next piece. “And this?”

“That was for all my dreams that would never come true. The realisation that my life would never be what I imagined or planned. It’s for what I once had, and what I lost forever.”

Jesus, this keeps getting worse. I intrinsically know the damage his incarceration has caused him, but actually hearing it in his own words, is heartbreaking. But I’m not stopping now. We’re halfway there.

My throat constricts as my finger trails down to the piece below. He says nothing, and from the tension coiling through his muscles, I know he’s trying to keep his emotions in check.

After a moment, I press, “This one?”

“Jamie …”

I meet his eyes.

“I don’t want you to feel bad about anything I felt … back then. Especially now, since that piece is redundant.”

“But it meant something once. Gavin, please tell me.”

Sensing his indecision, I wait.

“That one was for every time you looked at me in court. Your life was shattered, never to be the same again, just like mine. And you knew it. I saw it in your eyes every day of that trial. You believed I was the one who did that to you. And you hated me for it. And that hurt. Deeply. The weight of being blamed for ruining the lives of others is a backbreaking burden.”

I’m so stunned that I’d had such an effect on him way back then, I can barely breathe. Ashamed, I lower my eyes to his chest, causing more tears to spill over my cheeks.

Ever so gently, he wipes them away with his fingertips.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

He presses his lips to my forehead. “No. It was no more your fault than it was mine. We were both victims. You just had no way of knowing that. I wrote you so many letters explaining everything. But you never got them.” He touches the underside of my chin and tilts my head up until I meet his gaze.

“Jamie, that piece … that piece of my heart is whole again. Completely healed.” He wipes away another stray tear with his thumb. “I promise you.”

I nod, my throat too closed off to form words. Instead, I wrap my arms around his shoulders, tuck my face into his neck and hold him tight. How is it that his heart’s been torn to shreds, yet it’s still the warmest, biggest heart I’ve ever encountered? How is that possible?

He slips a hand beneath my wet hair and absently begins circling his thumb on the back of my neck, as if he’s done it a thousand times before.

And it feels that way to me, too. I know I’m right where I’m supposed to be, in his arms, just being loved and loving him back.

After accepting his comfort and giving him mine, I pull away enough to touch the one remaining torn piece. “This one?”

His thumb stills on my neck, then resumes the reassuring circles. But he remains silent and, when I meet his gaze, he seems more hesitant to tell me about this last piece than the others. Just as I think he’s clamming up, he takes a deep, resigned breath.

“That one’s for the loss of love, for the wife I’d never have, the family of my own that’d never exist. Why would anyone want me—a convicted killer—in their lives?

All the things people take for granted …

I’d never hold someone I loved or be held by someone who loved me.

I’d never touch someone with the love I have to offer or feel a loving touch …

that’s what ripped the last piece apart. ”

Now I understand his hesitation. This piece was all about the love he wanted to give and the love he wanted to receive. My heart aches for this beautiful man who deserves all the love in the world. Doesn’t he see that?

Tracing the piece with my fingertip, I ask, “Why didn’t you tell me … that this piece is redundant too?”

When our eyes lock, his thumb stills on the back of my neck. The utter vulnerability in his gaze wrenches at my heart. “Because I don’t really know, with certainty, that it is redundant.”

He’s right. I’m showing him how I feel, but without the words to back it up, he’s left wondering.

While I feel loved by the way he looks at me, touches me, holds and talks to me, I can’t be certain either.

I’m as vulnerable as he is. Without voicing how we feel, we’re both flailing around in the dark, relying on hope alone.

I’m just not sure if I’m brave enough to be the one to put myself out there first. But if he doesn’t feel as deeply for me as I do for him, isn’t it better to know?

“You’re holding someone right now,” I say softly, “and someone’s holding you back. You’re touching someone, and you’re being touched in return.”

He tightens his arm around my waist, pulls me flush against him, and rests his forehead on mine, the tension between us sparking.

Oh God. He noticed . By the look in his eyes, he’s not about to let me get away with it. And I don’t want him to. I need his words, just as much as he wants mine.

“You skipped over the one word that gives all those things meaning,” he points out, his voice strained.

“Love,” I whisper.

