Wild Kisses (Wildwood 2)

Pulling back, he broke the kiss and searched her eyes with a serious expression. Thoughts were churning in his head; Avery could see them getting batted back and forth in his eyes.

She lifted her free hand to his face. “What?”

“I just . . .” He gave a little shake of his head, then murmured in a voice that seemed more for himself than for Avery, “How in the hell did he let you go?”

Her stomach floated to her throat, and her chest squeezed. Yeah, she was in deep shit with this man. She really needed to check her emotions.

“We were young.” She shrugged. “Stupid. He was fulfilling his family duty to continue the military lines of his father, grandfather, great-grandfather. I was running away from turmoil and loneliness. We weren’t exactly thinking straight.”

He eased his lower body onto hers, twining their legs. “And then?”

“And then?” she repeated, her mind lost in ways to get him out of his jeans.

“You ran away, he joined the military . . . and then . . . ?”

She laughed. “Sounds like we ran away and joined the circus, which I guess would be an accurate description of our life a lot of the time—jumping through hoops, pretending I was someone I wasn’t, feeling like every day was high-wire act, with me waiting for that inevitable day someone showed up at my door to tell me my husband died performing unfathomable acts of folly . . . or, in his case, heroism.”

Her stomach clenched at the thought, far more of a conditioned response than a current emotion. She shook off those old fears. They didn’t belong to her anymore. They belonged to his fiancée now. And, in all honesty, Avery had a steadfast better-her-than-me attitude about David’s marriage. The failure of their own still ate at her. His betrayal still stung. But she didn’t want that life back. And she didn’t want David back either.

“He was deployed to Syria for his first tour and came back a very different man. We worked at reconnecting, went to counseling, but . . . Like I said, we were young. He didn’t understand my life; I didn’t understand his. He sucked at talking about it; I sucked at asking the right questions, giving him space, understanding his moods. And when we couldn’t bridge the gap, he started taking longer tours, which pushed a deeper wedge between us. He’d come home for a month or two even more distant, more complicated. We’d grow that much further apart. It was a lousy downward spiral.”

Trace pulled a pillow under her head, pressed a hand to her chest, and rested his chin there. “Why didn’t you leave sooner?”

“Because we were married,” she said with a what-kind-of-question-is-that laugh. “I didn’t get married just to hang around for the good stuff. I was in it until death did we part. I went into it committed five hundred percent.” She shrugged. “But you can’t force someone to love you enough to stay and fight.”

“You stayed and fought for eight years?”

“Eight very long, very painful, very lonely years.”

“I’m sorry.” His thumb skimmed her cheek, his gaze distant. “I can understand why you’re not interested in commitment.”

“What about you?” she asked. “Delaney said you were engaged once.”

His lips kicked up on one side, but the smile wasn’t humorous or even sweetly melancholy. It was jaded. Very jaded. “Yeah, well, my fiancée was about as committed as your husband. The second a whiff of trouble came my way, she bailed.”

Avery offered a sympathetic hum. She and Trace were kindred spi

rits in a lot of hidden ways. “Because of prison?”

“Well before that fully played out. She didn’t wait to hear whether or not I received a prison sentence.” His lips tightened and his brow pulled, creating a V of wrinkles between his beautiful, bright eyes. “About prison . . .” His gaze lifted to hers. “Is there anything you want to ask me?”

“That’s sort of a strange question.” Concern pulled at her lingering euphoria, and she pushed a hand through his hair and scratched the back of his neck the way he liked.

“You’ve never asked, and everyone’s curious. Most more in a morbid way than a hey-what-was-that-like way. Sort of like they’re looking for that shadow it left on my soul.” His gaze held hers pointedly. “Do you wonder?”

“I know we didn’t meet that long ago, and our pasts have been very different, but in a lot of ways I know you better now than I ever knew David. I feel like we understand each other. Like we’re on the same page. So, no, I don’t wonder.”

The lines around his mouth and etched into his forehead faded, and he seemed to breathe easier. And the look in his eyes . . . It made it hard to breathe. A soft, deeply affectionate, foundation-altering look she’d once seen in David’s eyes so very long ago, back when he’d still loved her.

“You’re so”—he shook his head—“so, I don’t know, wise or something. So mature for your age. Every twenty-five-year-old woman I know is worried about her nail polish and wants to talk about shopping.”

Avery laughed, long and hard. “You make it sound downright revolting. Those are important things to most normal twenty-five-year-old women. I’m not normal. I had to grow up fast when my mom left and my dad got lost in a bottle. Then Delaney took the low road out of town. And getting married sure didn’t solve anything. I ended up taking care of everything while David was gone—the bills, the house.” She sighed. “I think I skipped from sixteen to thirty.”

She threaded both hands into his hair and smiled. “Why are we talking about this crap when I could show you what I learned on the Internet?” She lifted her feet to his hips and tried to push his jeans down. “But you have to get out of these first.”

“Internet?” he asked with a laugh. “Were you surfing porn when you should have been making truffles?”

“I wasn’t surfing porn.” Her tone came out appropriately chastising. “It was soft porn. And it was for educational purposes.”