by Amy Brent
“I love you.”
I felt a little dizzy as soon as he said it. I hadn’t been expecting the words to feel so heavy, but they dropped down inside my head like stones to the bottom of a pool. I had wanted him to whisper those words to me when we were wrapped around each other, waking up in bed together, but instead I had to hear them when I had no idea if he was even going to take me back.
“Then do something about it,” I shot back, challenging him. I lifted my chin and looked at him, and realized that my hands once more had fallen to my stomach, feeling that bump, that promise of our future.
“What the hell do you want me to do?” He demanded. “What do you want? You want me to just forget about what you did? Because I’m sorry, but I just can’t get over it like that…”
“I’m not asking you to get over it,” I replied, cutting him off. “I’m asking you to accept that the way I fucked up has nothing to do with your ex or what she did to you, and just because I kept something from you doesn’t mean I’m going to keep everything from you.”
He fell silent. He seemed to be brewing on my words. I knew I should have counted them out more carefully, should have taken this chance while I had his ear to make sure I didn’t say or do anything that might jeopardise my chances with him, but I couldn’t keep the words straight in my head and just had to get them out for him to hear.
“You don’t know how much that fucked with me,” he shook his head. “I shouldn’t…I shouldn’t have been so quick to break things off. I was just so sure that if I let this slip then it was only a matter of time…”
“A matter of time until what?” I stepped towards him, taking his hand and putting it on my face. “Cormac, you know this is real. You do. Feel me. Touch me…”
He let his hand lay there for a moment and I closed my eyes, letting that sweet feeling of his skin on mine sink through me again. It felt like returning home; I didn’t want this moment to end, wanted to let this play out for as long as I could. I would have talked to him all night long if I thought there was a hope in hell of the two of us getting back together. I would have done it till the end of time if it meant he would touch me like this. He brushed his thumb across my mouth, just lightly, and I felt a jolt of desire move through me.
“Laurie, I don’t know if I can do this,” He admitted after a long while. I finally opened my eyes again, forcing myself to look at him. It was harder than I cared to admit, being so close to him and knowing that I couldn’t just lean in and plant my lips against his.
“Do what?” I asked.
“Be with you,” He reached out to touch my stomach, the tiny bump feeling so safe beneath his hand. “I mean, some part of me…I want this. I want you and I want the baby and I want everything that comes with it, I know that.”
“Then why can’t we just do this?” I implored him. “I know it’s scary, I know we’ve been through a lot, but I…I can’t share this place with you and know there’s no chance for us to be together again. And I don’t think you can either.”
He looked down at his hand, the one of my bump, and he stared at it for what felt like a full minute.
“You can do this,” I whispered to him, leaning my head against his. Even if nothing more came of this, it felt so good to be near him again. The father of my child, the only man who had ever felt as though he had really loved me. He had said it now – even if he never did again, I could hold on to that for the rest of my life and knew that I would, clinging to those words as though they were the only things keeping me afloat in a sea of uncertainty.
He looked at me again, and this time there was a softness in his eyes, so far removed from the anger that had been pulsing there just a few moments earlier. I could feel him wavering.
“I can’t promise that I’m going to be perfect, but I promise that I’ll love you and this baby and everything we have right here so fucking much,” I whispered, worried that if I spoke any louder my voice might crack and give away the tears that were threatening even as I stood there in front of him.
“I know you will,” he slid his hand around to the back of my neck, forehead touched to mine. Finally, for the first time in such a long time, I felt as though the two of us were functioning on the same wavelength. I tilted my head up, looked at him, and I was just about to lean forward and kiss him when-
“What the fuck was that?” He pulled back suddenly, and I blinked myself back into the real world.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, and watched as he looked around wildly, casting his gaze back and forth over the apartment.
“You’re seriously telling me you didn’t hear that?” He demanded, breaking away from me and heading over to the door; he paused for a moment, and this time I could make out what he was referring to. My heart dropped and my stomach tightened, and I grabbed for my bump protectively.
Footsteps. Footsteps outside the cabin. There was no doubt in my mind that was what they were. I could hear the crunch on the dry leaves, a few times in a row, like whoever it was out there was scuttling around the building in the hopes of not being found out.
“What the fuck is that?” I widened my eyes. “Is there someone out there?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, and there was a doubt in his voice that I had never heard before. Where only moments ago this love had filled me up, terror flooded in it’s place. The baby. Cormac. The sanctity of this place. It could have been nothing out there, but it could have been something, something to threaten everything that I’d come to need so much.
“I’m going out there,” Cormac nodded definitively, and I reached for him, catching his arm. I felt as though I had only just got him back, and now he was leaving again.
“Please, don’t,” I begged him. “Call the cops or something, just…don’t go out there. Please.”
“They won’t be here in time,” He pulled away from me. “I have to get out there. I’m sorry.”
He pulled me in close suddenly, pressing his face into my hair and letting out the tiniest sigh against me, as though he couldn’t believe this was happening now.
