“I promised you. It was the last thing I said to you. God, Emily.” He rained kisses on her face and her neck.
“Nave?”
“Fuck, don’t ever stop calling me that.”
“Never.”
He pulled back an inch and just stared at her, drinking her in, and she did the same. She wasn’t seeing him anew, but she was seeing him through Emily Webster’s eyes. In finding him, she had found herself. He ran his nose down the length of hers.
“You can’t imagine what it’s been like for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“The loss, just the thought of this perfect little girl....” He couldn’t finish the thought. It was horrific. “Not knowing. It was brutal.”
“I know.”
“I used to imagine what you’d grown up to look like.”
“Are you disappointed? I can’t compare to a fantasy.”
“You don’t. You exceed it. In. Every. Way.” He punctuated each word with a hot kiss.
“Nathan....” She wanted to beg him to take her home, to give herself to him, but he wasn’t finished.
“Every woman that I’ve dated, every woman that I’ve been with, every woman that I’ve ever made some miserable attempt...” he brushed a hand down his face, “. . . lost out to the memory of an eight-year-old girl and the woman she would have become.”
“It’s the same for me, Nave. That’s why... that’s part of the reason I can’t.... When you left for boarding school before I was taken,” Nathan stilled at her words and gripped her like a vice, anchoring her to him, “it was like something inside me wasn’t there anymore. I would get up in the middle of the night and stare out the window into the dark at your empty bedroom across the yard and just cry. It was crazy.”
“You want to hear crazy?” She nodded, relieved he felt this as much as she did. “That night at the Jane? When you burst into that conference room? I saw you, and I just knew.”
“Knew?”
“Knew what had happened. Knew you needed me. Knew there was something about you. I don’t even remember crossing the room to get to you.”
“That’s not crazy.”
“I haven’t gotten to the crazy part. After I caught you, after you passed out in my arms half choking me with my tie, the words on my lips, the thought in my head... it was something I had never thought, never meant in my life.”
“I used to tell you I loved you all the time.” She didn’t pretend she didn’t understand what he meant.
“I remember. You used to pat my cheeks with your tiny hands.”
“Do you remember what you said back?”
He searched her eyes, looking for an answer, but nothing came. He shook his head once.
“You’d say, and you are my sunshine, and you’d pull my nose.” Her eyes grew moist, but the sentimentality of the moment was quickly lost when she looked at Nathan. He had gone pale.
“What? Nathan?”
He puffed out a laugh and reached for his phone. He scrolled through his contacts and brought up the info. He showed her the nickname that he had flirtatiously withheld when they first exchanged contact information:
Sunshine.
His kiss bruised her lips, slicked her thighs, curled her toes.
“I need to tell you what happened to me; at least what I can remember. I can’t lie to you anymore. I don’t want anything between us.” She was babbling, pent up, and nervous. She wanted to give herself to this man, and it was a feeling she had never experienced. Instead of her trademark lockdown, she was saying too much, spilling out every thought. It was like he had pulled the cork on her bottled-up emotions. Nathan just nodded while she prattled on. He understood with a completeness she could not fathom. “I need to explain. I need....” Her voice failed her as she looked into grass green eyes filled with wonder and, yes, love.