I hoped Ashleigh would find someone else to love while I was away, I really did.
But no, I didn’t.
Hell, I didn’t know what I wanted. I was still frantically lying to myself.
Chapter Nineteen: No Boundaries
The knock came on a stormy, rainy Monday. It was twelve noon on the dot and that’s how I knew, after three weeks of waiting, that Liam Wilder was at my door.
I was still in my pajamas, reading in bed like I always did on rainy days. I put down my book and sat up very straight. Three weeks, and I’d suffered through every fucking day of it, exchanging anxious texts with Mem and fending off Rubio’s probing questions about “Liam’s deal.” I knew Liam had been traveling, but I hadn’t known he was back.
He knocked again and I vaulted out of bed and threw the door open. He looked the same, towering and sexy and handsome, but also different. More vulnerable beneath his good looks. He was in jeans and a white button-down top that lent him an aspect of purity. There were dark circles under his eyes.
“Hi, Liam,” I said. There were a million other things I wanted to say—I’ve missed you. How are you? Will you fall in love with me, please?—but he already looked on the verge of fleeing. “Do you want to come in?” I asked instead.
“Yeah,” he said, letting out a breath. He moved past me into my place, the same way he had the first time he came here. “Are you busy? Do you have a minute?”
“I’ve missed you,” I blurted out. I closed the door and leaned back against it, as if I had the power to stop him if he wanted to go. “Great sense of symmetry you have.” I glanced at the clock. “It’s noon on Monday.”
“I’m here for a session,” he said with a tight smile. “No, not really. I just got back in town this morning. I’ve been in Holland.”
“I know.”
“We’re opening an office there.”
“I know. Mem told me.”
He paced the length of my apartment and back, like a wild, trapped thing. He turned toward the bed and then away from it, running his fingers through his hair. He turned back to look at it again. “That looks nice. Pretty. I never saw it here once it was set up. I never came over here. I was too…afraid.” He shook his head and spread his arms. “I told you I might hurt you. Right from the start, I warned you.”
“Ruby did too,” I murmured. “I thought you were worth the risk.”
His eyes shot up at that word. Risk. I’d struck a nerve—and he was all nerves. I frowned and crossed to him. “You’re making all of this too complicated, Liam. You really are.”
He retreated, moving behind my bed. He was so tall he could lean his head against the branches. “I know I’m making it too complicated,” he said. “I know I had no right to be angry at you for looking into my past. I shouldn’t have said the things I said. I came here to apologize.”
I watched him, trying to read his expression. Was it going to be a goodbye apology, or was he going to let me love him despite the fear and guilt he carried around? I knew he loved me. I knew it when I opened the door. I could see it now in his tense shoulders and his tortured gaze.
“So, I’m sorry,” he said, gripping the branches like the bars of a cage. “I’m sorry for everything I did. It had nothing to do with you and everything to do with my own issues. And I realize now…”
He stopped and took a deep breath. “You realize now…?” I prompted when he didn’t speak.
“I realize now that I need you, and I want you, but…”
I felt soaring hope, and joy, but there was a but. “But what?”
“I can’t promise…”
Oh God, he was killing me. “You can’t promise what?” I asked, climbing onto the bed and walking over to him so we were face-to-face.
“I can’t promise anything.” His eyes went very wide. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I can’t promise jacked-up shit isn’t going to happen, or that we’ll be happy every day of our lives. I can’t promise everything will be okay.”
I took his face in my hands. “I don’t care.”
“You should care,” he said sharply. “I’m scared as hell. But Mem has all his sayings, you know. And he’s always said to me that love solves everything. He’s said it for years now, but I never believed it.”
“I believe it. You proved it to me before I even knew you were doing it, before I could admit I was falling in love with you. But I’m in love with you now and there’s nothing I can do about it. That’s the way it is and the way it’s going to stay.”
I could hear his palms squeaking over the metal as he gripped the branches harder. If he wasn’t careful he was going to yank one right off. “But are you in love with the old me?” he asked. “The one who put on the act, who pretended he had his shit together?”
