Page 65 of Promise Me This

With that, he removes them and lets my legs fall to each side. The bundle of black lace, however, is tucked into his back pocket while a wicked grin stretches across his face. “I’m keeping them.”

I can’t control the sound that rips out of my lungs then, caught somewhere between a moan and a sigh and a yelp, but it drives him wild. I’m spread before him, and I don’t feel an ounce of shame. Instead I’m consumed by the heavy want coursing through my veins.

He grabs one leg and tosses it over my other, turning me onto my side. Before I can process what is happening, his teeth sink into the flesh of my ass, and I cry out in pleasure. He covers it with a gentle press of his lips, then smiles up at me. “My favorite part of you. I’m so glad you kept it.”

The shamrock tattoo in question is little more than a dark blob on my ass cheek after twelve years, but he strokes it with a calloused thumb like it’s a miracle. I got it late one night in Dublin after one too many Baby Guinness shots and a lot of enthusiasm from Callum.

The memory brings a warmth to my heart that only serves to make the moment that much more intense. He surges forward, balancing himself over me so I feel his weight but am not responsible for it. When he presses his lips to mine once more, I can taste the faint remnants of myself on his tongue, and the resulting throb between my legs has me desperately fumbling with his zipper.

His hand moves from my exposed hip to roam beneath my sweater until he finds my breast and squeezes it, his thumb roughly grazing my nipple through the scant lace of my bralette. I roll flat onto my back once more, opening my thighs for him to settle between them. He falls into place like he never left.

I’m frantically pushing his waistband down, and he chuckles. “Why are you in such a rush, love? I want to take my time with you.” He leans back as he draws my sweater upward. “I’ve missed you so.”

The emotion that fills my throat is enough to drown in, so I simply nod. The last thing I see before my shirt travels over my head and steals my vision is his lazy grin and the dim rays of light reflected in his eyes.

His teeth graze my nipple before I’m even free of the sweater. As he flicks his tongue against the lace, his hand works the other nipple, pinching and rolling it exactly the way I’ve always loved. He either remembers or is a damn good guesser. My money’s on the former.

His mouth travels to my rib cage, kissing and nipping me there, which causes goose bumps to break out over my sensitive flesh. His golden hair glows in the moonlight, and I run my fingers through it, admiring the way it shines. He moans like I’ve just stroked the perfect spot, so I repeat the motion, tugging slightly harder at the waves I’ve gathered in my fist this time. What can only be described as a purr rumbles in his throat.

My gaze falls on the muscles in his back as he travels farther down my body. They move with a predator’s grace, scarred by angry red lines where my nails traveled their surface. I’m so distracted by the broad expanse of his shoulders that I almost forget about my stomach. About the silver bands of memory that strike through my core, now bared on display for him.

I could ignore them. Am trying to. But then he presses gentle, featherlight kisses to them on his southern-bound path, and my heart roars to the surface, forcing my brain to take note. To still. To bear witness.

He must sense the shift in my mood. He was always good at that, at knowing when he’d found a new place to lick and suck based on the fervent way my hips would strive toward him without any command on my part. Likewise he immediately knew not to touch the bend of my knee by the way I froze the only time he ever did it, skin crawling for no good reason other than it just felt wrong to be touched there, in that hollow place.

His gaze flickers up to meet mine, taking a reading on my reaction before glancing back down at the skin he’s just tasted. A soft chuckle passes over his lips. “Oh, love, you don’t think a few stretch marks are going to turn me off, do you?” He grins a wicked, Cheshire smile before sitting back on his heels and holding out an arm for me to examine. There, on the swell of his bicep, a band of silver marks the pattern of his growth. “We’ve all got them; nothing to be embarrassed about.”

And I try, damn it, to accept the out he’s offering me. To swallow the guilt and the sadness and all the other darker unnamed emotions that swirl within me, but I can’t breathe. Because Poppy is here, in this room with us. Her presence in those marks on my skin is so palpable I’m convinced I could reach down in this moment and feel her kick, like no time has passed at all since they first appeared.

He studies me with a curious tilt of his head. “What’s wrong?” A rough thumb scrapes over my abdomen before he thinks better of it and withdraws his hand. “We don’t have to keep going. I’ll understand if you’ve changed your mind.”

His kindness, which was meant to envelop me like a warm blanket but instead falls like shrapnel on my nerves, is my undoing. A single tear, rebellious and desperate, slips from the corner of my eye. He tracks its path, brow furrowed, before glancing at the stretch marks once more. “I don’t understand. Leo, you’re beautiful; you shouldn’t be ashamed of your body growi—”

The words stall on his parted lips. His calloused hand flattens over my stomach, a single finger tracing the path of the mark closest to it. A stack of wrinkles form on his forehead as realization, then confusion, then denial take turns flickering in his eyes. He shakes his head, gently at first and then fervently, like he’s begging me to disagree with the truth his mind has landed on.

“Leona,” he chokes out, that finger moving reluctantly now along the only physical reminder I have that our daughter existed. That I housed her in my body. That I stretched to make room for her, for what little time she was here. He hesitates there, seeing but not quite believing, before looking up at me with anguish drenching his features. “How did you know what to do about morning sickness?”

I cannot bring myself to speak, to answer, and that is an answer in and of itself.

“And why were you so upset at the market that day?” he adds. “You bought something from that woman, the one with the toys. And you were upset. Why?”

So he did see. He saw me give her the money, and he may not have heard the words that were spoken, but the pain must’ve been apparent on my face. “Callum, I’ve been trying to find a way to tell you. It just never felt like the right time, and—”

“Leona,” he whispers, removing his hand from my skin like he’s been burned. “Do you have a child?”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Callum

Even in the low light of the room, I can see the color drain from her face. Suddenly she’s the same shade of white as the bedsheets rumpled beneath her. As pale as she’s gone, the lightning strikes surrounding her navel are even lighter. Almost silver.

At first her reaction made no sense. Stretch marks are nothing to be ashamed of, and hell, what human alive doesn’t have one or two from weight gain or building muscle or just growing a few inches over the course of one pubescent summer? Besides, the Leo I knew and loved never cared about her body’s imperfections. Not around me, at least.

But her stillness. That lonely tear streaking down her face. After a double take, and then a triple, recognition like a branding iron seared the nape of my neck. I’d know these marks anywhere. Just five years ago I watched with wonder while Catherine’s belly stretched to accommodate Niamh’s presence, praising her even though she detested the way her skin was marked by those changes.

The pieces slowly fall into place. The haunted look in her eyes at the market that day. The somber way she told that guest how to combat morning sickness. Her fear that she’d only let people down.

Hurt ripples through me, turning over my stomach until I’m certain I’ll be sick. Every emotion I went through the day Catherine walked away, every tear I wiped off our daughter’s face while she grieved an absence she didn’t understand, returns to the forefront of my mind for the first time in years. I’ve worked so hard to push away the anger, the sadness, the impossibility of it all, and in a matter of seconds all that work is undone.

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