Lover (Court University 4)

Even still, I didn’t let her go. I wouldn’t. I closed my eyes. “Why?”

Was I not enough? Was all this too much? Our relationship too unconventional for her? I really hadn’t considered the age thing that big of a deal, but she always had and suddenly insecurities ran as rampant as my theories. I’d always considered myself a pretty secure guy.

But in her silence…

It radiated through the room.

Her sob accompanied it.

She physically broke down, tears gunning down her cheeks. It threw me for such a loop.

“What’s going on? Why don’t you want to have kids with me? Are we not…” My throat constricted. “Is this not working for you? Us?”

My worst fear, but that shouldn’t have her like this. Crying.

Her body shaking, she gripped her arms. “I don’t want to have kids with anyone.” She gasped, faced drenched. “I can’t. I can’t go through that again.”

What?

“It hurts too much.” She blinked tears down to my arms. “It destroyed me the first time.”

Whoa.

The unease of before transformed into something different, and when she keeled forward, body racked with emotion, I turned her around.

I buried her into me, swaying with her.

“Talk to me.” This wasn’t a request, not this time.

It was a goddamn need.

She needed to talk to someone for once, to get things off her chest and not bottle this shit up. She needed to vent, and I wanted her to do that with me. I wanted her to trust me.

I wanted her to let me in.

Bending, I scooped her up, bringing her with me onto the bed. I sat with her in my lap for a long time, as long as we needed to work this shit out.

She sobbed into my chest so long it felt like it’d been hours, hell days.

“There was an accident,” she whispered, face wet, cheeks red. “I told you my ex-husband was an athlete.”

I didn’t move, not a goddamn inch, and I wouldn’t. Couldn’t risk it.

Come on, Jersey girl.

I needed her to keep talking, didn’t want to move so I didn’t.

She winced. “He was pretty popular. Even being retired. Still had a following and fans. They even still followed him everywhere. Us everywhere.”

Fire shook my limbs, no world in which I wanted to envision her with someone else, period. Let alone the man who’d struck her. She hadn’t gone into details, but she had said he’d placed hands on her.

“There were always paparazzi,” she continued. “Always noise. Always chaos. That was that life.”

Haunted again, her voice completely hollow.

In her silence, I curled a hand over her shoulder. “What happened, Jersey girl?”

I felt the words before she said them, physically felt them in her quivering limbs. I drew her chin up, and she looked at me.