Page 40 of This Is Love (The Light to My Darkness 3)

“No, I do.” Her cheeks were rosy, like she was embarrassed by her admission. “But it’s different. Familiar, I guess I mean. In a good way.”

In a good way. “I still feel it too.” I rested my head down on my pillow. “Like my body is the negative end of a magnet and you’re the positive end.”

“Why do you always do that? Make yourself the bad part of an equation?”

“There’s no bad part of a magnet.” She was right though. I automatically made myself the negative end. Why did I do that?

Penny just stared at me.

“I don’t know why I do it,” I said.

“I’ve never met a better man in my entire life. There’s no reason on earth that you of all people should be self-deprecating, James. You’re perfect.”

I laughed at that. “Hardly. You should have seen your face when I told you I was an addict.”

“Which time?”

“The second one. You were much kinder the first time I told you.”

“I remember the first time. It was raining. Our relationship had felt so strained. Because you were hiding a part of your past from me. But your past doesn’t define you, James. You can be perfect even if you’ve had a hard life. The difference between that time and this time was that I loved you then. And when you told me the second time you were a stranger. It’s easier to judge a stranger when you don’t know how pure their heart is.”

“I didn’t know that you never told anyone. About my problems. Melissa didn’t know. I just assumed that she did.”

“It wasn’t my place to tell anyone. It’s your story to share with whomever you choose. Not mine.”

“It wasn’t because you were embarrassed by me?”

“James.” She removed her arms from around Scarlett. “How could you even think that?” She climbed over Scarlett’s sleeping body and then over me to try to close the distance between us.

I resisted grabbing her hips and pulling her on top of me. Our daughter was sleeping peacefully beside us. I didn’t want to disrupt her sleep, no matter how badly my body was calling for Penny’s.

She fell onto the other side of me with a quiet “oomph” before nestling herself between my arms. “Never in my life have I been embarrassed by you. I’ve always been the embarrassing one. I’m from a lower class,” she said in an accent that sounded far too similar to my mother’s.

I laughed. “I’ve never been embarrassed by you. I love you. I’ve loved you since the first moment we met and you took my breath away.”

“And I love you.” She yawned and closed her eyes, like the only thing keeping her from sleep before was the lack of my arms around her. “We were both wrong, you know,” she said into my chest with another yawn. “Love isn’t light or dark or a whirlwind of color.”

“If it isn’t those things, then how would you describe it?” I pulled her a little closer to my chest, savoring the feeling of her breath against my skin.

“This.” She sighed like she had never been more content in her entire life. “This is love.”

She fell asleep in my arms, her breath slowly becoming more shallow. I wanted to stay up forever watching her. For a few weeks I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to have another one of these moments. And now that it was here, I was terrified it would slip away again.

I stared at her luscious lips and the delicate curve of her jaw. Her long eyelashes cast shadows on her cheeks. And her red hair shimmered even without a light source. She was perfection in every se

nse of the word.

Her chest slowly rose and fell, outlining her perfect breasts through one of my old t-shirts. It was the sexiest thing I had ever seen. She moaned in her sleep, a sound I was all too familiar with when I was deep inside of her. I bit back a groan of my own. If my daughter wasn’t asleep behind me, I’d wake up Penny and make love to her. Again and again until neither one of us had enough energy to continue.

All I wanted to do was catch up on lost time between us. I wanted to show her how much I loved her. Penny was right. Love couldn’t really be defined. It wasn’t a balance of light and darkness or a whirlwind of color. It was a feeling. This feeling. And I’d spend the rest of my life making sure she felt this too.

Chapter 11

Tuesday - Penny

I wasn’t sure when I drifted to sleep, but when I opened my eyes I almost screamed. Then everything came back in a rush. It was James’ arms wrapped tightly around me. My husband. I’m in New York City. I’m a mother. I’m a wife. I took a deep breath. My heartbeat kicked up a notch instead of calming down. It all still felt unfamiliar, even though it felt like home. Would that feeling go away? Would this ever become normal again?

There was no light streaming into the room. It was probably the middle of the night. But my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness as I stared at the man lying next to me. He belonged in a magazine. Or on a T.V. show. How did he end up here with me in the city that never sleeps? He belonged in Hollywood.

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