If Forever Comes (28 page)

She vacillated, shifting, so obviously drawn
to the door and drawn to this place where she hid, where she hid
behind lies and pretended she didn’t have to face what we’d gone
through. Her unsteady gaze met with the intensity of
mine.

“Go,” I said.

The brown of her eyes flamed and dimmed, a
roil of confusion, harboring a disturbance unlike anything I’d ever
witnessed, a disturbance as severe as the one boiling inside of
me.

Anger and regret.

Revulsion.

Pain, prominent and suffocating.

Underneath it all was the love that would ever
let us go.

She dropped her gaze and shuffled around me,
quietly slipping out the door.

I stared at Logan who was trying to pick
himself up off the floor, my entire body rocking with hatred. Blood
dripped from my nose. Harshly, I wiped it with the back of my
hand.

“Stay away from her. Do you understand me?
This is
my
family. Did you see that ring on her finger? Do
you think this is a game? That woman belongs to me. She always has
and she always will. Don’t think for a second you can take her from
me. She will love me until the day she dies.”

I’d told a million lies in my
lifetime.

That statement was one I knew as the
truth.

“Fuck you,” he sneered, roughing the heel of
his hand across his bleeding face.

Derisive laughter flooded from me. I backed
up, lifting an accusatory finger at him as he straightened. “I’m
not joking. Stay away from her. You don’t know her…not for a
second…don’t pretend like you do.”

Then I turned and ran out the door I’d
barreled through not five minutes before.

Maybe I’d fucked up and maybe there’d be
consequences to pay, my actions lawless as I’d lost myself in my
rage. But that mattered none. I’d made a promise to fight for her,
and I’d pay whatever cost.

She was worth everything.

Night had completely taken hold, the darkness
thick, a blanket of clouds squatting heavily over the city. My
silver Audi sat at the curb. The tinted windows concealed Elizabeth
waiting inside.

I fought against the anger still burning
through my blood, fought against the image of the two of them on
his couch. I was sure I’d never be able to purge it from my mind.
It blinded me. Scrubbing my palm over my face, I opened the door.
The overhead light glowed to life, illuminating Elizabeth in the
passenger seat. With her head downcast, she twisted her fingers in
knots on her lap.

I sat down, started my car, and put it in
drive. Tension stretched between us, the tightest band, something
explosive threatening to snap. Anger and fury and unanswered
questions bounced between us as I seethed in the
silence.

I glanced at her, my lip curling as I swiped
the residual of blood from my lip. She didn’t look at me. She just
slowly rocked and cried, silent tears gleaming in the street lights
that flashed through the windows.

God, I loved her so much. I wanted to hold
her, tell her it was going to be okay in the same second I wanted
to lash out at her.

It took me all of thirty seconds to get back
to her house.

I pulled into the drive and cut the engine. It
ticked and hummed. We just sat there, me looking ahead, Elizabeth
staring at her hands. The air was so thick, and I could almost hear
the heavy thud of her heart. Nausea swirled in my raw
stomach.

How would we ever get past this?

With her head down, Elizabeth fumbled blindly
with the handle, a sob escaping her as she clambered from my
car.

Climbing out, I trailed her up the walkway
toward the front door. In the stagnant silence that twisted us
tight, there was no room to breathe.

The air was thick, heavy, dense as I hovered
right behind her while she fumbled to produce her keys. She
trembled as she slid it into the lock and let us into the house
that was supposed to be our home.

The door swung open.

She stepped inside, stopping in the entry with
her back to me.

Quietly I latched the door behind us, and I
edged forward, my chest an inch from her back. A single light
burned from deep within the kitchen. It cast a faint glow into the
dim-lit room. The walls enclosed around us, a stir of anger and a
rush of need. I could smell her, her hair brushing against me as
she inhaled, her body palpitating with the ragged
breath.

“Did you fuck him?” The words dropped from me
in a slow accusation. It was laced with all the hurt of finding the
two of them together.

I sensed every one of her muscles tighten, the
slow sway of her body as she shook her head.

“No.”

It was a whisper, enough to weaken my knees
with the rush of relief, still stoked the fury for what she had
given into.

My fingers weaved through her hair, and I
barely tugged her back, her jaw lifting as I brought my mouth to
her ear. “Is that what you want, Elizabeth? Someone else to touch
you?”

A tortured whimper escaped her throat.
“No.”

Slowly I turned her around and pushed her up
against the wall beside the door. Her back hit it with a thud. A
whine rose from deep within her, escaped as agony into the room,
something akin to the torture eating me alive. Brown eyes flashed
to mine, and she lifted her chin, rigid, this broken girl who
looked at me with bitterness and need.

I fluttered my fingertips down the slope of
her neck. Every ounce of the pain she’d caused me squeezed into the
words that I forced from my mouth.

“Tell me you don’t love me
anymore.”

She clenched her jaw.

I erased all the space separating us,
flattening myself to her as she shrank against the wall. Still she
said nothing.

I curved my fingers around her neck, my thumb
pressing under her jaw as I forced her to look at me. “Tell me you
don’t love me anymore, Elizabeth.”

A strangled sob broke loose from her, bounced
around the strained tension of the tiny room.

I gripped her face between my hands. My mouth
descended on hers. Her lips were chapped, pouty and full, all wrong
and perfectly right. And I wanted to erase it, expunge the asshole
from her lips, delete the past.

Elizabeth kissed me desperately as she clawed
at my neck, fingers sinking deep, cutting me more as she struggled
to bring me closer.

More fucking pain.

“Tell me…tell me you don’t love
me.”

Her hands fisted in my shirt, and she hit me,
pounded my chest. “I hate you,” she whispered hard, tortured, her
fingers curling into the skin at my jaw.

