19. Hope

19

Hope

H e brushed his lips over my knuckles before standing and leading me to his bedroom.

Cast in moonlight, it wrapped around me like a bear hug. Sturdy wooden furniture with minimalist masculine lines, a plush duvet on the king-sized bed, and a thick area rug warming the wide wood flooring pulled me forward as surely as his hand in mine.

Other than a lamp and a small bowl for his watch and chain, there was nothing on the nightstand. The chest of drawers held a huge television, but the dresser was completely bare.

How would my dainty treasures look scattered over the top?

Nan’s Irish lace and my mother’s vintage perfume bottles. It had been so long since I’d opened her favorite perfume, but I could almost smell her fragrance.

Tiny porcelain cottages carried by hand from Ireland, tea lights flickering with life inside them.

Cottages Dylan would one day inherit.

Gabe’s tug on my hand woke me from my reverie.

With his chin dipped down, he reached behind me to carefully unwind the tie from my hair. Sliding it onto his wrist, he worked his fingers through my hair, fanning it out around me, his gaze soft on my face.

Everything I held together on my own for so long unraveled under his hands.

“Beautiful,” he murmured. “For twenty years I dreamed of this hair spread over my pillow.”

My eyelids fluttered shut, his sweet words too much for my fragile heart to process. How could I have left him out in the cold the way I did?

“I’m so sorry, Gabe,” I whispered.

Sliding his palms up the sides of my neck, his strong hands cradled the back of my head. His eyes searched mine, asking questions and giving answers in a way words could not. “No one has ever come close to making me feel the way you do.”

I was completely, irrevocably in love with him. I had been since we were teens.

It had been real.

Lasting.

The truth hurt. Because I had hurt him badly and deprived myself.

Losing my dad cast me into a pit of blackness where there was no hope. When blessed numbness leached in to take its place, I convinced myself in an act of self-preservation what we had was only puppy love.

Now I knew different.

And Gabe had not had that numbness to protect his tender heart.

I could barely face it.

Swallowing tightly, I confessed, “I should not have frozen you out.”

He hushed me. “None of that. It was a terrible time for you, and you were practically a child. I wasn’t much older.”

He cupped my face in his hands. Tilting his head back, he held my eyes, revealing the sadness in his as he shook his head slightly. “We wouldn’t have made it, Shae-baby, that’s the truth. It hurt. It was hard. But you’ve lived in my heart all these years. And whatever I had to go through to get back here with you, I’d do it again and again.”

Tightening his grip on my face, he pulled me up to my toes.

My hands wrapped around his wrists. I held on as he gently opened my mouth with his. Softer than I believed he could, he brushed his lips over mine and licked inside my mouth, tentatively tasting me as if it was the first time.

The first time. His face wreathed in smiles as he bounded up onto my front porch, his enormous heart on his sleeve.

As if unleashed, the pain of the past tore through me with a guttural sob.

I clung to him, my eyes squeezed shut, spiraling downward until a pair of strong arms wrapped around me and held me together. “I’ve got you, Shae-baby.”

Still, the onslaught of memories continued.

My dad withering before my eyes, his lips dry and chapped as he assured me I would be okay financially. I only wanted him, but money was all he had left to give.

I shook my head as if to rid myself of the memory.

Gabe cupped the back of my head and tucked my forehead to his wide chest, his deep voice a reassuring murmur in my ear.

I began to shake.

Standing at Dad’s grave with Nan on one side, Gabe on the other. I sucked in a breath at the resurrection of that buried memory. He was there.

Quinn’s small face, red from crying, as she clung to her mom across from me. I’d shut her out as well.

I rocked back and forth, propelling myself closer, digging my hands under his arms and around his back as misplaced memories freed themselves from the abyss of my grief. Pummeling me like hailstones ripping through the veil of a summer day.

I gripped his shirt in my hands, my body shaking like a leaf in the wind, my throat tight, breaths shuddering in and out as barely human noises spilled from my chest.

Through it all, his steady presence, familiar embrace, deep, reassuring voice in my ear guiding me home.