“I’ll be back in a second, you’ll see,” he promised as he pulled on his shoes. “Go wait in my room. “You’ll be safe in there.”
“You think I need to be kept safe?” I asked, voice tiny.
“I don’t know,” he replied, and went for the door. My heart was pounding in my chest, the intensity of the last few minutes roiling in my head.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he promised, and I nodded. And, as he walked out of the door to investigate the noise on the other side, I tried my best to believe him.
Chapter Eighteen
I knew what I had heard out here. There was no doubt in my mind about that. But I didn’t want to scare her, so I did my best to make like I was totally in control and beyond calm, even though every muscle in my body was tense and ready for action as I walked out of that door.
I had never heard anyone else up here, not in the whole time that I’d been living in this place. Not once. I didn’t know that anyone knew where the hell I was, but I assumed someone stalking around the house had come looking for me – or Laurie.
“Hello?” I called out into the darkness. The winter came in so suddenly here, it went from cool, long evenings to ice-cold blackness in what felt like a matter of days. I shivered, not wearing enough to be out here this late into the day. Or maybe I was just unsettled by the thought of what I was going to find out here waiting for me.
The footsteps came again, this time from behind me, and I flashed around at once, heart leaping with fear – if they were behind me, they were close to Laurie, even if she was hiding out in my bedroom. The baby. The woman I loved. Adrenalin pumped through my veins and I forgot the cold and the dark and hurried towards the space I was sure I’d heard that noise come from, back around the side of the house. And that’s when I saw him.
My stomach dropped when I saw the figure standing there, his hand on the door – I stared at him for a long moment, tryin
g to place him, and then it hit me where I’d seen him before.
Richie. That fucking ex of hers. That fucking guy – the one who had driven her out of the city in the first place, the one she was still so clearly shit-scared of. It was him again, that motherfucker, and somehow he had come all the way out here to shatter what was left of our lives together.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I stormed towards him. He jumped when he saw me coming towards him, but then seemed to straighten himself out and hold his ground, eyeing me angrily from where he was standing.
“I’m here because you stole my woman,” he snapped back. He was a pasty-looking fucker, uneven dark stubble across his jaw and messy hair that looked as though it hadn’t seen a shower in days; he had narrow eyes and a pointed jaw that made him look distinctly rodent-like, which was appropriate given the rat that he was.
“Stole your…?” I trailed off, disbelieving, and shook my head. “You’re talking fucking bullshit. I didn’t steal anyone. She came to me.”
“I don’t care how it happened,” Richie stepped towards me out of the darkness and into the light, and I saw that his fists were clenched at his sides. “I just want her back. Laurie’s mine. She always has been.”
“She told me everything about the two of you,” I remarked coolly. “I don’t think she’s your anymore, buddy.”
“I’m the one who came all the way out here to find her,” Richie hit himself on the chest, as though underlining his point. “I’m the one who gave enough of a shit to-”
“You think I don’t give a shit about Laurie?” I snapped back at him. Maybe it was just the leftover tension from the conversation we’d been having, but I was so fucking done with this kid. “I’m the one who gave her a decent fucking life. I’m the one who takes care of her now.”
“You don’t know anything about her,” Richie sneered. “You don’t know the kind of chick she is…”
“And you do?” I shot back, voice raw. “She left you, remember?”
Richie fell silent for a moment, and then shook his head, as though accepting what I’d just said as truth would undermine his reasons for coming out here in the first place. I had no idea what he thought he was doing here, but I needed to get him away without making too much of a scene. Laurie was still inside, and the thought of her hearing any of this made my heart ache.
“I dated her for years,” Richie continued, finding his feet in the conversation once more. “I know her. And all this shit, the…the fucking taking her out to fancy restaurants and living up here in this place? It isn’t her. She’ll get tired of it eventually. She lives on the streets, like me, we understand each other like that-”
“Did it ever occur to you that she didn’t want to live like that?” I snarled back. I was running out of patience. I could feel something primal kicking in inside of me, something that wanted this fuckhead as far away from my woman and my child as I could get him right this instant. Richie moved forward again, closing the gap between us, pushing his ratty little face towards mine like it was going to scare me.
“Maybe we should ask her, huh?” He suggested. “Because I know that I fucked up, but I came all the way out here and she’s going to see-”
“Don’t go fucking near her,” I hissed. If he saw her, he would see that she was pregnant, and I had no desire to deal with the backlash to that discovery. He was already angry enough that I had stolen his woman that he had come all the way out here, and I had no idea what his reaction would be if he found out that I had gotten her pregnant, as well.
“Oh, yeah?” He grinned, without mirth, looking like a shark with those dark eyes glinting in the blackness of the night. “What are you going to do about it? Laurie’s always going to be mine, man, and you need to get over that and just let us get back together where we belong-”
“Fuck off,” I shoved him away from me roughly, already more than tired of his bullshit. He held his hands up and staggered back a few paces, looking around, as though hoping that Laurie had seen me lose my temper like that.
“Hey, hey,” he pushed my back, but I didn’t – little fucker like him probably burned out all his energy on drugs before he so much as got in his car to follow us up here.
