Page 36 of Between Now & Heartbreak

Instinct guides me and I take a hold of it before I think better of it and before she can pull it back.

But she doesn’t even try. She links our fingers and moves closer.

“No, it’s just that… He wasn’t in remission, and he didn’t tell us. Not even my mom.”

She gasps, her eyes widen in surprise.

“Oh, my God. That must have been so hard for him, keeping that all on his own. And wanting to spare you,” she says, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.

God, thiswoman.

She hasn’t walked a day in his shoes, and yet she gets it.

So many people have asked me with horror in the expression “ How could he keep it from you?” And not that I wasn’t pissed at him for it, but I can’t stand that anyone else would judge him. Because even in my angriest moments, I know he did it because he loved us.

“Yeah, he didn’t tell us it was back. Not even my mom. And one day, he just collapsed. It was crazy. We got him to the hospital, but he never woke up. The days that followed felt like seconds. You know? He was gone so fast. And I was so mad at him. Mad everyone, really. But, he lived on his terms. Died on them, too.”

She squeezes my hands and when I look at her, the understanding in her eyes slays me.

“God, Beth. I miss you.” I didn’t mean to say it, but I’m not sorry in the slightest that I did.

Even if things between us are…whatever they are.

It’s the truth.

She rewards me with a beaming smile.

“I miss you, too.” Her voice cracks a little, but her smile doesn’t slip and her eyes shine.

“You did?”

“Of course, every day. I think about that night all the time.”

She said she was nervous. But it’s not nerves making her nipples hard right in front of my eyes.

Oh. Fuck. Me.

I know better than what I’m about to do.

I.Know.Better.

But that body is my kryptonite.

And the woman it belongs to - she’s a magnet for whatever substance I’m made of.

I cup her face and turn it up so that she has no choice but to look at me. When our eyes meet, though, it’s me who’s held captive. Everything I feel for her rushes to the surface and lines I would never normally cross blur. I don’t see a shred of uncertainty or doubt in her gaze.

When she lets her lips free from the grip of her teeth, they’re bright pink and wet and I can’t fight the incessant pull between us anymore.

“Just a taste,” is all the warning I give her before I drop my mouth onto hers.

I’m starving, dispossessed and it’s been far too long since I’ve been near the woman stirs this craving. The only woman who can satisfy it.

Her hands cup my neck and her mouth opens on a moan that I swallow before I plunder her sweet mouth. My memories muted the shades of perfect that our fragmented parts make when they come together. But now that we’re skin to skin, the only thing that’s muted are the lies I’ve told myself for the last year.

This kiss is a hypnotic truth-teller.

The past is gone, but in this slice of time between it and our future, we’re not close to done. How could we be, when this kiss says we are timeless?

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