I missed him so badly over the years that no words could quite describe it.
“More, we need more. I need more.”
“Me too.”
* * *
We have more and more until we get drunk on each other. We move from the cave to our suite and continue the indulgence after we eat and he eats dessert off me. Then I become dessert.
Time freezes, it must do, because I no longer care for what’s happening outside the walls of The Dark Odyssey.
I fall asleep at some point but can’t remember when it was. I remember it was dark and now it’s bright outside.
I’m in Paul’s arms just like I have been nearly every morning this week, and waking up seeing him warms my heart.
Today, though, feels different. Something inside me has softened, loosened up so I’m not so wound up over the past.
I know what the something is because I felt it before. It’s the beginning of falling for him.
It’s the start.
It’s something I can’t control, so I won’t feel guilty that this is just day five of our thirty days and I’m already melting in his arms.
That’s the effect of this man. He can make you fall for him effortlessly no matter what.
I look at him, scanning his face. Long lashes too long for a man adorn his eyes, the deep ridge of his brows provides the perfect masculine contrast along with the angles and planes that sculpt his face.
Watching like this is almost easier than watching him while he’s awake. Like this, I’m free to look at him and feel the way I do but also put things into perspective.
The past keeps coming back to haunt me, not because of losing our baby. That was a different pain on its own. What haunts me is that I never believed what he was saying to me when he said it. I never believed he would break up with me because of his career, let alone anything else. I never believed anything could break us. So, what did?
Why did he do it?
He didn’t break up with me to screw around. I only told myself that so I could hate him. Deep down, I knew it wasn’t that, and I know he would have found it just as hard when he was with anybody else. I don’t think I’m wrong, or we wouldn’t be here like this. We wouldn’t want each other worse than we did before.
Even though we’re here like this and I see that he’s trying hard, I know his excuse was a lie, and it doesn’t sit well with me.
I don’t believe that he was just a fool. Something doesn’t add up, and I want to know the truth. Maybe because I want the reason I went through so much to matter.
Every time I get like this, I scan the events of the past in my mind. That period was so testy. His father had died months before, and no one ever talked about it.
He’d just said his father died, and that was it. I asked him if he was okay, and he simply responded that it was best not to talk about it. That was literally it. I knew that as bad as his father had treated him when he was growing up, and whatever hell he and Elaine must have gone through, he couldn’t have been as cold as what he appeared to me.
But if I’m honest, that was the start of his weirdness.
Then, three months later when he came back on leave, we broke up. If he’d said something along the lines of being upset about his father, I might have understood it more even if that made no sense. What made even less sense was what he did say.
He stirs, and as I watch his eyes open and the sunlight bounce off the vibrant blue, I melt all over again.
His lips arch, and his face brightens as he looks at me.
“Wow, this is what good mornings are made of,” he breathes and lowers his head to kiss me.
I smile against his lips and loop my fingers through his dog tags while I kiss him back.
When we stop, he brushes his nose along mine, and I look deep into his eyes.
I want to know the truth, but now’s not the time.
I know him. The same way he knows me. He’s not an open book. If he wants to tell you how he feels, it’s going to be when he’s ready to do it, no other time, and if I’m right, and I suspect I am, I’ll have to wait.
I will ask though, when our time is up. Not before. I don’t want to spoil this.
I’ll ask then, and maybe I can tell him my secret too.
If we do this and move forward with any hope for the future, then I want the slate clean. No secrets. I think it can only be clean if we share—and if I’m already thinking like this on day five, then maybe, just maybe, there’s hope that this will work out.
I want it to.