Page 74 of Rock On

I nodded. “Yes. I thought it would be easier if I wasn’t Harley Bane anymore.”

“I’m sorry you felt that way.”

The waiter came out with our meals, and we hadn’t even touched our salads.

“Let’s eat,” I suggested.

“Sure.” He lightly patted my ass as I slid off his lap.

“Beef Wellington,” I mused as the waiter put the dish down in front of me.

My favorite.

He was pulling out all the stops and I was getting confused all over again.

Could this really be the start of something new for us?

Did we even have a chance?

I hadn’t even mentioned the fact that I was scheduled to be impregnated with another one of Carter’s babies in the near future.

Would he be okay with that?

It was terrifying because I didn’t know if this was the road to redemption or the one to purgatory.

Because just like before, I was too afraid to tell him about my plans.

TWENTY-NINE

Tommy

Spending the week living life as a monk had my balls turning every shade of blue.

I had a plan for that, but it was harder to stick to than I thought.

Not because I couldn’t go without sex, but because I couldn’t wait to be intimate with Harley again. That would solidify our bond and hopefully bring us one step closer to reconciliation.

But I refused to rush it.

I loved her enough to wait.

And jack off in the shower twice a day.

We’d spent most of the last month together, both in therapy and out, and it was easy to fall into a new routine that felt so much like the old one. There had been occasional disagreements, but we’d never been the type of couple that had big fights, yelling and name calling or anything like that. We got our aggression out in the bedroom, and I brought that up in therapy because it made me a little nervous.

If we continued the way we’d been, we would be sleeping together sooner rather than later, and I wanted to find a way to let her know that we didn’t have to always push the envelope in that department. Sometimes vanilla was okay. Sometimes there was more to intimacy than fucking.

That was one thing we hadn’t done much in our marriage.

We’d dialed everything up to eleven.

Always.

Whether we were traveling or fucking or hanging with friends, we’d been over-the-top. At twenty-two, that was reasonable. A decade later, especially with a kid in the picture now, it seemed like we might want to dial back just a little.

And this time I had to make sure Harley understood that I was okay with it.

“I had something specific on my mind,” I said when Allisha asked what we wanted to talk about today.

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