Page 61 of Until I Found You
Her body trembles against me, as the tears start to flow down her face.
“Graham,” she cries, her arms wound tightly. I feel her tears against my neck as trembles rack through her body.
“You’re okay. We’re both okay,” I say to her, doing my best to remain calm even though I feel like I’m about to lose my mind.
She crawls over the seat into my lap and I hold her, doing my best to calm her down. We sit like this for a few minutes, until her tears have dried and her body has stopped shaking.
“I’ll drive us the rest of the way to my place.”
She nods her head. The adrenaline that was once racing through her has eased and now she’s crashing. The exhaustion weighing her down, as her eyes begin to droop.
I move to open the door and she scoots over into the seat. Closing the door behind me, I race to the other side and slip into the driver’s seat. I try to make quick work of getting us back to my place. Thankfully, we’re not too far now so it only takes a couple of minutes.
Her forehead is pressed against the glass of the window, as she looks out with her body curled up into a ball. Her arms are wrapped tightly around her legs, and I realize now how fragile she looks.
“You ready to head inside?”
It takes a minute before she unwraps herself, looking over at me.
“Graham, I was so scared,” she says, as the tears fill her eyes again.
I tell her to hang on a sec as I turn the car off and come around to her side, helping her out. She doesn’t hesitate when I wrap my arms around her lower back and her legs, picking her up. She tangles her arms around my neck, holding onto me as I carry her inside.
She helps grab the keys from my pocket and unlocks the door. Kicking the door shut behind me, I don’t stop as I take her down the hall and into my bedroom. Setting her on the edge of my mattress, I press a soft kiss against her lips.
“I know you were scared,” I whisper to her. “I was scared too.”
In fact, I was terrified. Images flash before my eyes of me racing down the side of the road, the gravel crunching beneath my feet as my lungs burned with every deep breath I struggled to take. I envision the red and blue lights from the emergency responders, as I frantically look around for Gage, hoping to see him standing around or being loaded into the ambulance.
I learned painfully that day that he had died at the scene of the accident, and as much as I wished otherwise, they wouldn’t be transporting him to the hospital. No, they would be pronouncing him dead at the scene and taking him directly to the morgue.
Watching the ambulance drive away that night without Gage in the back was hard enough to accept. Knowing that I would never see him or talk to him again was a painful reminder that life can change in an instant. Nothing is guaranteed, and in a moment, it can be taken from you.
All this time I felt regretful for what happened to Gage, feeling like it was my actions that put him on the road that night. It was my reckless behavior that made him have to come get me and if it wasn’t for me, he would’ve never been there. He never would’ve got into that accident.
Now it’s a painful reminder that life is too short.
“I don’t know what I’d do if something would’ve happened to you,” I say, the thought of losing her causes my voice to crack.
It’s now that the tears that were threatening to fall begin their slow descent down her soft cheeks. Wrapping my hands around her face, I press a deep kiss against her lips and hope that without words she feels every emotion pouring out of me and into her. I hope she understands everything I want to say but just can’t find the words because I’m so overwhelmed, I just want to hold her. I want to remind myself that she’s here with me, and even though we haven’t talked about it, I want to believe she’s mine.
When our lips break apart, she wraps her hands around my wrists and we just sit here with our foreheads pressed together. Our warm breaths mix together, reminding us that we’re both here and alive.
“Will you take a shower with me and then hold me tonight?”
I want to wash away the smell of dirt and exhaust from our bodies and lie together, with her wrapped in my arms.
“Of course,” I say, grabbing her by the hand and leading her into the bathroom located off my bedroom suite.
We don’t say a word as we both help undress each other. With every piece of clothing that is stripped away, I feel like every wall that’s been built up between us falls away too.
Standing here together, under the water steadily falling from the shower, I wrap my arms around her and just appreciate the feel of her skin against mine.
Halle presses a soft kiss against my chest, just over my heart as she circles her arms around my waist. When she peers up at me now, it’s like my heart stops beating for a moment, when I see the love on her face shining back at me.
Then when the words that follow pass her lips, I want to fall to my knees and wrap my arms around her waist, just thanking God and heaven for this woman.
“I love you.”
I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve her. I don’t deserve her one bit. Her light and her goodness, she’s everything that’s right in this cruel world.
When I tell her I love her back, I kiss her with so much passion I let myself believe for a moment I do deserve her. Lord knows, I wish I did. With every ounce that’s left in me, I wish I deserved her, and I vow to spend the rest of my life trying to prove to her I do.
