Page 24 of This Is Love (The Light to My Darkness 3)

“Hop in the shower to warm up. We can talk afterward. If you want,” he quickly added. “It’s fine if you don’t want to.” He gave me a small smile that for some reason looked sad.

What had I missed? What had he been trying to ask me?

“Leave your clothes out here so I can give them to my mom’s maid,” he said before I could ask. “I’ll go grab you a towel. And just…let me know when you’re done, okay? There’s another shower down the hall that I’m going to use real quick.”

I remembered showering with him. I remembered doing that a lot. But we weren’t alone. We were at his estranged mother’s house. And she and Rob were both waiting for us. This wasn

’t the time or place for us to reconnect. But I so badly wanted to reach for him. My body didn’t move though. And my throat didn’t seem to be able to work. So I just nodded. My apology from earlier definitely wasn’t enough. How could it have been? I almost ruined us. And I felt the distance between us reverberating through my soul.

I turned away from him. We weren’t okay. Would we ever be okay again? Tears welled in my eyes as I closed the bathroom door behind me. I waited for the water to run scalding hot before I stepped under its stream. It should have burned my skin, but I barely felt it.

It was like the steam was choking me. Like it was everything I had done in the past week trying to push me down. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I couldn’t breathe. What had I done? What a fucking mess I had made. “I’m sorry.” My knees buckled and I fell to the tiled floor of the shower. “I’m sorry.” My son was alone in a hospital fighting for his life when I didn’t remember him. “I’m sorry.” My daughter tried to accept the imposter that I was, but missed her actual mother. “I’m sorry.” And James? James. I tried to leave him. I tried to dismiss the life we had built together. I broke us. “I’m sorry.”

I heard the bathroom door squeak open and swallowed a huge gulp of air even though it didn’t seem to fill my lungs.

“I have the towels.” James’ voice was quiet through the steam and the sound of the water.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled to the floor. I wanted him to be able to hear me, but I was out of strength. My whisper disappeared into the steam.

“Penny?”

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

The shower door opened but I kept staring at the tiled floor.

“Jesus.” His hands were on me in a matter of seconds, trying to help me back to my feet, but I resisted his help.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Baby, it’s okay,” he said in the voice he used for Scarlett. Like I was just some innocent child that had done nothing wrong. But that wasn’t true. I had done everything wrong.

“None of this okay!” I couldn’t breathe. “I broke us. I broke us.”

“You didn’t break us. I’m right here.” His hands gripped my shoulders. “You came back to me. That’s all that matters.”

“But I tried so hard to push you away.”

“And failed. You failed. I’ve never wanted you to fail in anything you do except this. You failed at this one thing, and I’m so grateful. Penny, look at me.”

I couldn’t look up at him. “How could you possibly keep loving me despite how awful I was?”

“Because that wasn’t you. You weren’t you. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay! I was awful! I tried to leave. I…” I was choking on my words. “I wanted to leave everything behind. I wanted to leave you. I wanted to start a new life that had nothing to do with this one. How can you just stand there saying it’s okay?”

He knelt down on the floor with me. “Oh, baby.” He cradled my face in his hands and tilted my face up so that I’d look at him. “That never would have happened. There’s no way you could live without me.”

It was such a cocky thing to say. But he didn’t say it in an arrogant way. He said it as he stared deep into my eyes. He said it because it was true.

My eyes dropped to the towel that was wrapped around his waist. And the perfect V line that dipped beneath the towel. I remembered this. I remembered us. But a memory was so different from reality. I wanted to experience him. And there was no better apology than a blowjob. I had heard that phrase before. From Rob maybe? Who the fuck cared. I wanted James to know that I loved him. That I’d always love him. That I was so fucking sorry.

I grabbed the knot in his towel and pulled.

He reached down to hold it in place.

“You’re healing, Penny. We can’t…”

“I need you. I feel like I can’t breathe. This…this will show me that we’re okay. This…” I pulled harder, but he gripped the towel tighter too. It didn’t budge.

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