now. Be alone. I had changed my mind. I started to say something when my eyes locked on the man standing at my car. I stopped walking.
He was here.
Or I was delusional.
Could be that I had lost my mind.
“Do you know him?” Matthew asked and I nodded. My voice wasn’t working. Words weren’t there. If Matthew saw him too then I hadn’t lost my mind. He was actually there. At my car.
“Are you okay? Need me to have him leave?”
This time I just shook my head no. Still words weren’t working. Nate took a step in my direction and I was unsure what to do. Was he here to tell me something? To see me? To rip open the wounds that were still fresh?
“I can’t . . . I have to . . .” I was trying to tell Matthew I wouldn’t be going to Live Bay. Because after this encounter I would need more bottles of wine and cake while I once again nursed the pain.
“If you don’t want to see that guy I can make him leave,” Matthew said. He sounded as if he believed he could. I knew he couldn’t. Didn’t matter. I wanted to see Nate. Hear his voice. Know that he was okay. Even if wine and a lot of calories followed.
“I need to see him. I won’t be going to Live Bay tonight.” There I had said words. They came out.
Matthew paused then replied. “Okay. Well, I’ll see you Monday.”
Again, I just nodded.
Taking the first step in Nate’s direction my heart squeezed and fluttered. Knowing this wasn’t going to be easy I still wanted to be near him. He looked thinner. There were dark circles under his eyes. But he was still beautiful. The most beautiful man I’d ever seen. I was positive he always would be.
“I should have called first,” he said when I was close enough to him.
“It’s okay. It’s . . . good to see you.”
His eyes shifted to Matthew who was taking his time leaving. “Is he, are y’all dating?”
The pain in his eyes as he asked that told me he didn’t want me to be. That felt good. Knowing he wanted me still. That even after all the bad he still cared. I wasn’t a terrible mistake. I didn’t want to be.
“No. He’s a friend. A coworker.”
Nate’s gaze was back on me. He let out what could only be described as a sigh of relief. “How long have you been at this job? It fits you better than Live Bay did.”
“A few weeks. Maybe a month,” I wasn’t sure. My head was swimming with questions.
“Can we go somewhere? Talk? Or do you have plans?”
Didn’t he realize I’d drop any plans for him? Had I not made myself clear two months ago when we had slept together. I didn’t do that lightly.
“Yes.”
He nodded to his truck. “I’ll drive. Come with me.”
I walked beside him and he opened the passenger door. He was standing so close I could smell his cologne as I walked past him to climb inside. Even after all the pain all I could think about in that moment was burying my head in his neck and inhaling. Feeling his warm body against mine. If just for a moment. I wanted that before he left again.
The door closed once I was inside. He walked around the front of the truck with the same easy cool swagger he always had. Little things like that I had missed. He was here now. I had to soak it all in. His voice, his smell, the way he walked. All of it. Things I hadn’t realized would be gone so soon before.
Nate Finlay
“WHEN YOU MEET a girl that you still love once she’s a woman then you don’t give that up. .” Grandpop’s words replayed over and over in my ears. He was right. I’d fallen in love with the girl and the woman she had become owned me. My happiness was with her. Life without her wasn’t something I ever had to face again. Fuck easy. Life wasn’t easy. Love wasn’t easy. Not the real thing anyway. The real thing hurt like hell and gave you the best moments of your life.
I parked the truck outside the building her condo and my grandpop’s was in. This was where I’d left her. This was where I would now fight for her . . . for us.
“Let’s go to my Grandpop’s. He’s working and we can have privacy.”
“Okay,” she agreed.
We hadn’t spoken in the short ride over here. I was going over all I needed to say in my head. Now I feared what she had been going over in her head. Was she ready to get her closure?
I opened the door to Grandpop’s condo and stood back so she could go inside. She looked nothing like any librarian I had ever seen. The yellow shorts, white sandals with thin sexy heels had to distract every man who came in to check out a book. Or teenagers. She was working in the teen department Larissa had said when I went by Live Bay looking for her.
“You want a drink?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No.”
Me either. “How have you been?”
She frowned. “Okay. What about you?”
“Life has sucked. Dark, ugly and painful. But something did change. That’s why I’m here.” Where to even begin with this.
“What changed?”
She knew I had left because I blamed myself. I made that clear.
“Octavia’s stepmother came to see me. They found something out about Octavia’s death. There were things they didn’t know. A secret no one knew and guilt that was eating Octavia alive. She was seeing a psychiatrist who came to the funeral. Octavia’s father had the power to demand to see the records from her visits and he found the real reason behind Octavia’s suicide.”
Talking about my son was hard. Knowing he never had a chance at life in the beginning hurt. She’d never intended to let him live. I wanted to scream from the unfairness until my chest didn’t ache. The hole it left behind would always be there. It wasn’t going away.
