Page 38

Elsie is quiet on the way home, almost contemplative, but I don’t ask her to tell me what’s on her mind. I know tonight was overwhelming for her, that she went in expecting, for whatever reason, a much different reaction than the one that she got.

The truth is, I’m feeling a little raw too.

I didn’t expect to break down during my conversation with Cooper, but the past year came at me like a bag of bricks, knocking the wind out of me.

I watched Elsie tonight, seeing her so clearly, wondering how I missed the signs for so long.

How I ever brushed off her retreat as resilience.

All the times I let her pull away thinking she was strong enough not to need someone to lean on.

I failed her, and this last year is as much my fault as it is hers.

The truck bumps over the dirt driveway, the lights slicing over the house.

We accidentally left the light on in the front bathroom, and it makes the house glow golden.

Looking at it now, I’m overwhelmed that we made it back here together.

That we’re both living in this house again, working toward reconciliation, when we messed things up so royally before.

“Beau,” Elsie says, cutting into my thoughts. Her voice is small, quiet, but I hear a determination in it too. Like she’s been ruminating on that one word the whole way home. “I heard you with Cooper.”

I turn to face her in the darkness of the truck, my heart pounding. The headlights reflecting on the house illuminate her just enough for me to make out her features, the ones so familiar to me I could recite them from memory, trace them in my sleep.

There’s a set to her jaw, one I’ve seen before when she’s about to do something hard, like attempt a new jump or get lunch with her mom. But her eyes are soft. The way she’s looking at me is so tender I can feel it deep beneath my breastbone.

“What did you hear?” I ask.

“You didn’t fail me, Beau.”

Her words land like a jackhammer straight to my chest, knocking the wind out of me.

I shake my head. “I should have seen it. I should have.” I pause, searching for the words. “I should have known you better.”

Her smile is sad, and I swear I see a streak of silver in her eyes. “I didn’t let you.”

My hands reach out on instinct, pulling her close, and she melts into me like ice cream on a summer day, her head finding the crook of my neck she fits perfectly into, her fingers clasping my shirt right above my heart.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers into my skin.

When I shake my head, my stubble catches in her hair. She smells like vanilla. Like Elsie and every good memory I have in my life. “I’m sorry, Els. I’m so sorry I didn’t see you, that I wasn’t there for you like you needed me to be.”

“I didn’t let you,” she says again.

“Maybe not,” I concede. “But I should have tried harder.” I pull back from her then, needing to see her face, needing her eyes on mine when I say this next part. “We both broke us, Elsie. It wasn’t just you. But we can put us back together again too.”

My heart pounds in my throat as I wait for her reply, half-worried she’s going to push me away again.

Her eyes hold mine, as familiar to me as the back of my own hand.

I’ve looked into them so many times. On our wedding day, reciting our vows.

The first time I met her, when they caught my attention and I knew I was a goner.

All the times I’ve watched her fall apart, unable to look away.

When she told me she was pregnant, the first time with hope in her eyes, the second with fear.

I’ve lost myself in them too many times to count, and right now is no different.

“I want that,” she says.

My heart stops pounding. It stops in my chest, just like my breath, waiting for her next words.

She sighs, the breath catching the bangs that have grown out to her chin now. “I want you, Beau.”

And then she kisses me, and everything in my body roars back to life, like a live wire sparking and catching flame.

I think she intends for it to be something soft, sweet, but it changes tempo in an instant when I drag her across the splitting middle seat and into my lap.

It’s a tight fit now with the belly, unlike all the times we did this before, but she still fits perfectly against me.

She still sighs into my mouth, her hands finding my shoulders and kneading the muscles there like she has a thousand times before.

It feels like a dream, like all the best ones I’ve had the last year, but better. Because this time it’s real .

“Inside,” she says against my mouth.

I’m nodding, fumbling for the door handle. Warm summer air and the sound of crickets chirping in the moonlight fill the cab a second later. She tries to drop to the ground when I slide out, but I hold her against me, unable to let her go, and I feel her smile against my lips.

“So needy,” she mumbles between kisses.

I pull her tighter against me, her hips locking against mine, and she gasps, sending a bolt of lightning down my spine.

“You have no idea.”

We stumble through the yard and up the porch steps until her back ends up against one of the columns, my mouth trailing down her neck in a way that’s distracting us both.

We’re so close to the door, twenty steps from our bedroom, our bed , but I’m suddenly too impatient for even that distance.

Not when she’s in my arms, sighing, her nails raking up and down my back in a way I hope leaves marks that sting when I shower in the morning.

Not when her legs tighten around my hips, drawing us impossibly closer, the friction making my breath stutter, my heart hammer.

Not when she’s whispering “don’t stop” into my ear as I slide my hand up her thigh and toy with the unbuttoned waistband of her jeans that’s been lingering in the back of my mind all night.

