Page 91 of Promise Me This

“I’ll miss you every time it rains, because I’ll imagine we’re together by the inn’s fireplace, with Niamh cuddled up between us.”

We separate long enough to remove our pants and underwear. It’s clumsy yet romantic in its honesty. I straddle him once more, this time with nothing left to separate us.

“I will miss you every second,” he breathes.

“So will I,” I say, and I cannot even bring myself to cry because I’m so grateful that I get to love someone this much.

A smile quirks his lips. “Should we skip the condom again? Take our chances?”

I throw my head back and laugh so hard it hurts. So hard that the sadness gives way to joy.

When at last I’m able to catch my breath, I grin at him and shake my head. “No, not this time. If you’re going to get me pregnant again, let’s do it when I get to stay right here with you.”

The words tumble out of me without a thought, but then his eyes soften and my heartbeat trips over itself.

“I’d like that,” he whispers.

“I would, too,” I say, and realize that I mean it.

He retrieves a condom from his pants pocket, the confident bastard, and rolls it onto himself. Then he’s inside me and all around me, and I move against him in a slow rhythm meant to build rather than break. His lips find my ear and then my neck, and then he draws my head backward with a fistful of my hair and flicks his tongue over my nipple. The resulting moan passes over my lips and echoes from his.

I roll my hips, feeling my clit rub against him, and that arcs my pleasure higher. His rough hands fall to my waist, keeping my rhythm steady while he licks and sucks and nibbles at my breasts. It is all-encompassing, the feeling of him inside me and touching me and loving me. I give myself over to him, and he does so in return.

He groans, low at first, and then louder when he reaches that peak. His fingertips dig into the soft flesh of my hips as he thrusts up into me, losing himself in the pleasure he finds. I capture the sound of his orgasm with my lips, swallowing his air the moment he breathes it.

He shudders beneath me, and his eyelids flutter open. “What do you need?”

I shake my head. There’s too much emotion in me to think about finishing. “Just this.”

He nods as if he can hear what I haven’t said, and then lets his forehead rest against mine. “Is it crazy to think we were meant for each other.”

“It’d be crazy to believe we weren’t.”

A sigh escapes his lips, tickling mine. “Promise you’ll come back to me.”

My throat constricts at the familiar words. In my head I see us as we were. I see the positive test lying on my college apartment’s bathroom counter. I see the sonograms and my rounded belly, and I see our daughter, still against my chest.

But I also see the house at the end of the gravel road, with hydrangeas growing in the backyard. I see Niamh running to greet me with her arms open wide, and I see Callum leaning against the doorframe with a smile as bright as the sun spread across his face.

“I promise,” I say, and I mean it.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Callum

The best day of my life doesn’t start the way I thought it would. For the past eight months, when I pictured the day Leo would return to Ireland, it involved a silver-screen level of romanticism. I’d be standing just outside airport security, dressed to the nines with a large bouquet of roses in my hands, ready to welcome her the moment she stepped over the threshold.

Instead my fingers are tangled in Niamh’s curls, trying to turn them into some semblance of a plait. But I can never do it the way Leo does it, according to my daughter. Now that she’s tasted perfection, she’ll settle for nothing less.

“Would you prefer to go to school with your hair down?” I ask, peering down at her uniform to check for any specks of powdered sugar. I made crepes to celebrate the occasion, not realizing the potential mess I was signing up for when I did.

She contemplates the question, her blonde eyebrows scrunching into one long line of indecisiveness. “Can Leona call to remind you how?”

I snort. “It’s three in the morning her time.”

What Niamh doesn’t know, because we’ve decided to surprise her, is that the real reason Leo can’t video chat is because she’s currently landing in Dublin airport, over three-hundred kilometers away. Padraig’s there in the receiving line, taking my rightful place sans roses. It irks me, but I couldn’t bear to miss my daughter’s first day of school, nor would Leo ask me to.

Niamh sighs dramatically before hoisting herself off the chair and skipping over to the antique mirror hung in the hall. She looks over her wild curls, turning her head this way and that, before squaring her shoulders and turning to me.

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