Page 62 of Promise Me This

The words are out before I can stop them, though I desperately wish I could. Callum’s gaze falls to the stone beneath our feet, his shoulders slumping.

“I’m sorry, forget I said that.” My whisper is barely audible above the wind, but he hears it. I know he does, because he looks up at me, tilting his head to the side as he takes me in.

“I was going to bring you here when you came back.” He scuffs his shoe against the boulder. His eyes are solemn and calculating, a mixture I never thought I’d see on his face. “I always thought I’d propose to you on this rock.”

As much wind as there is swirling around us, all of it is knocked right out of me. My lungs empty themselves in protest, my veins constrict, my heart grows tight as a clenched fist. I can see it. I wish so badly I couldn’t, but there it is, right in front of me.

The life we could’ve had.

If I’d called him the moment the test was positive. If I’d gotten on a plane, abandoned my degree, and come back to him. In this life, Poppy was healthy, because everything only went wrong when I started making bad decisions. In the version of our lives where I made the right ones, she was okay. She was alive.

We’d raise her in the little white cottage. I’d write for a local paper or get a different job entirely, and we’d take Poppy to stay with her granny every day while we worked. She’d have wild blonde curls and green eyes like saucers. She’d play with the neighbor’s kittens and run around with half-done French braids at all times.

Niamh. I’m picturing Niamh, who wouldn’t exist in this version of our lives. I can hear the wistfulness in Callum’s voice, but he doesn’t know what it is he’s wishing for. A life where his daughter never existed. A life where his other daughter didn’t die.

I almost tell him in that moment. When he looks at me with that intensity burning in his gaze, I almost spill my guts right on the boulder. It’s selfish, the desire to lay it all out for him. Because I want him to understand why I didn’t return, to know that I never meant to break my promise. I want him to love me again, if that’s even possible. I want to be forgiven.

But how could I add any more pain to a loss I already can never undo? Is the desire to tell him really about what’s best for him, or is it me simply trying to unload this sadness on another person, on the only person who could come close to understanding the profundity of my loss?

Perhaps the right thing to do is to carry it, pain and all. To protect him from the regret I will live with forever.

I press my lips into a thin line, swallowing back all the words that want to pour out of me. When I’m certain that I’ve got them contained in the small, cancerous cell of my heart, I open my mouth to speak.

And Callum captures my words on his lips.

His arm sweeps around my back, pulling me to him, while his other hand moves to twine in my hair. I’m shielded from the wind, enveloped in the heat of his body, the scent of him coursing through me and bringing me to life. Our lips move in tandem, opening and exploring. When his tongue presses against my lips, I open for him, and then we are tasting one another and breathing the same sacred air.

I can feel the hard contours of his chest. My hands cling to the fabric of his sweater, drawing him closer but never close enough. I want to forget everything but this. Everything but him and me.

The one thing we ever got right.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Callum

The frigid wind whips frantically around us, but it cannot penetrate the sensual heat of Leo’s tongue moving in tandem with mine. I’m warmed by her hands clinging to the small of my back. In return, I cradle her jaw, and the flush of her desire works as kindling for the fire beneath my fingertips.

She tastes familiar and brand-new, all at once. Something shatters inside of me. I’m not sure if it’s my resolve or the bitterness I’ve held on to all these years, but I’m left trembling with need. We are flush against one another, the softness of her stomach pressing against my hard length. Her back arches, driving her breasts tightly into my ribs. I want all of her. Damn the cold and the cars driving past and God’s own viewpoint of this fucking boulder. If she’d let me, I’d lay her down right here and show her just how badly I’ve missed her.

A groan forming deep in my chest dissolves into a whimper when she pulls away. Her cheeks are wet, and so are mine. With whose tears, I couldn’t say.

I stroke a thumb over her supple skin, wiping away the pain we’ve both carried for far too long. I may not know everything that burdens her, but I know enough. I know that I’m capable of shouldering the weight.

“Let’s go home, Leo.”

Her mouth, red and swollen where I’ve bitten and sucked and licked, parts slightly, like she intends to speak. Something flashes in the depths of her eyes, and her lips clamp shut. She nods instead, weaving her hand through mine and allowing herself to be guided back to the car.

As we wind along the narrow road that leads back to the valley, and beyond that, Cahersiveen, Leo remains quiet. Her gaze is trained on the window, the glass fogging each time she exhales. If it wasn’t for her hand balanced on my left knee, and her thumb gently sweeping back and forth in comforting strokes, I’d be terrified that I’ve driven her away.

“Penny for your thoughts?” My question is punctuated by the windshield wipers squeaking to life to combat the sudden drizzle.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watch her lips quirk upward, but the gesture does not carry with it any sense of amusement. It’s hollow. It’s pained.

I fight the urge to lurch the car to the side of the road, grab her by the waist, and haul her into my lap, where I can hold her closely and protect her from whatever memories cause her to suffer so. Our kiss made me feel triumphant, and yet it seems to have done the opposite for her.

“I’m thinking about fear,” she says matter-of-factly. Her voice is quieter than the rain, and I have to strain to hear her clearly. “About how it changes you, and how, if at all, you can change it.”

She’s facing straight ahead now, but her eyes are unseeing, gone to a place I can’t quite reach.

---