I stroked his cheeks, stifling a smile. “You’ve never had your shit together. You never fooled me. Well, not for very long.”
He let go of the bed and grabbed my hands. “But what—what if I can’t get it together?”
“You need to let go of these fears,” I said, leaning my head to his. “You’re so strong and patient. So caring. If anyone deserves to be loved, it’s you. So now…” I brushed my lips across his in a whisper. “Now it’s your turn to be brave.”
*** *** ***
I let out a long, slow breath, right against her mouth. I wanted to disappear inside her where I could be sheltered and safe. I wanted to let go of my fears but they’d dogged me for so long. They felt comfortable and normal. They mitigated all risk.
“Ashleigh…” I shied away from her. I felt like I was standing on some precipice or some threshold I was afraid to step through, but she was on the other side and I needed her. She held me as I fought with myself, held me with complete trust…and no fear.
I’m all up inside your boundaries now, aren’t I?
Yes, Ashleigh. You really are.
Her arms tightened around me as she pressed her cheek to mine. I breathed in the scent of her blackberry hair and felt the pulse beat strong and steady at the base of her neck. And somehow, as I listened to her breathe and thought about our time together, and how much she’d changed when she was brave enough to try, I realized that maybe I could change too. That maybe I had to change to survive. Hope bled into me and some dormant part of me shuddered to life, some deadened, hardened thing that I supposed was my capacity to love. I was terrified to love this woman but it didn’t matter.
I already loved her.
It was already done and accomplished, tied up in a neat bow just like her toe shoes. Denying it, evading it didn’t make it any less true.
She kissed me, so, so tenderly, her lips feathering across mine, and then she kissed me harder, urging me to respond. I cupped her face and pressed my mouth to hers, drinking in the sweet, remembered scent of her. After holding her away from me so long I was ravenous to get closer. I pushed her back onto the mattress, stroking fingers over her soft, silky pajamas, over familiar curves and planes. I let go of control and fear and something else swept in to take their place. Surrender. Capitulation.
Peace.
My arms locked around her waist and we kissed with the intensity of lovers parted for a hundred years. A thousand years. It seemed like an eternity that I’d denied what I felt for this woman. “Are you sure?” I asked, pushing back her hair. “Are you sure you want me?”
“I want you like crazy.” She leaned to me, nibbled at my lip and then bit it hard. “Just love me, okay?”
Oh, I could love her. I had to love her, because not loving her had almost destroyed me. I couldn’t get enough of her now and I think she felt the same way, since she was wrestling to hold onto me. I slid my fingers under her waistband while her hands scrabbled at my shirt buttons. We undressed each other in a frenzied tangle of limbs and clothes, but then I felt her tense and I forced myself to slow down. I didn’t want to scare her, not in this moment. I gentled my movements and stroked her face. “I’m sorry for hurting you, baby. For pushing you away. I’m sorry. I
was afraid. I was…” My throat closed up. The words were a little hard to say. “I was dead inside.”
“No more apologies,” she said, pressing her fingers against my lips. “I just want to be with you. I need you. We need each other.”
I caught her hands in mine and trapped them over her head. “Open for me,” I coaxed in a low voice. “Show me.” I pressed her thighs apart with my knees and reached down to guide my cock into her tight wetness. “I love you,” I said as I moved into her. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
She kissed me while I babbled out all the pent up words in my heart, and then we set about making love without any walls between us. No boundaries. Half the time I held her down and half the time I let her go only for the joy of pinning her down again. Every place she touched me hummed with pleasure, with completion. The bond between us had never been severed, only twisted and stretched until both of us were doubled over in pain.
No more pain, though, not for either of us. I whispered promises to her as we moved together. To love, to trust. To never be away from her again. When I felt her go wild beneath me, gasping in her release, I gathered her in my arms and emptied myself inside her. Not just my billowing, clenching orgasm, but the fears and memories that haunted me. Over time, we could make new memories to replace the bad ones.
As long as she forgave me for being such an asshole to her. I was pretty sure she would. She was kissing me again.
*** *** ***