Take Your Time (Fate and Circumstance #2) (33 page)

“And my house was clean. A few dust bunnies doesn’t constitute a messy house.”

“No…it doesn’t. But the bedrooms were covered in dust. Do you ever go back there? Do you ever clean the rooms that aren’t used?” I waited through his silence, and when he didn’t respond, I worried I’d said something wrong. “Bentley, I’m sorry if cleaning your house bothered you, that wasn’t my intent. I was bored and wanted to make myself useful. I only wanted to do something to help prevent you from getting sick again.”

He sighed deeply, rested his head against the wall behind him, and stared up at the porch ceiling. “Is this how the rest of my life is going to be?”

“What do you mean? Being cautious and focusing on your health?”

“No,” he said, his attention falling back to me. “Listening to you lecture me about dust and rooms I never use. Is this what I have to look forward to for the rest of my life?”

Flutters filled my stomach and my pulse picked up speed. I ran his words through my mind, and then repeated them again, making sure there was no way I’d misunderstood him before responding. “The
rest
of your life? How long do you plan on keeping me here?”

“I don’t know…how long do you plan to stay?”

I wanted to be irritated at his inability to answer a question properly, but the uneasiness in his eyes tampered my annoyance. I didn’t think I’d ever grow accustomed to seeing such a large man, such a confident, strong person show so much insecurity. “Well, I have the week off work. I was supposed to watch Ayla for Bree and Axel while they went on their honeymoon, but things changed once I found out about you. My dad ended up taking Ayla, giving me the chance to come here. But I have work next week, and I’ll need to get back to my house.”

He abruptly leaned forward, pressing his elbow into his knee. “You don’t need to work. I can take care of you. We can live out here where no one can get to us. Just you and me.”

I wasn’t sure if he’d meant it, or if it was supposed to be a joke, so I didn’t know how to respond. I decided on the truth with a hint of humor, just in case. “That doesn’t sound so appealing to me, Bentley. You may enjoy the freedom from your cell phone, but I don’t care for it too much. Not to mention, I’d never allow a man to take care of me financially.”

“What about when you’re married? When you have babies? Wouldn’t you rather be at home raising them instead of having someone else take care of them for you?”

It quickly became clear that he hadn’t meant it as a joke, and I felt clueless as to what I should say to him. “To be honest with you…I’m not sure I want to get married.”

“But I thought you said you were wrong about love…”

“I don’t have any issues with love. It’s the marriage part that I’m unsure about. I’ve always been incredibly independent, and I’ve never had any problem with taking care of myself. I don’t need a marriage license to love someone.”

He leaned back again and studied his fidgety hands in his lap.

“Does that bother you?”

Giving me a noncommittal shrug, he said, “Sort of. I would like to get married one day. I don’t mean tomorrow or even next year, but at some point before I die, I’d like to have a wife. I’d like to have a home and be settled. Staring death in the face, believing I’d never get to experience that…it changed something in me.”

“Without sounding presumptuous, if you happen to have me in mind when thinking about a future, I agree that I’d like to spend my life with someone. I want those same things—the home, someone to share my days with. But why do I have to walk down an aisle to get that?”

“Just tell me, what’s your reasons for
not
wanting to get married?” It wasn’t anger in his hard expression. His tight lips and hard eyes were filled with hesitation, his restless hands expressed unease, and his rigid posture conveyed apprehension.

“Weddings are all for show. The gown, the makeup, the hundreds of pictures that are taken. It’s why so many guests are invited. The food and cake, the decorations and cheesy song lists…it’s nothing but a big show.”

“I’m talking about marriage, not the wedding.”

“Okay, so you go stand in front of a judge and you’re pronounced husband and wife. For what? A piece of paper that binds you together until you go back in front of a judge and wait for someone to declare you divorced? Why go through that when you can just live with the person and be happy?”

His head barely shook side to side as the tiniest of smiles held his lips. “I knew it. I called it that first night at the diner. But you denied it. You have a fear of commitment.”

“I do not,” I argued back matter-of-factly. “I told you that I have no problem being with someone for the rest of my life. That’s a commitment. I don’t have to sign a government document to prove I’m committed to someone.”

“Do you rent or own your house?”

His question threw me for a loop. “I rent. Why?”

“That figures. Mortgage is another form of commitment. Thirty years of payments that you can’t do. It’s easier to pay someone each month to live in their house instead of getting your own. Much like it’s easier to live with someone instead of making a
home
with that person. You can leave whenever you want. I repeat. No commitment.”

I dropped my feet to the porch floor and pulled myself off the railing, ready to walk away from his attack. But before I could fully stand on both feet, he moved in front of me, locking me between his chest and the railing behind me with his arms.