“She was sexually abused as a child. From a family friend. A man she referred to as her uncle. She had him killed once she was an adult and the guilt was eating at her. Even if the man deserved to die from sexually abusing a child. She couldn’t live with the secret.”
Bliss covered her mouth with one hand and tears filled her eyes. “Oh my god,” she breathed. “Oh, Nate. I’m so sorry.”
“She had an abortion scheduled for later that month. She never intended to let our child live. She wasn’t going to tell me about him. She didn’t want him.”
The tears on her face were sincere. She hurt for me. For Octavia and for my son.
“The damage he caused her . . . I lived through a hell of my own but nothing like that. I had support and love while I fought a disease. She had no one. She faced a monster as a child and there was no love and support to stand with her. That’s heartbreaking.”
I hadn’t thought of it that way. Bliss was right. Octavia had been through a private hell alone. Her mental sickness was something that might have been avoided if she’d had love and support around her. But she’d been alone in it all. A detached woman who needed money and success. Who was looking for something to fill her void.
We stood there in silence. I would always regret not knowing Octavia’s pain and being able to help her. Even if I had known I wasn’t sure I could have helped but I would have tried.
Bliss wiped at her tears again.
“I love you,” the words came so easily. Words I should have said already. That I should have said the moment those boxes fell and she was standing there staring at me with those big blue eyes. Because even then deep down I had known the truth.
She took a step toward me. “You do?”
I had been hoping for an “I love you too” but her question and the surprise on her face made me smile anyway.
“Yeah. I always have. The girl you were and the woman you became.”
She let out a sob and then she was there. Against me burying her face in my neck. I hadn’t meant to make her cry like this but I was hoping they were good tears.
“Bliss,” I said touching her hair gently with my hand to comfort her. “That wasn’t supposed to make you cry.”
She let out a laugh then and lifted her tear streaked face. “I’m sorry. It was too much all at once. The sadness then this. I wasn’t expecting this.”
“You weren’t expecting me to tell you I loved you?” I asked wanting to clarify.
She nodded. “Yes. I love you. I love you so much. But I didn’t think . . . I just thought you liked me a lot. But that we were done.”
“Liked you a lot?” I asked grinning.
She pressed her lips together as she tried not to smile. “Yes.”
“It goes well beyond a lot.”
She let out a gentle sigh and closed her eyes. “I feel like I shouldn’t be happy. What you came to tell me is so sad. How can I be happy?”
I understood. But I had mourned. In the end, I couldn’t have changed anything. “I’ll always wonder about my son. He has a piece of my heart now. That will never change. But I want to have a life with joy in it. I want to experience how complicated and hard times feel knowing I’m facing them with you. I want it all, Bliss. As long as I get to spend it with you.”
Again she buried her head in my neck and wrapped her arms around me. “Me too.”
I held her as we stood there in silence. This was our beginning. The other times had been our prologue. But the real story would start now.
Bliss York
THE SUN WAS barely breaking through the blinds when I opened my eyes. Nate was asleep beside me. We had eaten in last night and talked about things. I asked all my questions and he seemed to want to tell me. Then we kissed until our clothes were gone and made love in the bed for hours. It had been slow and sweet. Naughty words hadn’t been needed.
Watching him sleep peacefully with his arm thrown over me was like a dream. One I had a million times and never expected to experience. I reached over and brushed the hair from his eyes. He was mine. After all these years Nate Finlay was mine.
But for how long?
I’d asked him questions last night now wondering had it been to avoid talking to him about me. My past. My illness. I had avoided it because I didn’t want him to see me as the sick girl. If we were going to have a chance at a real relationship I had to talk to him about what all I went through. How it affected my body. Especially now. He’d created a child that he never got to hold. If we stayed together he’d never get to create another one. My body didn’t work properly. I’d lost parts of me in the treatments.
I moved to get up quietly so I wouldn’t disturb him and pulled his discarded shirt on before going to the kitchen for coffee. Nate said he loved me. Everything he did and said last night also said he loved me. He wanted us to work. Keeping it a secret about what all my body went through especially the fact it couldn’t bear children was a lie. I wouldn’t lie to him.
The fear that in the end he’d leave me for someone whose body wasn’t broken was strong but it was a truth I had to face now. Waiting until later was unfair to both of us. I had come to terms with the fact that I would become a mother by adoption and I was good with it. I wanted to give a child a family. I wanted to love it and raise it. And I knew one day I would adopt more than one child.
After I poured a cup of coffee I sat with my feet curled up under me on the sofa and looked out the window. It wasn’t a beach view but the early morning sun danced on the world outside. It was peaceful. Full of promise.
