Page 18 of The Next Of Us
My eyelids fluttered shut, and Aaron’s steady pace began to stutter.
“Dini,” he rasped.“Get there.”
I nodded, eyes closed, tears momentarily spent, lost in the rapture of him inside me.
“Fuck,” he rasped.“Dini…”
My head fell back on a soft grunt, the sweet waves of my release washing over me as I pulsated around him.
“Yes, baby.Yes, baby.Yes, baby, yes,” he praised.With his forehead pressed to mine, he drove inside me, then, sealing his mouth over mine, he came with a violent shudder and a muffled sob.
I whispered his name like a prayer.
7
Nipple Shrinkage
Aaron
I closed my email app early the next morning, and a wave of relief swept over me as I counted the weeks since the last message.Outside was quiet and still.For the first time in months, I was too.And although it was bitterly cold up here at Moose Lake, nestled inside the cabin with Nadine, away from the rest of the world, I was warmer than I’d been in months.
Hearing the bedroom door creak, I looked up and smiled at the sight of my sleepy wife wandering into the hall.
A closer look caused my smile to fall away.The stiff set of her shoulders betrayed a tension I’d only seen in her once before.Whatever progress we’d made the night before had dissipated.
I didn’t like it.
Knowing I was the probable cause made me like it even less.
“Good morning, baby,” I murmured.“I made coffee.”
She smiled wanly and dipped her chin as she turned to the kitchen.
Grabbing her wrist as she moved past me, I tugged her to an abrupt stop and cupped my hands over her shoulders, pushing them down, easing the tension from her frame.“The last time I saw you in this state we were pregnant with Thalia.”
She winced as her eyes flicked up to mine.“Sometimes I worry I trapped you.”
My eyebrows shot off my face.“Trapped me?What are you talking about?You didn’t trap me.”
“You were so young—”
“We both were,” I interrupted.
She held up a palm.“You don’t need to defend me from myself, Aaron.You were a teenager when we got pregnant.Ateenager!And you were tied down with a wife and child by the time you were twenty.”
“If I remember correctly, and I do, it was me who asked you to keep the baby and take a chance on me.And you had just turned 21 when we had Thalia.”
She grimaced.“I hate it that I thought about terminating for even a minute.I can’t imagine a life without her in it.”
“You wouldn’t have known any different,” I replied gently.“It was a difficult decision that wasn’t made any easier by everything that was happening at the time with your parents and my grandfather.”I paused, my hand slipping down to weave my fingers through hers.
My grandfather took every opportunity to punish my mother for being a single mother.Being friends with Nadine’s father, he was also instrumental in antagonizing Nadine’s home life until she moved in with me.
Those scars ran deep.
I tugged on her hand.“Getting married was never about Boomer for me.Never.It was always about you.It will always be about you.I have no regrets.Do you?”
Her throat worked convulsively as she swallowed hard.Tears balanced on the curve of her bottom lid while I held my breath.“No.I have no regrets.I have loved you since I was seventeen years old, and I love you still.”
