There were so many twists and turns to the shit show, and it was frustrating not being able to tell her them.
Since the discussion, she’d been slightly more relaxed around me, no longer tensing up and withdrawing when my phone rang, and I was called away. I still couldn’t hold her, though, I didn’t feel like I had that right, and it was killing me.
My natural instinct was to put my arms around her every time I saw her—almost like it was to breathe in air to survive—so I was being cut off from something vital to my survival.
Looking more confused than anything, she asked, “Why do you keep calling me that?”
“Because you are,” I told her slowly. “You and the boys are what keep it beating.”
I expected her to withdraw again or to push me away. Instead, her head dropped down to my shoulder, and her response came out muffled as a result. “I don’t know what to say to that.”
Turning my head in so that my mouth was next to her ear, I whispered, “You don’t have to say anything. Just let me show you and prove it to you, malysh. There’s a lot you don’t know, but what I can tell you is that I never touched her.”
The words she’d said to me at the hospital woke me up at night. It was torture hearing them on repeat during the brief moments of peace in my life just now.
“One of the first things I did after I found out I was pregnant, was to ask them to run tests, to make sure I hadn’t caught a sexually transmitted disease from you, on the same day I found out I was over four months pregnant with twins. Can you imagine how dirty, embarrassed, and hurt I felt doing that? Thinking that, for four months, I’d potentially carried something that would hurt my unborn babies, and that it had come from their father?”I’d told her as much before, but I wanted her to believe me.
“I never even kissed her or held her hand, baby.”
I could feel her trembling where we were touching, and hoped she was finally absorbing the truth.
“Why did you do it? Why wasn’t I enough to keep you?”
Dropping her hands, I wrapped my arms around her, and pulled her off the bed until she was in my lap. The position was uncomfortable, but I’d go through any amount of it to hold her like this.
“You were enough—you are enough—Nell. It wasn’t ever about that. It was about keeping everyone safe, including the MC and your family. I suffered every day, wondering if you were okay and wanting to see you again.”
I heard and felt her suck in a breath, and continued. “I have so many promises to keep, and part of them is to explain everything to you as soon as I can. But also to make sure you never feel like you aren’t enough ever again.
“You and the boys are everything that matters in the world to me, moye serdste, and I need you to believe that.”
I gave her a moment, the time to hear and feel what I was saying, and when she finally straightened up, I thought she was going to ask questions.
Instead, she moved until there was only an inch between us and stared into my eyes, searching for something, but I didn’t know what.
If she wanted proof of any of it, I’d find a way to give it to her.
Then, she took another deep breath in, and surprised me by closing the distance to kiss me hard on my mouth.
I don’t know if she intended to keep it at just that, but the second her lips touched mine, my arms wrapped around her, and my mouth opened. I only had just enough strength not to take control of the kiss and let her lead, which she did by licking gently inside, skimming her tongue along mine.
For months I’d missed the taste of her and the way she kissed. Nell could do things to me that no one else could. Some might call it a weakness, but I thought of it as a strength, that only a specific person, maybe even a fated one, could do to someone.
A kiss was only a kiss, until the person doing it made you feel truly alive.
And that’s what she did, every single time.
Tightening my hold around her, I crushed her against my chest and flicked her tongue with my own, chasing it back into her mouth when she took it away, signaling that it was okay for me to do what my instincts were screaming at me to do.
I was so taken by her taste and what we were doing that the world disappeared, until a hungry baby let out a shriek of protest, making both of us groan.