Lance jerked like I struck him with that four-letter word that had been lead in my stomach the past months.
I wanted to kiss him now.
For his arms to circle my body.
His lips to explore every part of me.
But I couldn’t.
Lance was laying out his ugly truth. I had to lay out mine. Right now. So I could breathe. So we had a chance.
He expected it.
I could tell that. Because his hands were at his sides, clenched into fists. He was shaking with the effort it took for him to stay standing there.
“I need to tell you how much I hurt for you before I say anything else,” I whispered. “I’m not going to tell you I’m sorry because that feels so weak. It’s not enough. I know there’s nothing that I can say that’s enough.”
There it was. Another ugly truth.
It was time for more.
“I had a husband that hurt me,” I said, my voice was flat. Blank. Dead. Like his had been. “He beat me until I passed out. Until my bones broke. He raped me.”
Lance flinched at this, I kept going.
“He raped me so he could hurt me inside and out, so he could hurt me in every way it was possible for a man to hurt a woman.” I paused. “You hurt me worse than anyone ever has, and in my life, with my history, that’s saying something.”
His eyes shimmered, his entire body shook with the force of my words, his pain, guilt. A single tear trailed down his cheek and I stared, shocked into feeling something more than the numbness that had overcome me since he left.
Lance didn’t even give me a moment, a second to breathe through the pain his single tear brought on. No, he just surged forward to give me more.
“I hurt you more than anyone else, I can’t change that,” he said, gripping my neck and forcing my eyes to glue to his. “But I’m also gonna heal you more than anyone else. I hurt you because I thought it was better than hurtin’ you worse down the road when we were more attached… more—”
“We already were more,” I choked out.
His grip tightened and his face moved with misery. He rested his forehead against my own, leaning into me as if he couldn’t hold his own strength.
It was a huge thing when a strong person relied on you to share the load.
He leaned back to give me his eyes, the eyes that had followed me into my dreams and my nightmares every night since he’d been gone.
I drank up his gaze like it was liquid.
“You taught me how to be… something more than I was,” he murmured. “Something more than I thought I was capable of. I’m not worthy of you, of Nathan. But I’ll protect you from hurt, from everything I can. And everything I can’t protect you from, I’ll be there.” He paused, there was a lifetime in that pause. The promise of a lifetime.
Tears were trailing down my own cheeks now.
“You have to earn back my trust,” I said.
“I will,” he promised.
“More importantly, you have to earn back my son’s trust,” I continued, instantly trusting his promise.
Lance winced. He knew he’d hurt Nathan, I hadn’t explained how much, he hadn’t seen it, but he winced at the bare idea of hurting my son.
That was why I was giving him the opportunity to earn both mine and Nathan’s trust back, because of that wince.
And, not to be outdone, because I loved him.
“First,” I said. “You have to kiss me.”
The words were barely out of my mouth before he did that.
And more.
He made love to me on the living room floor.
Nathan had not had any kind of heart to heart with Lance when I texted Karen the all clear to bring him home.
He hadn’t even hesitated to run into his arms.
Lance didn’t hesitate to not only catch Nathan, but lift him up, and hold him.
I could only imagine how much pain such a simple gesture was for him. What it felt like to hold a child that adored you, that wasn’t yours. Knowing you’d never hold your child. Watch them grow.
I didn’t cry, as much as I wanted to, watching that moment. Mostly because Nathan was babbling on about everything Captain had missed.
Also because Karen was staring at Lance like she might try to scalp him.
I didn’t blame her.
She had seen my hurt. My pain.
She was a good friend.
Family.
But, while Nathan and Lance were ‘catching up,’ I managed to talk her down. She must have seen something in my eyes, because she didn’t yell curses at Lance when he gave her a chin lift greeting.
Then again, with what Karen and Eliza had gone through, I guessed she knew that this was never simple.
But that first night was, somehow.
With all the complicated we’d laid out, it turned simple. It turned into making dinner together. Eating together. Watching some stupid movie Nathan was obsessed with. Putting him to bed.