Page 72 of Nine Months to Love
Stefan.
He’s yelling, his face twisted with fear and fury. He hauls me toward the yacht with powerful strokes, one arm locked around me.
“I was just s-s-swimming,” I gasp.
“You were fifty feet from the yacht in choppy water. What if you’d gone under? What if—” His voice cracks. “What if I hadn’t seen you?”
We reach the yacht. He practically throws me onto the ladder, then climbs up behind me, his hands on my waist to steady me.
On deck, he spins me around. “Are you trying to kill yourself? Is that what this is?”
“No, I just needed to cool off.” I don’t know what I’m saying, though. My throat is sore from sea salt and my head is a waterlogged mess.
“Cool off? You could have died, Olivia. You and the baby.”
His hands are on my shoulders now, gripping tight enough to bruise. He’s soaking wet, his chest heaving, his eyes wild.
“I’m okay,” I say softly. “Stefan, I’m okay.”
“You’re not okay. You’re reckless and stupid and?—”
I grab his face and force him to look at me. “I’m okay. We’re okay.”
His breathing remains angry and ragged, though. Water drips from his hair onto my hands. For a moment, we just stand there, dripping and shaking.
Then he brings me against his chest, his arms clutching around me so tightly I can barely breathe.
“Don’t do that ever again,” he orders into my hair. “Don’t scare me like that.”
“I won’t.”
He doesn’t let go. Just holds me there on the deck, both of us wet and cold, but alive.
I can feel his heart thudding against my cheek. There’s a tremor in his hands as they stroke my back.
This man cares about me. Really cares. Maybe he can’t say the words. Maybe he doesn’t know how.
But this? This fear, this desperate relief? This is real.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “For what I said earlier. I had no right.”
“You were trying to understand.”
“I was trying to fix something that can’t be fixed.”
He arches back just enough to look at my face. “Nothing’s broken, Olivia.”
“Really? ‘Cause it seems likeeverything’sbroken.”
“Then we’ll break together.” He cups my jaw, thumb stroking my cheekbone. “But you don’t get to leave me. Not like that. Not ever.”
“I wasn’t?—”
“Yes, you were. You were running. You’ve been doing that for as long as I’ve known you, and probably even longer than that: fleeing from whatever’s in your head that makes you think drowning is better than staying.”
He’s right. God, he’s right.
Iwasrunning. Not consciously, maybe. But that’s what it was.
