Page 132 of Forged By Sacrifice

“You’d break your leg so we could be together?” I asked, my heart beating a new tune. A tune of “what is.” A reality and a dream built together.

“If you want me out. If that’s the condition upon which you’ll take me back,” he said quickly and honestly.

“Mac, I don’t want you to give up your career—any of them—for me,” I told him, but he misunderstood. He thought I was saying what I’d said back in D.C.—that we couldn’t be together—when that wasn’t what I meant. I really meant that if he’d have me, I’d take him no matter his career.

But when I went to talk, he put a finger on my lips and said, “I understand that. I know that you don’t want me to, and that makes me love you even more. The fact that you want me to have the future I always envisioned. The thing is, once you walked into my life, the only future I could imagine was one with you in it. One where I get to wake up guessing what color your eyes will be when you come out of the bathroom. One where I get to kiss the place at the corner of your ear and your jaw that makes you shiver and moan.”

His words were so sweet they brought tears to my eyes, and he continued to misread them and said, “Do you know what I can’t envision? I can’t imagine living with the idea that you’re out there with some other man. Where some other man gets to hold you, and protect you, and make you his. I can’t imagine any other woman coming into my life and fitting into the curves of my life and my body and my soul the way you do. I can’t imagine any career that requires me to give up?”

I kissed him. I tangled my fingers in his hair and pulled his lips tight up against mine, and my body relaxed for the first time in over a month. I was where I belonged. In his arms. For as long as he’d have me. He didn’t even hesitate before he was kissing me back. Fiercely. Like a man who was drowning and asking to be pulled ashore. Like a man who loved a woman who loved him back.

I pulled away, and he groaned in protest.

“I was right, and you were wrong,” I told him, and he looked at me questioningly. “I told you that you have all the beautiful words when you speak from your heart.”

“It’s because you are my heart. All of it.”

He went back to kissing me and found my favorite spot below my ear along my neck that had me saying his name in desperation. Forty days of longing. He picked me up, tongues and lips still locked in a battle to show who had missed who the most, and headed toward the picnic tables that were on the roof, and we’d almost gotten there when we heard a ripping sound.

I pulled back from his lips as we both burst into laughter. My hand found the torn sleeve of yet another rental tux. He set me down on the edge of the table, moving in between my legs, my short bridesmaid dress riding up my thighs.

“Why did you pick me up?” I grinned up at him.

His smile faded. “I didn’t want to let you go in case you changed your mind.”

We stared at each other for a long time, and then I put both my hands on his face before carefully and gently brushing my lips along his. “I’m not changing my mind. Why would I want hamburger when I can have steak?”

“You’re quoting Newman to me?”

I smiled at him, and he devoured my lips in a kiss that took us both to a new dream realm where it was just us, his hardness rubbing up against my middle, making me wonder why I’d ever thought I could walk away from this. Why I’d ever thought I’d want to walk away from this. From a man who saw me for who I was and still loved me with all my pieces and parts strewn around the world.

Truck’s laughter from the rooftop entrance brought us to our senses.

“I absolutely won the bet!” Truck hollered at us.

“What bet?” I asked, looking over Mac’s shoulder at Truck’s grinning face.

“The bet that said he’d be kissing you before the wedding was over.”

“The ceremony ended hours ago,” Mac said, but his lips were smiling against mine.

“I didn’t say the ceremony, I said the wedding.” Truck snorted.

“Potato, potahto,” Mac responded.

“They’re about to leave,” Truck said and then disappeared back down the hatch.

“You bet on us?” I asked as he helped me down from the picnic table and entwined his hands back with mine.

“I’d bet on us a million times.”

His words tore a new hole in my heart. A hole that was anchored with the string that bound me to him. That would forever bind me to this man who was willing to sacrifice everything for the ideals and the people he loved.

“I love you, Mac-Macauley.”

“I love you right back, Georgie-Girl.”

Mac

---