Noah hangs his head. “Fuck. Now I have to buy a new one.”
“Calm down,” Tully laughs. “We didn’t have sex on your couch.”
“I know, but now I won’t be able to sit on it without thinking about the fact that you ‘nearly’ did.”
“Yeah,” she says, stepping out of my arms and grabbing her phone and keys off the coffee table and then dragging me towards the door. “I’m not even going to pretend to be sorry about it. It was fucking incredible and I plan to take him home and do it all over again.”
I can’t help the wide grin that spreads across my face as my girl looks back up at me. I know she’s only trying to stir her brother, but something tells me that she means every fucking word and I can’t wait. Hell, she has a whole apartment full of furniture that I intend to bend her over.
Tully pushes through the door and comes to a stop as she takes in the black dodge RAM sitting right behind her car, making it look like some sort of clown car. “What the hell is that?” she questions, scrunching up her face.
“It’s my new truck,” I explain, looking over it with pride as Tully begins to gawk. “What?”
“That’s yours?”
“Yep.”
“It’s huge.”
“Uh-huh.”
She shakes her head as Henley’s phone screeches to life behind us. “Speaking of huge things,” Tully murmurs looking up at me with a sparkle in her eye. “We need to discuss your piercing.”
“What piercing?” I laugh as the screeching phone is finally answered. “I had to get rid of it when I joined the Military.”
She nods. “Exactly my problem.”
With my hand in hers, Tully starts leading me out to my new truck, bypassing her little black car so she can check out my new ride. I start digging for my keys when Henley’s voice has me spinning back around. “Rivers,” she calls out. “That was Mom.”
“What?” I demand with wide eyes. “Is she alright?”
“Yeah,” she says as a smile slowly spreads across her face. “More than alright. All the paperwork went through and the judge signed everything off. She’s free. Mom’s coming home.”
Chapter 15
Tully
The past two weeks with Rivers have been incredible. It’s so much more than I could have imagined. With Spencer, I was barely getting by, but this…this is as though I’m finally alive for the first time in my life.
He lifts me up, he makes me feel things no other man has ever made me feel, and the sex…well, that’s on another whole playing field. It’s simply mind-blowing.
Though I always knew it would be, it’s part of the reason I fell in love with him in the first place. But I’m not going to lie, despite how incredible it’s been, I can’t help that nagging feeling that one day he’s going to leave.
I have to learn to trust him again and that’s going to be one of the hardest battles I’ll ever face. I want to trust him so damn bad. I want to believe that this is what it’s going to be like until the end of time, but I’m terrified of allowing myself to believe it. If I’m right and he does leave, I don’t know how I’ll ever survive.
I hate being that weak girl who revolves my life around a man’s decisions. I should be stronger. I should be able to stand on my own two feet and tell him exactly how it’s going to be, but when it comes to Rivers, I’m putty in his hands. And what’s more; I like it that way.
Over the past two weeks, he’s let me take things slow despite the fact that we already know exactly where this relationship is heading. I don’t want to rush this. I want to rediscover him in the way that I didn’t get the chance to do the first time around.
He’s been my guy since I was eleven, but the past two weeks it’s as though he’s completely new. He’s my same old Rivers, but now with so much more to give and I wouldn’t have it any other way. He encourages me, he supports me, he lifts me up, and lets me believe that the world is in my hands, and I absolutely adore him for it.
How did I go four years without him in my life? I feel as though we’ve missed all this time together, but had we not, would it still be the same? If Rivers didn’t join the military and learn to forgive himself, would he be the man he is today? Would he have ever found the courage to open up to me and share his world? Something tells me that the answer is ‘no’ and that the past four years were a necessity that I need to move on from.
Those four years are what brought Rivers back to me and I need to learn to be grateful for them rather than hating it for how I fell apart while he was gone.