Page 21 of Between Our Hearts

“I’m not complaining.” He let a devilish smile accompany his words as his thumb played with her lowest rib.

Her eyes widened slightly before they fell to his mouth again, and that was all it took. Lips and tongues and hands played as the strong bassline thrummed on the opposite side of the door. The vibrations of the music pulsed through the wood barrier into his spine.

She looked down, fisting his shirts in her right hand and bringing their edges up over his waistband. This incredible half-hum/half-grunt came out of her mouth, and he was absolutely certain he’d never heard a sexier noise.

“You have my favorite feature.” Her fingertips tickled the skin over the angled groove peeking over his belt. “Colloquially, it’s called an Adonis belt, but it’s actually made of the inguinal ligament and the transverse abdominis.”

Clark tightened his abs and tilted his hip so her fingers would get lost deeper in the groove, and that same sound ripped free from her throat again.

His hand roughly found the edge of her jaw, tilting it up and capturing her lips in another drugging kiss. “Tell me you live nearby.”

The smile that curled her mouth made everything in him clench. “Right across the complex.”

“Perfect,” he rasped, a second before he crushed his mouth to the crook of her neck.

Clark had never felt that kind of immediate connection with a woman before. It had been jarring as much as it had been addicting. After that point, he’d taken as much of Sadie as he could get.

His wife seemed to be lost in the same memory as the back of her index finger traced the part of her neck that he’d sucked on years ago. That single simple action almost made him want to throw this whole plan out the window.

He swallowed hard, organizing his thoughts. “Everything has always been such a whirlwind. Maybe we should take the time now. I’d like to take you out. Bring you flowers. The whole nine yards.”

“You’ve gotten me flowers before.”

He ran a sawdust-covered hand over his face. “Love, you’re not listening to me. I want to take things slow. I want us to spend time together that isn’t wrapped up in parenting or trying to achieve a goal.” He knew that statement would cause her to bristle, but it needed to be said.

Sadie stood silently for several beats until she quickly twisted her wrist—her tell for when she was nervous about something.

The gesture made his chest ache. Maybe he wasn’t alone in this. Maybe she was as anxious as he was about the degradation of their relationship.

Her answer came out as a single breathy word. “Okay.”

“One more thing,” he began, carefully watching her expression. “No sex.”

Her lips tensed, but she kept herself from frowning.

“The point of us dating is to spend time together for the sake of it.” And hopefully for them to find a way to reconnect. “I don’t want to blur any lines.”

Her jaw worked, but she stayed silent. Instead, she gave him a single curt nod.

“I know it’s Mother’s Day, so I thought we’d keep it easy—dinner and a movie.”

Sadie took a deep breath before she finally said, “Fine.”

He waited for her to say more, but in the end, she claimed she had charts to finish and then strode back into the night air.

Clark waited to turn his saw back on. He needed his heart to slow down and his hands to stop shaking so that he wouldn’t accidentally lose any fingers. Instead, the tips of them cradled his forehead as he let out a resigned exhale. She’d said yes, he should be pleased, but the way she’d resisted had cut through him like a diamond-bladed circular saw.

Time.

This was going to take time. It’d taken them a year to get here, and it was going to take time to get back. As he flipped the machine back on and continued to cut perfect forty-five degree angles, he hoped that it wasn’t too late.

?Chapter 11?

As it turns out, Sadie never got to have a date night with her husband on Mother’s Day because at two in the afternoon, she was jolted from sleep by Clark calling her, slightly panicked, from the pediatric dentist’s office. Though she’d technically gotten eight hours of sleep since she’d crawled into bed after her long call night at six a.m.—thirty minutes before Clark’s alarm—sleeping during the day always made her disoriented.

Since southern summer had already arrived, she’d thrown on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, shoved her feet into sandals, and was racing to the location Clark texted her before realizing she’d never gone to the bathroom or brushed her teeth. Sadie hadn’t been to the pediatric dentist’s office, but the building held the same beige squat architecture common of medical offices.

Pulling into the empty parking lot next to Clark’s slate grey truck, an unexpected nervousness swept through her. She shook it off, straightened her frame, and strode into the office like it was her own OR.

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