Home.

My eyes widened almost painfully.

Home.

Packing up my house, my entire life and history taped up and sent to storage.

Nan’s red nose and swollen eyes.

My mother’s perfume bottles preserved for all time on a silver tray on the vanity.

My dad’s books tumbling off the shelf into a box in my anger. Gabe abandoning the clothes he’d been folding into a suitcase to wrap me up in his arms as I cried.

My God, he was there.

He’d been there for all of it.

And I froze him out. I squeezed my eyes shut.

The phone, oh God, the Goddamn phone ringing and ringing and ringing.

Nan’s fingers in my hair.

My neck arched back with a sob as I drowned in sorrow. “Gabe,” I choked on his name. “I’m so, so sorry!”

He curled his long body over mine, his arms so tight I could barely breathe. “You’ve lived on the darker side of midnight for too long, Shae-baby. Let it out and let it go. It’s time to face the dawn.”

Pressing closer, I grabbed the back of his neck and yanked his face down to mine. I fused my mouth to his, sucked him inside my mouth like oxygen I needed to survive.

His hands dropped to my ass and hefted me up.

Not like this.

“Please, Gabe, please don’t let go.”

“I fucking won’t,” he promised, eating at my mouth like a man starved even as he set me back down and pulled my t-shirt over my head before going back to assault my neck with his teeth, his scruff reminding me exactly where I was.

Who I was with.

My hands flew to his belt, pulling it through the loops of his jeans and dropping it to the floor before moving onto the button and zipper.

Keeping one hand on my neck, he pushed his jeans down to the floor along with his boxers and stepped out of them. Pulling away, he dropped to his knees.

Pressing his face to the softness of my belly he made short work of freeing me from my jeans, my panties and socks quickly following.

I curled my toes into the softness of the rug beneath my feet as he wrapped his arms around my hips and pressed his face to the apex of my thighs. Inhaling deeply, he pressed closer and drove his tongue between my lips to tease my aching clit.

“Gabe,” I choked out his name as I pulled at his hair, needing him with me, mouth to mouth, heart to heart, hip to hip. “I need you.”

Rising fluidly to his feet, he arched me back and pressed my body to his. “I’m here, Shae. I’m right here.”

My body melded to his as I filled my lungs with the heat of his neck.

The fear inside me could not stand against what was now, was then, and had always been real.

What would always be real.

Him.

Him and me and the life we would build together.

I shoved my fingers through his messy black hair and held his head, not a breath between us.

I clutched at him as he broke the kiss, but he only lowered me to the bed and climbed up over me.

“Easy, baby.” His hips wedged between my thighs. “You have me.”

I closed my eyes and breathed a sigh of relief as he entered me with one smooth thrust, pushing the tension from my overwrought body.

My hands gentled on his back, cupping the muscles that undulated as he moved over me. I spread my thighs wide, wrapped my legs around his calves, and opened my mouth to his.

Clasping his hand around the back of my neck, he kissed me hard, smashing my lips against my teeth, his tongue delving inside as if desperate to fill me more completely with himself. His other hand, hot and heavy on my hip, held me immobile. Above me, his big body shook as his hips rolled, moving me slowly, inexorably, closer to release. Pressing deeper, withdrawing, pressing in once more, leeching the pain away.

The silky softness of his duvet.

The warmth of his skin.

The heat of his breath.

The branding of his mouth, his hands, his cock inside me, anchoring me to the present.

Offering a future so much brighter than the one to which I was convinced I’d been condemned.

I inhaled.

New life.

Love that had stood the test of time.

Hope.

My neck arched back, my fingers dug into the muscles in his back, and I cried out as my release rumbled through me.

His hips slammed into me once, twice, three times then stuttered to a stop, his body bowing, face tucked into my throat as he grunted out his release.

I melted into the softness at my back and ran my hands up his back. Stroked the back of his neck, and pressed my cheek to his temple as his big chest rose and fell, my name on his lips.

“Gabe,” I whispered a promise. “I love you.”

Nan’s face in the mirror.

Time to write a different story.