“I’m going to make this very clear so there’s no possible way you can misunderstand me.” His lips were so close I couldn’t take my eyes off the fullness of them, or the way they molded around his words. “I never wanted to fall for you. All I wanted was to thank you for your generosity, and then come back home to my family. But one look into your eyes and nothing could’ve stopped me from changing my plans. I only meant to stay long enough for you to overcome your grief and learn to live the life you deserve. But at some point while doing that, you taught
me
to live life. I’d already come to terms with death, and even after the transplant, after each appointment with the specialists, I still refused to let hope in. Because if the new heart failed, I didn’t want to start the acceptance all over again. But then you breathed life back into me, and I fell in love with you. I knew it would end badly, I understood the consequences of it. But I couldn’t stop myself. I
still
can’t stop myself. I want the chance to see what we can have together, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t scare the shit out of me. The thought of changing my plans, throwing caution to the wind like I’d done before, frightens me, because I won’t survive watching you walk away…
again
.”

“What do you need to hear from me in order to trust that I won’t do that? That I’m not scared of commitment and that I’d stick it out, regardless of marriage? Tell me what you need to hear so I can say it and relieve your fear.”

“Do you still love me?”

I concentrated on his eyes, hoping he could see the truth in mine. “I never stopped.”

“Are you
in
love with me?”

“No.” I grabbed his face to prevent him from backing away from me so I could finish what I had to say. “I can’t breathe without your air, I can’t feel if it’s not your touch, and I can’t live if it’s not with you. So no, Bentley…I’m not
just
in love with. I’m
head over heels
in love with you. I’m in
so
deep it hurts.”

I couldn’t say anything else because his mouth took mine, his tongue fighting for control as our breaths grew heavy and demanding. My back pressed hard against the railing, the wood digging into my spine. But I couldn’t feel any of that, because his hands were at my hips, gripping me painfully. My fists released their hold on his T-shirt in order to grab the bottom and remove it from his body, and then he did the same with mine. The moment I pressed my chest against his, unimaginable heat seeped through my skin and lit my insides on fire, burning the hottest in my lower stomach.

He hooked his fingers in the waistband of my cotton shorts and pushed them down until they fell to the floor at my feet. Then he picked me up and set me on the edge of the railing, pressing himself between my thighs. I wrapped my legs around his waist, urgency coming from both of us in the form of rough touches, hard movements, and erratic breathing.

“Please tell me you’re still on birth control,” he mumbled between kisses, his voice so deep and desperate, uncontrolled and throaty. He didn’t even wait for my answer—which was only a nod and a moan—before he reached between our bodies to free himself from his shorts.

In an instant, I became completely filled with him as he thrust inside me. He stilled and locked his eyes with mine. The softness of his gaze completely contradicted the tremors in his arms, the heavy, desperate panting that brushed across my face, and the deep throbbing inside me.

“I love you, Sarah,” he whispered, holding me against him with his arm around my back. He didn’t need to say the words. His eyes said it all. But the sound of his confession became music to my ears.

“I love you, too, Bentley.” As soon as I had the words out, he started to move again. But instead of the intensity he’d started out with, his thrusts were long and slow, painfully slow.

His gaze never fell away from mine as he continued his unhurried, torturous assault. And just as the ball of fire began to grow in my lower abdomen, his lips fell to mine—soft, unmoving—his eyes closed, and his body began to shudder against me. Witnessing him coming apart did something to me, something far greater than getting off. I held his body tighter against mine, with my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist. His skin burned every part of me he touched. I latched my lips to his and felt his breaths coming out in waves through his nose. He consumed me, filled me, owned every one of my senses, and left me higher than any orgasm I’d ever experienced in my life.

Once he stopped shaking with pleasure, his head dropped to my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I told you I’d make up for this morning, but I couldn’t hold it back. You feel so fucking good.”

“I’m fine, I promise.”

He lifted his head and stared into my eyes. “Then give me five minutes and I’ll make you better than fine. I’ll have you screaming my name until your throat is sore. And then we’ll wash off in the shower where there’s a seat you’d look amazing bent over.”

I wagged my eyebrows at him, instantly ready for more. “Well? What are you waiting for?”

Bentley spent an hour making sure I felt “better than fine.” He fulfilled his promise of making me scream, and then learned just how amazing I looked bent over the tiled seat in the over-sized shower. By the time we were done, we didn’t even have enough energy to put clothes back on before collapsing into bed.

“You’re not gonna freak out worrying about me getting pregnant again, are you?” I asked as we lay cuddled in his bed, swarmed with blankets to keep the chill off our damp, naked bodies.

“More than likely. I have to remember to pick up condoms tomorrow. Lots and lots of condoms.”

I tilted my head to look at him, needing to see his face when I asked the question that had been on my mind for weeks. “Do you have something against kids? Like, do you not want them or something? I’m on birth control, yet that’s not enough for you.”

