Page 45 of Never Say Never

“I’m not going to break, Travis,” I say, his words warming me, and I curl in closer to him. “I’m a very responsible driver.”

He uses his other hand to pull my chin up to face him. “You, baby, were mad at me.”

“But still a responsible driver.”

If things were like this when we’d been home, then I wouldn’t have left. They wouldn’t have gotten so out of hand. I think maybe it’s me. He’d done all this before. Marriage. I’d had boyfriends, casual sex, but no one on the same level that Travis has had before. So maybe I’m going about the marriage thing all wrong. I don’t know. Maybe I’m pushing him away. I don’t know what the fuck to do or how to do it.

The thought twists hard and cold inside me and I force it away. It isn’t helping me.

He kisses me then. A soft and sweet kiss, his lips gentle, and I return it. How can I not? He’s everything I’ve ever wanted, and he’s mine.

Then he lifts his head and says, “What do you say we go home? It’s warm there. We can take my car and I’ll bring you back for yours tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

In bed, he shows me why I’ll give him every part of me.

There’s a light shining in his eyes as Travis strips me down slowly, almost reverently.

This time, when we go to bed, he doesn’t take me, doesn’t make it hot and hard and dirty.

No, this time he makes love to me. With a tenderness and gentleness that rips me apart into a quivering, crying, gasping mess when I orgasm. And it might be the most beautiful thing ever.

Afterward, I lie sprawled out next to him while he’s holding one of my legs over his waist, our bodies slightly sticky but neither one of us moving to clean up. He kisses the top of my head and I realize that the tears and pain from earlier are nowhere to be seen.

And a part of me wishes that we could stay like this forever and keep everything else outside.

But I know better.

I’ve never had luck.

At least… not the good kind of luck.

14

TRAVIS

“Travis?”

Everything in me freezes at the sound of the voice at the other end of the call.

I’ll never forget it, not for a thousand years.

Instinct says hang up the damn phone. Reality says that isn’t about to solve a single problem.

It is three days after I made up with Brandi, and I know I should have talked to her about what I feel, but I don’t know what that is, not in words. And this… it doesn’t help one bit.

I want to keep things on the up and up. Already I am keeping from my wife a thing she may see as big, regardless of how I may see it. And now this. Fuck no. No way am I telling her about this, whether I hang up or not.

“Travis?” Her voice is sweet and trembling, the way she used to speak to me that made me fall apart, and now…

It does something all right.

My hand tightens on my phone as I try to force the surge of emotions into something manageable. A thousand questions twist through me that I am not going to ask.

“Yeah.”

“It’s—”

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