She kissed me harder as she locked her fingers
in my hair.

We lit. A frenzy took us over as we gripped
and clutched, as she bit and hit and begged.

The anger we’d left unresolved the day I’d
walked out pulsed between us, a force that neither of us could
stop.

My kiss was demanding, urgent as I consumed
her. Hers, desperate.

I ripped her shirt over her head. “Tell me to
stop,” I pleaded. My body strained, clashed with the fury of what
she’d done, the pain she’d caused, collided with the grief that
devoured Elizabeth.

Another sob.

My arm wound around her waist, and I dropped
us to our knees and laid her on the floor. Her chest heaved as
tears streamed.

She tore at my skin, claimed it again. “I hate
you.”

I caged her, raked my nose up her jaw and to
her ear. “Tell me you don’t love me.” It came harsh, acute and
severe.

She slapped me across the face, before her
fingers locked on the back of my neck, pulling me back to her. She
forced her mouth against mine, and I lost it, kissed her and kissed
her, tore at her clothes, desperate to feel her against me. I
needed her. Oh my God, I needed her. And yet she’d hurt me, cut me
so deep, I didn’t know how to see, had no clue how to make sense of
any of this except I refused to let her go.

My pleas changed as I ripped the panties from
her body and fumbled with the button on my jeans. “Tell me to stop,
Elizabeth. Tell me to stop," I ordered as I shed my
clothes.

“Don’t you dare stop.” She raked her nails
down my back, drawing blood, her body begging for mine. “Don’t ever
stop.”

I slammed into her.

I cried out in pleasured relief.

And I fucked her. I fucked her and fucked her,
because I was angry. Angry she’d let that bastard kiss her. Angry
that I had let her slip away. Angry that Lillie had been stolen
from us. Angry that I hadn’t been strong enough to hold her
together when she’d fallen apart.

And she was crying, crying as I claimed her.
Marked her. Took back what was mine. I felt her convulse around me,
her body gripping my cock as she came. Still, she cried, she cried
and raged and pounded out all of her pain against my
chest.

Her name crashed from my mouth as I poured
into her. It was agony. It was ecstasy. I collapsed on her, my
chest to hers.

Elizabeth went limp below me, but she was
clinging, weeping against my skin. “Why didn’t you love her?”
Fingertips bored deep, cutting into my spirit. “Why didn’t you love
her?” she asked on a muted sob.

I held my weight on my forearms as I sank my
nose in the warmth of her neck. I ran my fingers through her hair,
kissed her jaw, whispered at her ear. “I loved her, Elizabeth…so
much…I loved her so much.” It was low, ragged, a promise for the
one who would forever live in our hearts.

A little girl who had touched our
lives.

A little girl who had torn it
apart.

A trauma we could not sustain.

And she wept. Elizabeth wept, and I just held
her.

Finally I got to my knees, gathered this
broken woman in my arms, and climbed to my feet. Elizabeth wrapped
her arms around my neck. I hugged her to me, kissed her forehead as
I carried her upstairs.

“I love you, Christian.” I felt her words more
than heard them.

“I know,” I whispered tenderly at her skin,
all of mine held in the simple acceptance of what she had
said.

With my foot, I nudged the bedroom door open.
Crossing the room, I gently settled her in the middle of the bed.
Elizabeth looked up at me with all the torment she had been
unwilling to show, her eyes open wide, the darkness in the depths
revealing how deep her pain really went.

My movements were measured as I climbed down
beside her. I tugged her twisted sheets over us as I turned to my
side and pulled her into my arms.

There was no resistance. Her arms were crossed
between us as I held her whole, my hand at the back of her head
while she cried out months of misery into my chest.

I held her, supported her the way I should
have, even when she’d pushed me away.

“I’m so sorry,” I finally managed to murmur. I
ran my fingers through the length of her hair. “I’m so sorry for
everything. For everything.”

She curled her hand into the skin at my chest,
fingers anchoring deep. “Don’t leave me.”

Exhaling, I somehow managed to pull her a
little closer. I would never let her go.

“Never, Elizabeth. I wasn’t going anywhere. I
was just waiting for you to come back to me.”

In all of this, that had been my greatest
mistake, my biggest failure. Leaving her alone when she needed me
most.

Another sob echoed from her mouth. “It hurts,”
she whimpered.

“I know, baby, I know.”

She choked over the emotion in her chest. I
held her tighter. Never again would I allow enough space for a
wedge to be driven between us. I’d never sit silent. I’d no longer
wait.

I whispered into her hair softly, “It is time,
Elizabeth.”

I said those three words again, the ones that
had continually been our ruin. I wasn’t scared saying them now.
“It’s time to talk about it. To talk about her. Talk about us. You
have to
tell
me what you’re feeling.”

Elizabeth burrowed deeper, her tears wet on my
flesh. “It hurts,” she said again.

“I know. It hurts me, too, but we
have
to.”

Hiding only ruined us, destroyed what we
had.

Slowly, she lifted her face to me, and I
stared down at the woman I loved, silently encouraging her to open
up to me.

She swallowed hard before her face pinched and
a rush of tears streamed from the creases of her eyes. “That day,
Christian.” Her lids closed as if she were trying to block the
memory, or maybe she was finally allowing it in. The words were
rough, pained. “Going through labor…it was torture.” She glanced at
me, searching for understanding. “It felt like I was rejecting her
when all I wanted to do was hang onto her. But then they brought
her to me…”

She wet her lips, her attention darting away
before it flitted back to search my face, agony set in every line.
“All that time when I was holding her, I kept begging her to
breathe. She felt so whole in my arms that I kept thinking she
had
to. She just had to take a breath, and everything would
be okay.”