“No. You’re the one with the commitment phobia, remember?”

“Shut up.” I playfully slapped his arm and snickered. “I do not. I’m just trying to figure you out. We’ve never talked about this kinda stuff before. And since you brought up marriage already, I feel it’s a safe conversation to have. I mean, shouldn’t we know each other’s expectations? I told you my thoughts about marriage. I’m just curious about where you stand with having kids.”

He stilled for a moment, his chest steadily rising and falling with his even and controlled breaths. “I would like kids someday. Not anytime soon, though. I’d like to get through the first year after the transplant, and then see how things are. The last thing I want to do is get you pregnant and then something happen to me. I think it’s important to secure my future on this earth first before bringing a baby into it. What about you? Are kids in your future?”

His explanation increased my pulse. I thought about what it must be like for him, unsure of where he’d be in a year. The idea of my mom’s heart failing him worried me, but I refused to let it take me down. I believed in fate, more now than ever before. And I knew there was no way my mother would’ve brought us together if it wouldn’t last a lifetime.

“I wouldn’t mind having kids.”

“Just not getting married…” It wasn’t posed as a question, more like stating fact, and it left me saddened.

“I don’t see why people should get married just because they have a kid together. So many couples do that and then end up getting divorced anyway. What’s the point in it?”

“Don’t you want to have the same last name as your child?”

“What does the last name have to do with anything? Bree and Ayla had different last names for years. Hell, Bree and I have always had different last names, but that never changed the fact that we are sisters. And after my mom married Wayne, her name changed—ours didn’t. I think you’re putting too much stock in the things that don’t matter. The only thing that should matter is the love between two people, not a piece of paper, not a name.”

His arm curled around my back and pulled me closer to his chest until my ear rested over his heart. “You’re right. I guess I’m just old-fashioned. But it doesn’t matter, because you’re absolutely right.”

I felt like something was off, like he’d given in too easily. “Are you just saying that to appease me? To shut me up? Or do you really agree with me?”

“Sarah, if you’re willing to spend your life with me, have a home with me, give me a family, then what exactly do I have to complain about? I agree with you because what you said makes sense. If I’m in love with you and want to be with you, then it shouldn’t matter if you’re my wife or not. Just as long as you’re mine…that’s all that counts.”

“I’m not sure if I trust your sincerity over this, but I’m going to let it go. And you can’t fault me for my paranoia over there being a loophole I can’t figure out. You only have yourself to blame for that one.”

His laughter reverberated through his chest and shook my body.

I closed my eyes and allowed myself to feel freely. My entire body touched his, from my feet to my head. Every inch of bare skin met with his. Fiery tingles lit my flesh, but they didn’t burn me. They soothed me. His even breaths lulled me, and his fresh scent reassured me. I had not one ounce of concern as I thought about a future with this man, and I was instantly taken back nearly two months to the visions I had when I looked into his eyes for the first time.

But then I realized that in order to have it, we actually had to work on it. It was easy when I was on vacation and could spend the week with him, but what would happen when our time would end? “Where do we go from here, Bentley? You live here, and I live six hours away. How will that ever work?”

“We’ll make it work.” He sounded sleepy, but the thoughts in my head wouldn’t ease up. They kept me wide-awake, needing answers before I could rest.

“That sounds great and all, but can we at least talk about it?”

“Well, since you’re only renting, and I own this house, how do you feel about moving here? You could get a job at one of the salons in town since you don’t want me to provide for you.”

An intense ache filled my chest, and no matter how hard I tried to swallow it down, it wouldn’t ease up. “I can’t leave my family. My dad needs me. We’ve grown really close over the last few weeks, and I can’t leave him high and dry. And I have my sisters there. And my job is really good. I can’t afford to start over somewhere else. I have standing at that salon.”

He gave me nothing but silence in return. I knew he hadn’t fallen asleep because his breathing had turned stiff, struggling almost. And that’s when I realized my implications.

“And you can’t move south because your family is here. I’m sure after thinking they were going to lose you forever, they wouldn’t want you to be that far away. And you have this house…”

His arm tightened around me, holding me impossibly closer. “It’s okay, Sarah. We’ll figure it out. We don’t need to come up with an answer right now.” He kissed the top of my head and then released a heavy breath, proving just how tired he was.

I decided to let it go and fall asleep wrapped in his warm embrace, not wanting the uncertainties to hinder my time with him.

Nothing else was said the next day about our talk…or the day after that. Instead, we spent the time together living in the present. He took me around town, showed me where he grew up, and then at night, we took our time discovering each other’s bodies thoroughly. By the end of the week, he knew just what to do to make me scream his name, and I learned how to get him worked up with a single look. There wasn’t a spot in his house we hadn’t used to our advantage, including the driveway against his truck. He was right about one thing…women do love men with big trucks. Or, at least, I do.