“Do you love me … the way I love you?”

If I had a weak heart, I think it’d give out right about now.

“I don’t know,” I answer honestly.

He lifts his forehead from mine, his eyes unguarded and full of turmoil.

“Because,” I continue, “I don’t know the way you love me.”

“I love you,” he says without hesitation, “for the way my day can’t even begin until you look at me.

I love you for the way you care with such genuine affection, it brings me to tears.

I love you because you don’t judge me when I break.

I love you for the way you chase away my darkness.

And I love you because you make life look so much brighter than I ever thought possible.

I’m so in love with you, Jamie Evans. You’re the reason this tiny little fucking life of mine is worth living.

” He inhales deeply and lets it out. “So, do you love me the way I love you?”

Staring into his beautiful, vulnerable eyes, I don’t hesitate either. “Yes. God, yes . I love you in all of those ways, and all the other ways I’m in love with you, too.”

I want to say so much more, but the palpable relief on his face has my heart pounding like a sledgehammer, smashing against my chest and beating a drum in my ears.

Saying those words for the very first time was exhilarating.

Especially since I didn’t have to risk rejection.

That was all on Gavin. His own thundering heart beneath my palm tells me just how much courage it took.

He cradles my face with such tenderness, I’m engulfed by a wave of euphoria. Then he kisses me. And it’s the first kiss I gave him, our mouths joined and pressing in that wonderful offering of love and affection.

Chest rumbling, he tilts my head and moves his mouth over mine, his lips full and soft as we drink each other in. When he moves us away from the wall, I wind my legs around him as he spins us in circles, my mind dizzy in this magical moment.

Breaking the kiss, he rests his forehead against mine. “Pinch me,” he demands on a ragged breath.

Grinning, I slip my hand down to his backside and obey. “Awake?”

“Thank fuck.”

“That makes you happy?”

“You have no idea.”

“I think I have every idea,” I say.

Crashing his mouth to mine, cool water swirls around us as he moves us back into the shade of the ficus.

Once we’re hidden again, we kiss until we can’t breathe.

Being in his arms like this, knowing he loves me in all the ways he said, is a truly transcendent experience.

One that, just like him, I never thought I’d find.

After a long moment, I lean away enough to see his torn heart again. Touching each piece in turn, I say, “Abandonment … Purpose … Truth … Love.”

He sighs heavily, his eyes locking with mine. “I thought I’d worked through all my crap in prison, but there’s something inherently different about revealing the pain inside my soul … to someone who actually cares, to someone who wants to know every part of me. The light and the dark.”

I cup his jaw, smoothing his short beard beneath my palm. I know what he means. “Did I tell you the last words my mother ever said to me?”

He shakes his head, his eyes never leaving mine.

“She said ‘ open your heart ’.”

“Sounds like good advice.”

I nod and touch his tattoo again. “Maybe … maybe these tears don’t mean what they once did. Maybe they’re torn so your heart is open. So you can allow love and forgiveness inside. So it can heal. So you can heal.”

Eyes bright with unshed tears, he pulls me into him and buries his face in my neck. His body shudders against mine as I hold him tight. Once he regains control, he trails sweet kisses up my neck and whispers, “Thank you.”

I pull back so I can look into his eyes. “Thank you for sharing—”

“Oh, my fucking God!” Anika’s voice rings out. “You two better not be starkers. Looks like there’s been a strip show out here.”

Gavin chuckles as I shout to Anika, “It’s safe.”

A few moments later, she takes the first two steps into the pool, cooling her short-clad legs. Hands on her hips, she rolls her eyes at us.

“There better not be any bodily fluids floating around in here. That rule applies to the backyard, too.”

“Morning, Satan’s little helper,” Gavin says. “Or is it afternoon?”

Anika lets out a snort and smirks at him. “Afternoon, Shawshank.”

“Oh, I like that,” I say, giving him a cheeky grin, thrilled that the two most important people in my life somehow, so quickly, seem to get each other.

“Don’t even think about it,” he grumbles, miserably failing to suppress a smile before he plants a quick kiss on my lips.

Anika makes a retching sound before asking, “So, ready for Mum’s letter?”