I want to devour her right here on our front porch, but there’s enough sense left in my mind to make me pull back and shake my head against her neck, the spot that smells like vanilla and tastes like sin. “Not until we’re inside, Elsie baby.”

The way she whines has the hair on the back of my neck standing at attention, my mind swirling in a million different directions.

I catch her earlobe between my teeth, promise her something filthy that has her sliding down my body until her boots hit the creaky wooden porch boards. “Let’s get inside.”

My eyes linger on her for a moment longer, unable to look away.

Her hair is a mess from my hands, and her shirt has ridden up to expose the unbuttoned waistband of her jeans.

Moonlight casts her in silver and the bathroom light from inside bathes her in gold.

She looks like something precious. Like mine .

She’s needy, but I want to take my time with her, show her with my body and my words how much I love her, in a way I haven’t been able to in a year.

My boots thud against the porch boards as I close the distance between us, slow and purposeful. My hands find the sides of her neck, thumbs brushing against the delicate skin at the base of her throat. Her lips are swollen, her cheeks mustache-burned.

“I love you, Elsie.”

My words calm the hungry, frantic look in her eyes, make them soften.

Her palms slide up my chest, leaving a trail of warmth in their wake.

It’s too dark to make out the shades of blue in her eyes, the white flecks that are only visible up close, but I can see enough to know they’re intense, blond lashes framing them, kissing her cheeks as she blinks.

She doesn’t look away when she says, “I love you too, Beau. I never stopped.”

My lips find hers, slow, tasting, determined to break her down the way she’s just done to me. I feel raw, exposed, one spark away from catching flame.

She must open the door, because a moment later, we’re walking through it, our hands and mouths never leaving each other.

I kick it shut behind me and kick off my boots as she does the same.

Then we’re making our way down the hall, closing the distance between our bedroom and the front door in meandering, sloppy steps.

And then we’re at the bed. My hands tremble with anticipation as she lowers herself onto it, body moving with the grace of a dancer, eyes never abandoning mine.

For a moment, I just stand there, chest heaving, looking at her under the moonlight cascading through the windows.

It makes her skin look silver, her eyes dark as midnight.

Just the sight of her makes my heart ache and the palms of my hands itch with the need to touch her.

It’s been too long, and I want to make this last. I want to make this good.

I move in slowly, erasing the distance between us, one hand falling to her hip, the other tilting her head up at the angle I want. My lips find her, soft and urgent and filled with all the wanting that’s been coursing through me for months. A year. Too long. Too damn long.

Her breath hitches as my hands wander, as they push up the hem of her shirt, my mouth following the same trail.

Her skin burns beneath my lips. It’s soft, delicate.

The feel of it has always driven me nuts.

Sometimes I’d wake up from dreams, the palms of my hands tingling, and I could swear I was just touching her, feeling her, loving her, only to realize I was alone.

But not right now. This is real. She’s real.

“Elsie,” I murmur into her skin.

She shivers as my mustache scrapes over a ticklish spot. I can’t say anything else. Her name just slips from my lips over and over again like a prayer, an enchantment. Something special, something precious. My entire world in one little word.

She squirms beneath the light touch of my mouth, and I can sense her getting frustrated.

It makes a smile pull at my lips, and I press one more kiss to a sensitive spot beneath her belly button before she pulls me up until my mouth is on hers.

My weight presses her down into the mattress, and she sighs against my lips, hands tightening on the sheets.

When I palm her hip, knead it, a switch in her flips, and her hands start fumbling at my clothes, exposing skin like she’s on a mission, tugging and pulling, knuckles scraping against muscles.

She’s needy, restless, urgent, but I indulge her for only a moment before stilling her hands, pulling back until all I can see is her face in the moonlight.

“Elsie baby,” I pant, chest rising and falling against hers. “Slow down.”

Her breath is ragged, and she shakes her head against the white sheets, her hair looking like spun gold against them. “I can’t.” She sounds desperate, pleading, and it makes my skin prickle, my entire body feel like it could combust.

It almost makes me lose whatever semblance of self-control I’m hanging on to like a lifeline, but I shake my head and I press a kiss to her neck, right below her ear.

My breath fans against her skin in a way that makes her shiver beneath me, and I want to memorize the feel of it.

“We have time,” I tell her. “Let me love you.”

Maybe it’s my words. Maybe it’s the way my hands move in slow, comforting circles against her bare skin, but she seems to settle, melt into the mattress, become pliant and languid.

“Okay,” she says with a nod.

My mouth finds her ear again, desperate to say the words that I’ve been holding in for a year, biting my tongue every time I almost let them slip out.

“I love you.”

I don’t wait for her to respond. I move down her body, removing clothes as I go, whispering the words over and over again into every inch of exposed skin.

But this time, she says it back. “I love you too, Beau.”