Page 58 of Caught from Behind

I nod jerkily.

“She was saying no.”

I sigh. “I’m fine.”

“Honey.” It’s soft, but I hear it in her voice.

She expects me to shut her down, to push her away, to fuck up and drive her from me. To leave, even if it’s just emotionally. And, I can’t lie. I want to retreat. I don’t want to talk about this shit—I fucking don’t.

But I want her more.

So, just as she lifts her hand, as she starts to back away, I turn, snag her hand and draw her to me, burying my face in her throat, inhaling slow and steady until the scent of her is in my very soul. “I’m fine,” I rasp. “I promise.”

“You’re not fine.”

I grind my teeth together. “No,” I admit. “I’m not.”

“It’s okay to not be…well, okay.”

I laugh and it’s broken. “You sure about that?”

She sighs, running her fingers over my head, through the strands on top, and along the shorn strip of hair at the back. “No,” she eventually says. “But if it’s not okay to not be okay…then what’s the point of it all?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why have the good and the bad?” Her voice drops, her words almost contemplative, as though she’s realizing this for herself for the first time too. “Why have the moments of joy and the deep, deep darkness that sometimes follows? Why not just exist, just plow forward day by day by fucking day without really living if we’re going to make ourselves numb to all the rest of it?”

My heart starts pounding. “Chérie.”

“Why do it at all if we’re going to bury everything and exist in…nothingness?”

I don’t have an answer to that.

Because that’s been my life.

Until her.

“I don’t,” I murmur. “I just know that when I’m with you, I feel everything.”

She inhales and her arms come tightly around me. “Honey,” she whispers.

“I know.”

I lift my head from her throat, stare out at the wide expanse of Lake Tahoe in front of us. The water is mostly black and navy, only a narrow strip illuminated by the bright, round moon overhead. But I can hear the waves hitting the shore repeatedly, the soft hoot of the owls in the nearby trees, the distant music from inside the bar.

And it settles me.

Settles me enough to realize that Ella’s shivering next to me.

Shit.

I wrap an arm around her waist, draw her against my body. “We should go inside,” I tell her.

A shake of her head. “I like it out here.”

Something unlocks in my chest—or maybe it twists. Hard.

Because she’s taking care of me.

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