Page 24 of The Fate of Us

I know she’s close. I shift my hips to hit her right where I know it will bring her over the edge.

I look into her eyes just before we both come and I see everything in them.

I see the ghosts of my past disappearing.

I see the woman I love.

I see my future.

“Anna,” I shout as we both find our release.

Her lips are on mine and I fall backward, her body lying on me. I manage to kick off my jeans that were still around the bottom of my legs.

I roll us to the side so we are lying face to face. I brush a wild curl off her face and cup her cheek. “I love you, Anna May Cooper.”

She smiles as she presses a kiss into my hand. “I love you too.”

I never thought I would find someone like her. Someone that made me forget all the shit that happened in the past. All the shit that made me want to never feel like this again. But letting myself go, letting myself love her, it feels like the best thing in the world.

I slowly remove the lingerie she has on. Giving her body every ounce of attention it deserves before I make love to her over and over again.

8

Anna

“If you keep bitingon that lip, I won’t have anything to kiss later,” Noah says to me as we drive to my parents’ house.

We just dropped Jed’s car off at his house and now I am in the car with Noah for the fifteen-minute drive over. I was glad he wasn’t in the car with me from South Carolina because I bit off every one of my nails and bit the inside of my cheek so hard it started bleeding.

I know I am going to have to tell my family the truth. The rumor’s out. Everyone knows that Becca had a kid with Kyle. But I need to let them know everything. They deserve it.

I tried to convince Noah to let us stay one more day in the cottage but he said we needed to spend a day in Hartswell. I knew he was right but I loved the time we had together at the cottage. The day after we went to dinner we spent between the sheets. We watched the sun rise and set and spent some time outside, but most of the day was spent in the arms of each other.

It felt good to give in to my feelings. To let myself finally tell him I loved him. And instead of being scared when it happened, waiting for him to pull away from me, he didn’t. He showed me what those words meant to him. And when he told me them in return, my heart nearly burst.

This feels like love.

Not what I thought was love with Kyle.

This is a feeling I never felt before and it had me high as a kite yesterday.

But today I am scared as shit. I don’t know how my family is going to react. Especially when they find out how much of a dick he was and how much I put up with.

I still wonder why I didn’t break up with him sooner. Why I didn’t let myself think about how his behavior changed.

Every mile we get closer to my parents’, the panic starts to set in a bit more. All the thoughts I let disappear when I was with Noah at the cottage come flooding back. My breathing gets heavier as I try to find a way to calm down. My thoughts turning to Noah, wondering if this is all a dream. If I’ll wake up and he will be gone.

I don’t even notice the car pull over to the side of the road until Noah is gripping my cheeks. “Baby, it’s going to be okay.”

I start to sniffle. “I need to tell them everything, Noah. How are they going to react when they find out what I put up with? What I hid from them for years?”

Noah brushes a tear from my cheek. “They won’t think any less of you. You did nothing wrong. They already know the worst parts of it all. They are just going to want to make sure you are okay.”

I nod as I try to find my breath.

“You are strong and resilient. It’s going to be okay.”

I take a deep breath as I find a bit of peace with Noah’s touch. But then Becca’s face floats through my mind. “What about Becca?”

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