Page 31 of Secrets Within Us

I should do it.

She deserved to be rid of me.

But fuck, I couldn’t make my body do what my brain told me to do. I couldn’t let her leave me like this.

I stood up and carried my uneaten dinner to Dev’s bowl and pushed it into the stainless steel. It was a fucking shame to do it too, because Hadley was an incredible cook and the ziti and garlic bread were the best I’d ever tasted before, but my appetite shriveled up with my heart when she asked about my wife.

God, hearing the word wife on the lips of the woman I was enamored with, gutted me.

Pain radiated through my chest as I turned to look at her back, but she wouldn’t face me where she stood with her fingers gripping the edge of the sink in a death grip. “I’m going to go out and do some more chores. Keep Dev inside and lock the door behind me.” I said, but she still didn’t respond. I layered up and told Dev to stay when he tried to follow me out, and I walked out into the freezing night.

Letting out a heavy sigh under the cover of the porch, I slung the rifle over my back and watched as my breath evaporated into a mist above my head as the cold destroyed it.

The cold never bothered me before. But since feeling the warmth in Hadley’s arms, I was aching for something more.

Something deeper than just the drifts under my feet as I walked down to the wood shack, intent on splitting logs for the fireplace until I couldn’t lift my arms again.

Maybe after that, I could come up with a way to make her forgive me.

Six hours of backbreaking work numbed my brain and wreaked havoc on my body as I trudged back up the steps to the cabin. It was one am, and I’d watched the lights turn out in the living room hours ago and it had taken all I had inside of me to not come back then, sliding into bed against Hadley’s warm body and using my body to distract her from all of my inadequacies.

Instead, I’d forced myself to stay outside in the cold for hours more until I was dead on my feet. I silently entered the house and motioned for Dev to stay where he was on the couch as I kicked off my boots and shed the layers of my protective clothing. The fire burned brightly, warming the living space, and casting a bright warm glow over the area, highlighting the beautiful woman who had stolen my desire to live alone in quiet torture like I had been doing for the last four years.

Hadley sat in the chair she loved in the corner by the fire, with her head tilted to the side and her knees to her chest, covered by the warm blanket I’d covered her with the first night she sat down there with me. She was asleep and my body ached to feel hers against it as I watched her silently.

“Fucking hell,” I muttered and took off my shirt until I stood before her in only a pair of jeans and socks and slowly slid my arms under her body. She startled in her sleep, instinctively wrapping her arms around my neck at the sensation of being lifted as her eyes fluttered open and looked up at me in the darkness.

“Kip.” She whispered, looking down at my bare chest and then back up into my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said, unable to offer anything else. “Let me hold you tonight.” I implored her, fearing that she would tell me to go to hell and deny me what I unreasonably asked of her. Instead, she just sighed and laid her head on my shoulder, taking a deep breath against my neck.

“I missed you.” She breathed, and I could hear the gloom in her voice.

“I shouldn’t have left. I just… wanted to give you space.” As I cleared the top of the stairs and walked us into my bedroom, I elaborated, “But I can’t stay away. Something about you pulls me in.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” She stated sadly as I gently laid her down in the center of my bed.

Our bed.

If she wasn’t in it, I knew it would never beckon to me again.

“I know.” Shedding my jeans, I nestled beside her and drew her body snugly against mine. “I don’t mean to.”

“You can’t help if that’s how you feel.” She replied, settling her head on my chest and taking a deep breath. “I’ve never mattered to another human being even one time in my life, I shouldn’t hope to start now.”

“I don’t want you to leave.” Into the silence, I confessed, “I don’t know how to be what you need me to be either.”

She didn’t respond as she laid in my arms, after a while she finally spoke. “I grew up in foster care.” She paused, and I could tell she was fighting with herself to open up with me. “I’ve never belonged anywhere, or to anyone. I’ve never cared about it much either, because I could come and go as I pleased and didn’t have to answer to anyone. So if this isn’t where I’m supposed to be, then I’ll move on, Kip.”

There was no need for me to respond, as the silence hung heavy in the air, filled with unspoken words. The connection between us was going to fizzle out if I didn’t come clean to her and she would not bear all to me unless I took the first step.

I just didn’t know how to take one step without watching it all implode once I put things into motion.

Chapter 11 - Hadley

Secrets

Afew days later, we were in the same loop of activities like we weren’t living on borrowed time. Kip left early to go out and do chores, leaving me alone in the house, once again.

---