Page 7 of Bride for Keeps

She didn’t mind. Not at all. It made her feel powerful instead of weak, important and elemental instead of inconsequential and small.

They fell to the bed, panting and naked, a tangle of limbs. She crawled on top of him, and she guided him inside, watching as their bodies joined in one long, slick slide.

She gasped. It had been so long and she’d forgotten somehow in the weight of all this awfulness that it could feel good, feel right, to be joined with another person. Withhim. Even when things didn’t work,thisworked. Sierra and Carter worked.

She moved against him, but she didn’t look at him. Fear tangled with all that pulsing want, and she was afraid if she looked at him it would feel like goodbye. It wasn’t an end. It was a hope. Skin to skin, heart to heart.

She had to believe in hope. They wouldn’t behereif he didn’t feel something for her.

He rolled her over, strong and in charge as ever, the complete opposite of what he’d been the past few months. This was Carter.HerCarter.

She reached up and touched his face, allowed herself to look into those blue eyes she loved so much. They were cloudy with desire, his mouth and jaw hard, and there was a moment where she wanted to say something important. Tell him she loved him and that she needed him. Something, anything. Cement them here where things made sense.

But he moved, ruthless and knowing, making words jumble in her head. The orgasm crashed over her in a rush, and he followed on a pained groan, deep inside of her.

He dropped his forehead to hers, something he’d always done in the aftermath. That intimate touch a sign. A promise.

They could fix this. They could. She sighed contentedly. Theywould.None of this would have happened if things were hopeless.

But when she woke up later in the dark, she was alone in their bed. Carter was gone. His coat. His shoes. Him.

He’d left without a goodbye—not long after she’d fallen asleep if she had to guess by the fact it was only three in the morning.

She lay there for she didn’t know how long, the heavy weight of the truth finally getting through all her fears, all her love, and all her hope.

They couldn’t fix this.

*

Carter stayed awayfor a week. It was cowardly. He knew it, and he also knew he should be disgusted with himself for the way he’d bungled things.

He shouldn’t have slept with her. Not now. He wasn’t in the right frame of mind. He hadn’t been able to fully…cope yet.

She deserved a man whose world wasn’t upturned by a family secret. A man who didn’t struggle to sleep and eat because he couldn’t fathom not being what he thought he was.

It was wrong to have given in until he could find a way to fix this dark fog that had enveloped him. He needed to be at his best for her. Strong and in control and the man she’d fallen in love with, not this strange…shell.

But fixing this feeling, emerging from this darkness was eluding him, and he didn’t know how much longer he could simply…exist. But what other options were there?

Like he had for five months, he came up completely and utterly empty. Him. The man who was supposed to be smart and able to diagnose most anything couldn’t find his own solution to his own problem.

“There you are.”

He glanced up at his sister as she strode into the hospital cafeteria.Half-sister. Lina only had a few months left of her residency here, and Carter didn’t think she had plans to stick around Marietta once that was over.

He wondered if Dad had figured that out with everything else going on. Or had Lina used the diagnosis and aftermath to hide her plans? Because their father wouldnotbe happy if she left.

Her dad. Not yours.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Lina demanded, fisting a hand on her hip. He’d never envied that edge of hers before, but here in this moment he did. He envied her certainty and her strength when it felt like all his had been sucked out when his father had delivered that blow.

You aren’t really a McArthur.Everything he’d spent thirty-some years trying to be. She was. Cole was. He wasn’t.

“Carter,” Lina repeated.

Carter pushed away his thoughts, looked down at his untouched dinner. “I’m…eating dinner.” Sort of.

“With yourwife, you idiot. What the hell are you doing with Sierra?”

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