“Stop,” he said. The word was harsh. Painful. Because he’d yanked it up his throat with a force that hurt to hear. “You are what I want above all else, Polly. You.”
He shook me roughly in his arms as if to bring home his point. As if to remind himself that I was still there.
His eyes burned into mine. “Your fucking sunshine. Your smile. The fact that you wander around the house at three in the morning because it’s some sort of witching hour and you want to suck up the ‘positive energy.’”
I jerked at that because I hadn’t done that in the two months we’d been here.
Because there was no positive energy for me to suck up. I slept past the witching hour. Slept past the nightmares.
Heath knew this somehow, like he knew everything about me.
And he wasn’t done.
“You who won’t eat meat but who will cook me steak with a wrinkled nose because she knows I like it,” he growled. “You who constantly loses phones, keys, remotes, but never forgets a birthday, an anniversary, a commitment to a friend. You who smiles at strangers because that’s your first instinct. You who sleeps tangled up in me and uses my chest as her pillow.”
He cupped my cheek in his hands. “That’s what I want above all else. I didn’t have a home, a family, until you. You carry home around with you. You make a family everywhere you go because you attract people who want to be involved with you, connected to you, dedicated to you. So if you think that what you lost, what breaks my fucking heart, is going to make me lose you, then you’re fucking wrong.”
As if he couldn’t help himself, he leaned forward, kissing me hard and brutal in amongst his gentle words.
“I’m not going to lose you,” he murmured against my mouth. “Not going to walk away. Never. Because you’re my family. Even if it’s all I’ll ever have, it’ll be enough. More than enough.” He paused, searching my face.
I blinked at him, unable to digest his words.
He waited. For the words to tear through me. To settle.
And then he fed me more.
“Being part of something like this,” he murmured, tightening his hands around me, “is something special. Sacred. And when we started, I didn’t treat it that way because there was no fucking way I could. You were still in fucking high school. The only reason I didn’t run away was because I knew you were legal, that and I couldn’t fucking resist you.” He squeezed again.
That hunger that had been only teasing, weakly fighting against the rest of the vile filth inside me, it sparked again with that squeeze. With the desire in Heath’s eyes.
“I couldn’t resist taking you even with the knowledge of knowing I’d have to leave you,” he murmured. “Because you’re the beautiful girl who wants peace but fucks like it’s war.”
My thighs clenched at his words.
Heath’s eyes flared in response to the desire I must’ve been wearing on my face. “You’re the woman who deserves a smile on her face every day and a man that doesn’t have demons that makes that impossible,” he continued, voice raw. “So that’s why I left at first. Because I knew I was gonna be in a war fighting demons and creating worse ones in their place. Knew I was going to sacrifice whatever parts of me would’ve been able to give that beautiful little girl her smile. I did the wrong thing that morning to do the right thing in general.”
“I know that,” I whispered.
His eyes flickered. “You know that?” he repeated.
I smiled. “Of course I know that. I used to live in a fantasy, most people will tell you that. But I lived in that fantasy to save myself from pain in the world. If I’d held onto fantasies into regards to you, then I’d be in insurmountable pain when they never came true.”
We were laying it all out here, with talks of murdered ex-husbands, lost babies, lost loves. Lost lives.
“I know that you leaving was the only option,” I said. “I knew that the second we kissed. When you took my hand and dragged me from the bar. I knew there was a time limit. An expiry date. That’s why I fought so hard, before,” I said. “When you came back. Because I couldn’t stand our love having an expiry date.”
“It fucking doesn’t,” he promised. “It never fucking will.”
I smiled. “I think I’m getting that now.”
Something moved in his eyes. “Not quite. But I’ll prove it to you.”
Chapter Nineteen
One Week Later
“You need to go,” I murmured against Heath’s mouth.
“I know,” he responded.
But instead of letting me go, he yanked me closer, melding my body against his and laying his mouth against mine.
I responded. Completely. With all of the hunger I had for him, with all of the fear that pulsated through my body with his touch. It was a battle, every time he kissed me like this. But it was worth it.