“You left me in bed. Our first morning as a real couple and you left me.”
I turned to see Nate standing there shirtless in a pair of boxer briefs. His hair was still mused from last night and his eyes heavy from sleep. A man should not look that good. It was unfair to the females of the world.
“I didn’t want to disturb you.”
He cocked one eyebrow. “Were you still naked?”
I nodded.
“Then I would have preferred you disturb me. Next time crawl on top of me.”
I laughed into my coffee cup. I wanted this so much. But first he had to know.
“I need to tell you something.”
His teasing smirk faded. “You look serious. That makes me nervous.”
I could drag this out and explain everything but I wanted to say it. Let him process it and figure out if we had a future. One past dating and enjoying each other. One where we grew old together. He may not want to adopt. After losing his son he may need another child with his blood. His smile. A part of him.
“I can’t have children. The chemotherapy ruined that part of me.” There I said it. He would be reminded I was sick. That I hadn’t always looked like this. That I wasn’t completely whole.
“Okay,” he said walking over to me. He sat down beside me and pulled my legs into his lap. “How do you feel about that?”
What? He was asking me how I felt? I’d known this for a long time. He was the one that needed to adjust and decide how he felt about it. I answered his question anyway. “I’m going to adopt when I’m ready to have kids. A child doesn’t have to grow inside me to be mine.”
He nodded. “Agreed. Well it wouldn’t have grown inside me anyway but I agree with you. I wouldn’t love a child any less because they didn’t have my blood in their veins. I like the idea we would give a child a home that needed one. That we would love it and raise it the way our parents did us.”
I was going to cry again. I had cried a lot the past twenty-four hours. “You really mean that?”
“Hell yeah I mean that,” He tugged me closer and I clutched my cup with both hands to keep the little bit of coffee left from spilling. “All I need is you. If I have you I’m happy. Raising a child with you will make me happy. Our baby doesn’t have to come from us to be ours.”
I sat the cup down beside the sofa. Then promptly threw myself into his lap wrapping my arms around his neck and peppered kisses all over his face. “I love you more now and I didn’t think that was possible.”
He chuckled. “Good. I need to get you to love me so damn much you can’t ever let me go.”
“You succeeded.”
He slid a hand under his shirt I was wearing. “How about I show you exactly how much I love you.”
“That’s not love. That’s lust.”
He lowered his head to kiss the inside of my thigh. “No baby this is love. Real motherfucking love. I love your pussy. Trust me.”
I burst into laughter until his mouth pressed just at the top of my thigh. I went silent and held my breath until his tongue trailed to flick over my swollen clit. I liked this form of love too. I was good with him loving several parts of me.
Because right now I really loved his tongue. A lot. A loved it a whole lot.
“Nate,” I panted.
“Hmmm,” he said as he continued between my legs.
“Fuck me, please.” He paused and lifted his head to look up at me.
Then he moved. So quickly that he was inside me in seconds. “Fuck,” he groaned. “I get to come inside you.”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Goddamn this just got better and I didn’t know it could.”
Lifting my legs, he sunk deep inside. This was my fairytale. All little girls have them. They normally have a prince and a castle. Until they grow up, then their fairytale becomes something different. Mine was a silver eyed, dirty mouthed, big hearted, man with a magical penis.
Nate Finlay
DINNER WITH HER parents. She had tried to talk me out of going when her mother had called and invited me. But I wanted to meet them. The people who raised her and the brothers she talked so much about. These people would one day be my family too.
The man that opened the door was about my height with dark hair and Bliss’s blue eyes. He regarded me with a serious expression then held out his hand. “Cage York, glad you could come.”
I shook his hand and I was pretty damn sure he was trying to crush the bones in my hand. This was his warning without Bliss knowing. I wouldn’t tell on him later. I got it. Bliss was his only girl. He’d been by her side while she fought for her life. He was protective. I’d just have to prove to him he could trust me.
“Let them in, Cage,” a woman who looked exactly what I imagine Bliss would look one day said as she came to the door and shoved her husband over. “You didn’t have to meet them at the door. Bliss doesn’t have to knock. This is her home.”
Cage grunted but his scowl stayed in place. Her mother rolled her eyes at him then smiled at us. “We are thrilled y’all are here. Cord and Clay even canceled their plans for this. They wanted to meet you.”
“Yeah, because I wanted to make sure you understood who you’d be dealing with if you hurt my sister,” a tall but lanky version of Cage York came to the door. He was frowning like his father.
“Oh for god’s sake y’all move so we can get inside or I’m taking him and we are leaving.” Bliss said as she took my arm and pulled me inside with her. Then she paused and stood on her tip toes to kiss the lanky boy. “Glad you stayed, Cord. Love you,” she said.
He kept his warning glare on me. “Love you too.”