When she finished closing it, she turned to face me and stopped, wide-eyed, when she found me grabbing my keys off the island. “You’re still leaving,” she said, fear and hurt wrapping around the words even as she tried to sound unaffected.
I gestured to the ceiling. “We keep the guest rooms locked.”
“Right,” she said with a relieving breath, but disappointment clouded her expression.
“Unless . . .”
“No.” The word burst from her, her golden eyes going wide and darting away, looking anywhere but at me as a blush crept up her neck. “No, of course not.”
“Of course not,” I murmured, then nodded at her. “I’ll get everything taken care of down here. You should go on up.”
Her head bobbed quickly, her lips shaping into a forced smile as she turned to go.
I waited until I heard her climbing the steps before going through the downstairs, closing all the blinds and turning off the lights, and then headed up after her. Feeling like I’d slammed into a wall when I automatically turned the way that led toward our side of the house and remembered that wasn’t where I’d be sleeping. Rocking back, I headed toward the guest side of the house and found one of the rooms already open. And on one of the chairs, some of my clothes.
And everything about it shredded me.
It was more painful than being kicked out of the house because this was us pretending for everyone else that we were okay. This was handing me hope that things could change, that I could fix this, and then being slammed with the harsh reality that I was still losing my wife.
“Tell me there’s no one else. That there’s never been anyone else.” Her voice was a whispered plea, twisted with every pain we’d been surrounded in these weeks.
I looked over my shoulder to see her in the doorway, trying to stand so tall and looking like she was on the verge of shattering.
Turning to face her fully, I swallowed past the knot in my throat as I studied the woman I’d loved for so long. “Never,” I vowed. “From the day you fell into my life, it has only been you.”
A soggy laugh tumbled past her lips. “Tell me I’m not stupid for believing you.”
I pressed a hand to my ruined chest and then gestured to her, wishing more than anything I could give her what she was asking. “I can’t. That’s something you need to decide for yourself when you’re ready. But know that I can’t handle the guilt of lying to you, of keeping something from you. And the times I have, it’s almost destroyed us. You’ll know if I am.”
She nodded shakily and took a step into the room. “Tell me you won’t hurt me again.”
The plea was so raw and vulnerable that it nearly brought me to my knees. “Savannah, the last thing I’ve ever wanted to do was hurt you.”
“Tell me.”
“I . . .” A defeated breath ripped from my lungs. “I can’t promise that. But I will do whatever I can to spare you any kind of pain.” I took a step of my own toward her, my voice rough and low as I went on. “I know what I’ve promised you in the past, but if someone’s hitting me, I can’t promise I won’t hit them back. If y’all are in danger, I can’t promise I won’t do whatever I have to to keep y’all safe. But I can assure you, I am absolutely in control. You and our kids are everything to me, I wouldn’t do something to jeopardize that.”
The hushed sound that left her was all understanding and acceptance mixed with the remnants of her sorrow. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
Her head bounced softly before quickly shaking. “Why are you still over there?”
I was across the room and pulling her into my arms in the time it took my wrecked heart to thump out a pained beat. Crushing my mouth to hers in a searing kiss that I felt in my soul.
It was sorrow and pain. Claims and vows and forgiveness.
I knew a kiss would never mean as much.
Lifting Savannah into my arms, I pressed her against the wall and savored the whimper that crept up her throat. The way she arched against me and wrapped her legs around my back in moves that were so familiar but still had such a profound effect on me.
“Fuck, Savannah,” I ground out as I moved my mouth to her jaw. Gripping her hips tight in my hands.
Needing to feel her.
Taste her.
Know this was real when, just minutes before, I’d been shattering under the excruciating knowledge that I’d ruined my marriage. Betrayed the girl who had always been my everything in irredeemable ways.
I dragged my teeth across the sensitive skin beneath her ear. “Every last breath.”
She trembled against me, weaving her fingers through my hair to lift my face back to hers. “I love you too.”
Our next kiss was fire.
All demanding lips and punishing bites as we tried to heal hurts. As we tried to form the shattered pieces of us back together.
“Need you,” I breathed against her lips.
An echo of her pain bled free, her head nodding quickly as she attacked the kiss with renewed fierceness between her claim. “I’ve always needed you.”
Sliding one of my hands up her back, I pulled her away from the wall, keeping her in my arms as I left the room. Moving with quick and confident steps across the house to where we needed to be.
In a space that was solely our own—not somewhere I’d been about to spend my nights without her.
And then I was laying her on our bed and curling my fingers around hers. Slowly removing her hands from where they’d been secured in my hair to pin them to the bed and nipping at her bottom lip as I leaned back. Staring down into golden eyes, all wild with need but looking at me in a way that ripped at my chest.
Like she was afraid I might disappear.
Like she’d been suffering under our separation as badly as I had.
“Together,” I said, the word nothing more than a rasp as I grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled it off, letting it fall to the floor. “That’s how we’re making it through this, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she agreed, her tongue darting out to wet her lips as she reached up, letting the tips of her fingers trail over my chest and down my stomach before reaching for the button on my jeans.
Everything about her touch so different from just minutes before. Slower, softer . . . easy. But that wild look in her eyes was closing in on frantic as she lifted up to capture my mouth while pushing my jeans and boxer briefs down.
Sitting back, I slowly dragged my fingers up her body, taking my shirt she’d been wearing higher and higher and following the path with faint kisses along her bare skin. Teasing her breasts and savoring every whispered moan and the way she began moving beneath me—little shifts that said exactly what I was doing to her.
Once the shirt was joining mine on the floor, I leaned over her, letting my lips hover above hers. Every breath causing them to brush and making me ache to close that distance.
To bury myself in her.
To make her mine all over again.
But the parts of me that had always been tied to Savannah knew I had to let her take this at her own speed.
“I need you.” She forcibly swallowed. “I need to feel you—I need this,” she begged, voice slightly desperate as she pushed my pants farther down when her body was asking for something else.