“You really think she’s going to stay with you?” He goaded me once more, knowing that it hit my buttons. I closed my eyes and tried to centre myself. I didn’t want to have to make a scene, but if he wasn’t going to get out of here then I would have to.
“Yeah, I fucking do,” I snarled back. I didn’t have to explain myself to him, but the way he was talking to me, disrespecting me…
“Prove it,” He went for the door, going to pull it open, and without thinking I wrenched him back and away from it.
“You get the fuck away from there,” I growled at him, my adrenalin pumping now. I could hardly see straight it was so intense; I had never found myself in the position where I’d actually needed to fight anyone before, but this motherfucker was pushing my buttons.
“Oh, she’s in there, right?” Richie taunted me. “She’s waiting for me? Does she know I’m here? You should let her choose, buddy, but if you don’t-”
And that was all I could take from him. I swung my fist and landed it on the side of his face, knowing that if he got in there and got to Laurie she would never feel safe in this place again. He tumbled away from me, sprawling to the ground, and swiftly scrambled to his feet and shoved me away from him. He was pathetic, so much smaller than me, and I wondered if he had ever actually been in a fight himself; the panic in his eyes seemed to tell me that he hadn’t.
“What the fuck, man?” He demanded.
“Get the fuck away from my house, and never come back here,” I ordered him, voice low, hoping that the one punch would be enough to convince him that I was in no way fucking around. “You leave Laurie and me alone and you never look us up again, alright?”
“I don’t think you understand how this works,” he shook his head again. “I need to see her. I need to talk to her-”
He moved towards the door again, and this time I couldn’t hold myself back. I pulled him off, pushed him to the ground, and crouched down over him, grabbing the hem of his shirt and wrapping it around my hand to draw him closer to me.
“Leave,” I murmured again, and even to me my voice sounded saturated in menace. “Now.”
He looked up at me for a moment longer and I could see him weighing up the pros and cons of the situation, whether or not it was worth it to stick around in the face of the threat that I seemed to pose. He scrambled away from me a few feet, but I didn’t let go. I wasn’t going to be satisfied until I saw this fucker turn tail and run into the woods. And even then, I’d be calling the cops to bust him.
“Fine,” he snapped, and I let go.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he whined, gingerly touching the side of his face where my punch had landed. “You’re fucking crazy, you know that?”
“When it comes to her?” I glanced back inside the house. “Yeah. I am.”
He looked up at me for a moment longer, and I could see a second thought in his eyes. I pulled him to his feet and shoved him back towards the dark trees behind him.
“Get the fuck out of here,” I ordered, and finally, finally, he vanished back into the forest, leaving nothing but a whiff of cheap aftershave and a sore fist to remind me that he’d been there in the first place. I stood there for a long while, waiting for my breath to return to normal and making damn fucking sure that there was no way he was going to come back again. I would call the cops as soon as I got inside and let them know about him and his little dealing business, and hopefully he would get tossed in prison and that would be the last we would see of him.
When my heartrate had returned to normal, I slowly turned back toward the house, peeling open the door and making my way inside with trepidation. I stood there for a moment, in the living room where only a few minutes before we’d been embroiled in the middle of the scariest conversation of my life, and now that I
had dealt with Richie I had to face up to the fact that that conversation was far from resolved. I had told him that she was my woman, but I had no idea if that was actually the case or not yet.
“Laurie?” I called into the quiet of the house. For one, crazy moment, I was sure that she had run away – that she had fled when she’d heard Richie’s voice and that it would be the last I heard from her. But, after a beat, the bedroom door opened slowly and I found myself looking at the woman I loved.
“Laurie,” I made my way towards her at once and pulled her into my arms, glad that she was safe. She wrapped her arms around me and held me tight, not saying a word. She didn’t need to. I pulled back, with every intention of telling her about what had just happened, but before I could she kissed me.
It had been so long since we’d last kissed that it took me a moment to recognise the feeling of her lips against mine. And then, as soon as I realized what was happening, I gripped her waist and pulled her against me and pushed my tongue into her mouth and gave myself over to the moment.
I backed her into the bedroom quickly, guiding her hurriedly towards the bed; I didn’t know how long it would be before one or both of us realized that we had a hell of a lot of talking to do before we could actually say we were together once more, and I needed to feel myself inside of her right this instant. Her body felt so small against mine, so vulnerable, and I felt another surge of rage that Richie had seriously thought that he could just come in here and make her his again. She belonged to me – my woman, the mother of my child, my wife…
I pushed her down on to the bed and she pulled me on top of her at once, her lips slightly parted and her eyes wild with desire in the glimpse of her that I got. I pushed my hand up her shirt, grabbing for her breasts, pinching the nipple roughly between my fingers and drawing a squeal of pleasure out from between her lips for my trouble. I moved down and kissed her neck, and remembered the first time I had ever taken her in this bed, when it had been her first time and she had given herself to me so fully and so completely. I felt my cock harden at the memory, and pressed my hips against her.