On my last day in town, he took me to his dad’s horse-training arena, telling me all about his days as a trainer. His eyes glimmered as he spoke, and it left no doubt in me that he truly loved what he did.

“Why can’t you train horses anymore?”

He leaned against the wooden fence with his arms falling between the wide slats, the brim of his baseball cap shadowing his face, but I could see the sorrow in his downturned lips. “It’s too physically demanding. I mostly broke horses in, and it’s not an easy job. With my limited capacity for strenuous exercise, I can’t do it anymore.”

“Why can’t you exercise?”

He turned sideways to face me, his height blocking the sun from my face so I could see him clearly. “I can…and I do. But not like I used to. Without going into specifics, after the transplant, I don’t have any nerves attached to the new heart. That means it takes longer for my heart rate to react to exertion—slower to rise, slower to fall. And that can be damaging if it stays high for too long. But exercise is important, so I walk, I swim, and I ride bikes. I lift small weights, nothing too hard, but I can’t work out like I used to.”

My eyes widened at the thought of him pushing it too hard and getting hurt again. “What about sex? How can you do that?”

His mouth widened into a broad smile that caused his eyes to crinkle at the edges. “Oh, I think you’re fully aware how I do that, Sarah.” He laughed when I playfully shoved his shoulder and then pulled on the bill of his cap. “You don’t have anything to worry about. Sex is fine. I just can’t run or do much bodybuilding. But getting bucked off a horse is pretty much frowned upon.”

“So it’ll always be like this?”

He twisted his lips to the side and gazed out into the distance over my shoulder with a far-off look in his eyes, contemplating. “Doctors can’t answer that. Only time will tell. At least for a while, though, yeah. There’s a chance the nerves could grow back, but it’s not guaranteed. My doctors believe that with healthy, moderate exercise, I’ll be normal again in a few years, doing things I used to. But it’s simply a waiting game right now.”

“I don’t understand how your heart can work without nerves.”

“Your heart pumps on its own because of signals it gets from the brain, kinda like a natural pacemaker. The nerves increase your pulse when working out, and then calm it down during rest. Without that, I can run around and my heart rate will stay the same. Once adrenaline is released, it will increase, but it won’t slow down again until the adrenaline subsides. That’s where the danger is, because a prolonged, rapid pulse isn’t healthy. And without the nerves, I can’t feel when it’s like that.” He placed his hand over the center of my chest, staring me directly in the eyes. “You know how your chest constricts when you’re fearful or upset? Mine doesn’t do that. My heart stays at rest most of the time. And there’s no way to know if I’ll ever feel that again.”

“But…”

He grabbed my face with his strong, rough hands, and pulled me so close I could only see his eyes on mine. “There are no ‘buts,’ Sarah. I’m alive. That’s all that matters to me. I don’t care if I never feel my pulse pick up when you walk in a room, because all I’ll think about is how without you, I wouldn’t even be here
to
see you.”

I nodded, accepting his response, because he was right. It didn’t matter if he’d never be able to run a marathon. At least he could watch it, which is far better than his original prognosis. I closed the small gap between our faces and briefly pressed my lips to his.

“Well, I feel sad that you can’t train horses again. I can tell how much you loved it just by listening to you talk,” I said once our lips parted.

His shoulders rose and then fell, as if it didn’t matter one way or another to him. “I’ll be all right. I’m sure I’ll find something else that I’ll love just as much. There’s a whole wide world out there. I’m not worried about that.”

“Yeah, but…it seems training paid well. What if you can’t make the same amount of money you did before? How will you pay for your house?”

“Don’t worry about the money or the house.”

“Speaking of the house…” My curiosity had gotten the best of me. I’d pushed down the question all week, but for some reason, I couldn’t stop myself from asking. “It’s a really big house, Bentley, almost too big for one person. Why would you need so much space?”

He turned to lean his back against the railing, separating us from the horses grazing behind the fence. Then he tilted his head back, closing his eyes as the sun hit his face. “The property was my dad’s—and before that, it was his dad’s. For whatever reason, no one ever put a house on it and it just sat there, being handed down to son after son. So two years ago, right after my thirtieth birthday, I decided to build a house. I knew I’d never get rid of the land, other than to pass it down, but I’d never sell it, so I decided to build my dream home on it. I made sure the house was everything I ever wanted, because I planned to live there for the rest of my life. After I was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy, I went to give the property back to my dad, but he said he wouldn’t take it until he had to. He felt that if he gave up and took it back, that would be losing hope, and he wasn’t going to do that. But nothing has changed, it’s still the house I plan to live in until I die—whenever that may be.”