There was nothing to say, no words that were going to help. He could only sit with her. Share her pain as best he could.
He’d known his own kind of grief. Sometimes being with another while the onslaught raged was just better than being alone.
Time passed; he wasn’t counting it.
The neighborhood around them was quiet, unaware of the storm inside their cocoon of darkness. At one point as she sniffled, he leaned over enough to grab some napkins out of the glove box, handed them to her and then wrapped his arm right back around her. Shielding her from the outside world just long enough for her to purge some of the pain trapped inside her.
And feeling some of that pain. At first, when his throat tightened, he didn’t get what was happening. But as his gaze on the street outside started to glisten, he recognized the sorrow gathering up inside him. Not for him. Not for Emily or their losses. But for Chris.
All for her.
“I’m so sorry.” She didn’t pull away as her sobs eased. Just lay against him for the moment. He wanted to be her support for as long as she needed him.
“Don’t be. Please, don’t ever look back on this moment with remorse,” he told her softly.
She turned her head to look up at him, her eyes raised in question, and he lifted his thumb to the tears on her cheeks, wiping them away as though he could somehow take away the pain that had caused them.
He couldn’t return her to thirteen years in the past. Couldn’t reverse choices or return her son to her.
She continued to hold his gaze, letting him see the woman behind the mask, while he gently brushed her skin. She was so ungodly beautiful he ached with it.
Drawing his thumb down the trail of her tears, he ended up at the corner of her mouth. Gently moving from her mouth, over an inch and down, to return and repeat the gesture.
There was no motive anymore. No forethought. Just a need to be there, connected to her. Her lips opened when he brought his thumb back to them, only inches away from his own, and he lowered his head.
The kiss was instinctive. A way to bring them closer still, to join their pain, their lives. He didn’t ask what he was doing, he just did it. And when her lips opened farther, moving against his, he deepened the touch, opening his mouth fully, finding her tongue with his, melding them. He wasn’t going anywhere with any of it. Just living in the moment that was there.
Doing what felt natural. Right.
His arms pulled her closer, cradled her neck, as he broke contact only to deepen it more, to kiss her in a way he didn’t know, didn’t recognize. Fire burned through him, need so hot it erupted, obliterating any thought he might have had. He had to take them further, go with her into an unknown. His erection straining against his pants, he moved, straining toward her pelvis, her hip. He didn’t know until she pressed forward, joining their intimate parts through their clothes, how badly he’d needed his penis to find welcome against her.
“No!” With an emotion-filled cry, she pulled away from him. Her eyes glinted with tears in the streetlight as she wiped her mouth. “No,” she said, more calmly.
>
Christine had just entered the vehicle. He didn’t have to ask or wonder—he knew.
And instantly respected her right to be there.
Feeling blindsided, like a deer in headlights, he tried to make sense of what had just happened. When what he’d just been denied had him in such a stronghold he could barely form coherent thought.
“This is wrong.”
He didn’t deny the point. Couldn’t. He had no frame of reference for what he’d just experienced. It didn’t feel wrong. But it made no sense, and in his world if it didn’t make sense, there was something wrong.
But...
“Caring about someone isn’t wrong,” he said. “Chris” almost slipped out of his mouth. He refused “Christine.” “Being present when someone is hurting is one of the purest forms of expressing humanity.”
Where in hell were the words coming from? Certainly no math equation.
Her nod was the first thing that had made any sense to him since he’d been brushing a tear off a cheek.
“The kiss,” she said. “It’s wrong and it can’t happen again. If you even try, I’ll have to enforce the clause in our contract that states that I can, with cause, refuse to see you, which would deny you access to your son until his birth.”
He heard the words, saw her hand reach for the door.
“It won’t happen again.” He wasn’t going to lose her. Or these months with his son.