Page 114 of Just a Heartbeat Away

“Thank fuck,” he growled, half laughing as he braced his feet against the headboard and pushed forward. “You were killing me.”

He arranged her legs around his waist and braced himself on either side of her head. He was restrained gorgeousness, wild pleasure, an animal, a god. The lamplight lit him from the side as he pumped into her, the bed shaking on its legs and his noises of blurred ecstasy filling the room.

“Everything,” he said into the skin of her neck. “Everything.”

He tightened and pulled back to look in her face. Via had the distinct pleasure of watching Seb spiral out, unravel and come apart at e.v.e.r.y. fucking seam.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“WE’RENOTGOINGto sleep yet, old man.”

Seb cracked an eye at her, blocking out the light with his biceps. “Just a catnap.”

“Nuh-uh.” She sat up, pulling at his arms. “No sleep. It’s only 8:45 at night. I’m feeding you instead.”

That had him pulling his arm away. “What are you making?”

“Come and see.”

She slid all the way down his body to slither out of bed, and it was that more than the promise of food that had him lumbering to his feet. She walked, buck naked, out of his bedroom. He had to follow the woman who’d just destroyed him. Destroyed him and remade him. Seb sat up on the edge of the bed and realized that for the first time in three years, he didn’t feel like an imposter in his own romantic life. He wasn’t acting or faking it. He was exactly where he was supposed to be.

He grabbed his briefs off the floor and joined her in the kitchen, squinting against the bright kitchen lights. He watched as she grabbed his T-shirt off the ground and slipped it on, fishing around in the fridge for food. Seb simply couldn’t believe that he got to touch her. He’d been waiting for her for so long that it still almost didn’t seem real.

Seb took a seat at the barstool and watched while she started making pancakes. He could watch her clean a toilet, and he’d still be amazed at her grace. It felt strange to be anywhere but the bedroom. But especially in the kitchen, after their conversation there. The intensity of it still rang in the air.

“How are you feeling?” she asked him, apparently sensing the same thing. “After all, you know, that?”

“All what? The sex?”

“Uh, sure. But I also meant after my total and complete freak-out.”

He rose and went to her, standing behind her while she flipped pancakes at the griddle. His hands slid under the T-shirt she wore and he hugged her back against him. “You weren’t the only one that freaked out. And I feel...like I just ran a race. You know that loose feeling in your chest? Relieved and tired and healthy.”

She turned to him, her eyes cautious. “It’s not going to be the last time that happens, Seb. I’m not always happy. And I’ve been lonely for so long that it’s changed me. Made a real impact on who I am. It won’t always be as fun to be with me as it might feel right now.”

Seb reached out and flipped off the stove. He picked her up by the hips and walked her into the living room. He sat her down on the couch and crouched in front of her. “Via, I can’t help but feel like you’re stating the obvious here. Let me just be really clear, okay? I understand that you are a complete human being, with a lifetime of complications going on inside you. I’m not looking to carve away the hard parts. I’m not looking for three-quarters of a person to be with. I want the whole thing. All of you. I want a real relationship. Where sometimes your shit gets in the way and sometimes mine does, and we’re patient and we talk about it. I don’t expect you to be issue-free. And I definitely don’t expect our love for each other to just magically dissolve our respective hang-ups. All I want is to keep growing. To keep growing alongside someone I can lean on and who leans on me. And to argue and hold each other accountable and celebrate the good stuff with and make love to and come home to.”

He was breathing hard and gripping her knees. She reached forward and just like that, she was the one comforting him.

She slid forward so that she was wrapped around him, mostly in his arms and mostly off the couch. “You said love.”

He leaned back and took her with him so that she sat on him and he sat on the floor. He made sure to hold her eyes with his. “I don’t know what else it could be.”

“You love me.” It was half question, half disbelief. “You’re sure?”

He tightened his hands around her; he wanted to laugh but could sense the seriousness of the moment. He cast around for a way to explain it. “Via, I’m positive. I’d suspected it for a while, but I knew it the second I walked up to the Botanic Gardens before the wedding. I’ll never forget seeing you in that green dress for the first time. It was like being hit with a hatchet. A clean hit. Right down my center. I got changed from one person into two.”

“What do you mean?”

Well, she was really gonna make him spell it out.

“I mean that before that, everything about me was easy to keep track of. All in one place. And then you happened, and now half of me is walking around in here.” He tapped a heavy finger over her sternum. Like she wouldn’t break. And he knew she wouldn’t.

“Oh, Seb.” She was looking at him now, with such tenderness it almost alarmed him. He was hit with the sudden urge to make sure she understood. Everything.

“I wasn’t a good husband to Cora,” Seb whispered, the words like bitter poison on his tongue. Via was simultaneously the last person he wanted to say this to and the only one he ever could. “But I’m stronger now. Better now. I understand so much more about the world. We’ll figure it out, Violetta. We just have to try together.”

“Seb, I’m in. I’m really, really in for this.”

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