Page 138 of What About Us
“Not real?” he asks, hurt in his voice thick. He cups my face in both of his hands, pulling me in so that our foreheads are touching. “This has always been real for me. Nothing has ever been more real in my life.”
His words hit their mark and my chest aches with a longing to believe him, to throw caution to the wind with all of my insecurities about Tristen, the circumstances surrounding my mama’s cremation, and my worries about him leaving me some day, whether by choice or by force. I shake my head, but I don’t pull away from him. Our breaths mingle together, our lips an inch apart. It would be so easy to close the small distance and lose myself in his kiss, in my best friend, in my husband. The man I’ve come to associate with home.
Idobelieve him. But the words that come out don’t match up with the truth of his. “You’re just saying that because my feelings are hurt,” I manage to whisper.
“No,” he says. His thumbs softly stroke over the apples of my cheeks, swiping away the tears that will not fucking stop. “I love you, Finnley, so goddamn much, and it’s killing me that you can’t see it; won’t accept it for what it is. Please, just accept it for what it is, baby,” he pleads. “Please.”
I can’t take it anymore—his proximity, his scent, his warmth, the way his eyes bore into mine, and the hammer of his heart under my palm. And that’s why I don’t stop him when he tips his chin up and presses his lips to mine. I shudder against him as his hands leave my cheeks and dig into the hair at the back of my neck.
“Please believe me,” he murmurs against my lips, and I sink into his arms, mine finding their way up to snake around his neck.
I’m nearly climbing him, trying to push closer as I fist the neck of his shirt. It’s a desperate kiss, full of longing and everything we’ve both felt for so long, and I feel it everywhere. It wraps around my heart and buries itself there, in the battered and bruised parts that Tristen just stomped allover. But it’s not enough to drown out her words as they drift back to me, immediately followed by Paige’s…
You really are clueless, aren’t you? You’ve always been his little charity case.
You can still be married to Daddy even if he’s with my mommy.
A sob breaks free from my chest as I break the kiss. I shove at his chest, pushing him back a step. “I can’t do this.”
His look of surprise turns to one of defeat when he reaches for me, and I pull my arm out of reach. He runs a hand through his hair and sighs before meeting my eyes again. A muscle in his jaw ticks. “So, that’s it, then? You’re just walking away?”
I sniff, hating the loss I see in his eyes and knowing I’m the one who put it there. “I have to.”
“And what about this?” he asks, lifting his chin at me. “What about us?”
I close my eyes, feeling miserable and knowing that as much as I hope for it, nothing will ever be the same between us. I can’t even look at him as I say the words. “Hopefully we can still…be friends.”
“No,” he says, stepping into me and tilting up my chin to catch my eye when I won’t look up at him. “I want you. I want us together.” He links our fingers. “I want what I didn’t have with Tristen.”
“That’s just it though, Huddy.” It causes me physical pain to use his nickname, but it would cause more not to. “You and Tristenweretogether. Really together for almost ten years. You hadthis.” I raise our hands. “And just like that, it was over. I couldn’t—” I falter, my voice cracking. “I couldn’t bear that if it happened to us.” It causes physical pain to know it is already happening to us and I don’t know if we’ll come back from it. But I have to try.
“I don’t have anyone else. If I don’t have you, I don’t have your family and I don’t have Paige. I don’t have dinners at the ranch, and I don’t have birthdays for Pop, or weekends at Hutch’s.” I sob, my dark eyes pleadingwith his hazel ones as my words rush out. “The business, my family—it’s all wrapped up in you. I’d lose everything if I lost you. I can’t do life alone.”
He makes an impatient sound in the back of his throat, but then softens his features. “Listen, I know you were raised by a hell of an independent woman, but you don'thave to bealone. You don’t have to face shit on your own. You won’t. I’ve been here since you were seventeen, and I’ll still be here when you're seventy. I don’t know how to make you see that I’d fucking doanythingfor you.”
“I know that, but—”
“No. You don’t.” He cuts me off.
Running a hand up my arm and shoulder, his fingers come to rest behind my neck and his thumb traces my cheek again. I want so badly to turn my face into him, to let him take me away from here and live happily ever after. But people like me, the ones who everyone leaves, don’t get happy endings. At least not like this.
“There are two reasons I get up every morning, Finnley. That little girl upstairs and you,” he says, gently, emotion so thick in his voice it’s tight. “You’re mine.”
A tear rolls down my cheek and splats on the concrete. When I look back up at him, his eyes are wet, too.
“Tristen, she—”
“Tristen doesn’t matter.” He sighs.
“She does. She was yourrealwife and she’s Paige’s mother, Hudson. This isn’t the same. You said as much to Paige. It’s not the same as you and Tristen." Just saying the words he spoke to Paige makes my stomach twist. I squeeze my eyes shut, expelling more tears, before meeting his gaze. “Why would you say that?”
His expression clouds with confusion. “Of course, it’s not the same. There’s no comparison. I didn’t think I needed to explain that to you.”
“Do you know how that makes me feel? That what we have is nothing like a real marriage?”
“That’s not what I said.”
I cut him off with a curt nod. “You did, actually. You said it was just to help me and not like what you and Tristen had.”
