Page 21 of Trusting Trey
I frowned a little, reaching for the blanket and pulling it over me. He shook his head. "Don't, you're beautiful, please don't try to hide from me."
I allowed him to move the blanket again, but all the while his eyes were on mine. "I assumed you came to Duluth for your job. At least, that's what you led me to believe."
He rested his hand on my belly and the heat of it was comforting. "I did that on purpose. Maybe if we had started dating in a more conventional way I would have told you, but not when you've been recovering from your own horrors."
"You lost someone," I deduced and he nodded. "Was it your wife?"
He shook his head. "No, a girl I dated. She died in a car accident when I was in college. I never told her how I felt about her and it was only after she died that I understood I loved her. Her family blamed me for her death and I guess in a way I was to blame."
"Were you driving?" I asked, putting my hand over his, still on my belly.
"No, I went to school in White Bear Lake, which is about twenty minutes away from Minneapolis. She was driving to meet me for dinner when she hit a patch of ice and spun out. A semi-truck then smashed her into a road barrier. She died on impact. Her family was hurting and I understood that, but the sting of their words combined with my guilt, and unexpected feelings about her, left me looking for a new start after graduation."
I rubbed his hand under mine. "I'm sorry, you know it wasn't your fault, right?"
He smiled. "I knew that then and I know it now, but I couldn't bring myself to date again afterward. I didn't want to experience those feelings ever again. Then I met you."
"But we dated before this happened, well once I guess."
He shook his head a little and looked up at the ceiling as though it would help him explain what he wanted to say. "It wasn't the one date we went on, Allie. It was the fact that I met you once and couldn't get you out of my head. I went to the library that Sunday night because I was praying you would be there. I had to see you again, and if you weren't there, I would have asked about you. You were the first woman I had let into my heart in three years. When I met you, I started to see a future again. Since I've had you here with me, it has become even more obvious. I can't deny how I feel about you any longer."
"How do you feel about me?" I whispered, his seriousness scaring me.
He smiled and held a hand to my face. "I want to tell you, but I don't want to scare you. I don't want you to be uncomfortable and have to find someplace else to live."
I shook my head no, and took his hand in mine. "Tell me, so I can tell you how I'm feeling."
He took a deep breath and whispered, "I love you, Allie, and not just as a friend. I love you more every day we’re together. Living with you has given me an insight into how our life could be together if you would trust me with your heart."
I felt a tear run down my cheek at his words. "I do trust you," I whispered. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't trust you, Trey, and I don't just mean with my body. I trust you with my heart because I love you, too, so much, but I haven’t wanted to say it. Up until now I've been living on the edge, constantly worried about what would happen to me if you decided you were done taking care of me."
He was shaking his head vehemently, and his hand grasped my side. "I'll always take care of you."
"But I may never get any better than I am right now, Trey. You could end up taking care of me for the rest of your life and I don't want to be that kind of burden to you."
He leaned down and kissed me, and my argument fell away. My heart was happy and broken at the same time. I loved this man more than I ever thought possible, and my accident could be the reason we can’t be together. His lips prodded and tried to convince me that what he said was true. I reacted, putting my arms around his neck and holding him to me like a lifeline.
He left his lips on mine, but spoke. “Right now you’re the only one who believes you’re a burden. I don’t care if you’re in a wheelchair, Allie. You’re more than the wheelchair, and I don’t even see it anymore. If my feelings for you weren’t strong and lasting would I have invited you to live at my house? Would I have come out in the middle of the night to find you?” I shook my head under his lips and he kissed me again, passionately, and the words he didn’t say, he conveyed with his lips.
“I don’t have smoke in my eyes about what life with you would be like, Allie,” he said, kissing my neck and trailing his lips up to my earlobe. “This is a moment in time that makes you feel alone, but you aren’t,” he assured me, tugging on my earlobe and kissing his way back down my neck. “I’m here and I’ll carry you wherever you need to go because life comes and goes in waves. Soon you’ll see that regardless of whether your legs work or not, you have an overflowing amount of love to share with this world, and with me. I’ve only known you a few months, but I would be lost without you if you ever left. Don’t ever leave me,” he begged, claiming my lips again and kissing me with abandon. His hands roamed up and down my sides, his thumbs rubbing against my breasts as they went by.
I whimpered and tried to pull him closer to me. My cries triggered something deep inside him and he ripped his lips from mine, and rested his forehead on my collarbone. “I want you right now, Allie. You’re lying in my bed, warm and naked, and all I want to do is make you mine so you never leave me.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I whisper promised. “I want to spend every night in your bed with your arms around me instead of alone in the other room. Every night feels never ending when I close my eyes and relive the last months over and over. I want to cry out for you. I want you to comfort me and tell me it’s going to be okay. I want you to make love to me and give me memories to relive that don’t scare me.”
His hands went into his hair and he left them there, fisted as though it was the only way he could keep from touching me. “I wish I had known that, sweetheart. I would hear you cry out and I would come to you, rubbing your shoulder or back until you settled down again. Sometimes, I stayed and watched you sleep, memorizing every inch of your face because I couldn’t sleep knowing how much you suffered.”
I reached up and touched his cheek. “I love you, Trey, for everything you do that I don’t even know you’re doing.”
He took my hand off his face and laid it back on the bed. “I love you too, but it’s time for you to get some sleep or maybe it’s just time to cover you up before I kiss every inch of you in this bed.”
He tried to pull the blanket over me, but I touched his hand to stop it. “What if I want you to kiss every inch of me in this bed?”
He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “I don’t want to hurt you, Allie.”
I pushed myself up into a sitting position and ran my hands up under his t-shirt. “You’re not going to hurt me,” I promised, pulling his t-shirt over his head until he sat before me in jeans only. I ran my hands up through the soft curly hair on his chest, up and down, feeling his muscles rippling and his chest heaving with the magnitude of the emotions swirling in his eyes. The jeans did little to hide his arousal, and I ran my palm across it. A hiss went through his teeth as I moved my hand up and down.
“Allie, are you sure I won’t hurt you?” he asked, laying me back on the bed and climbing over the top of me. He moaned a little as my breasts swayed from the motion. “I want to be with you, but I don’t want to hurt you.”
