Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 76717 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76717 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“Jason…” I murmur against his lips, reaching up to tangle my fingers in his hair.
“I love you,” he says, pulling back slightly to look into my eyes. His gaze is intense and full of sincerity. “More than I’ve ever loved anyone. And that fucking kills me in a way. A sweet death, for sure, but damn. What I had with Lindsay, our daughter. How can I feel so much more for you when I’d do anything to have them back?” He shakes his head. “I’m twisted inside, Angie. Fucked up.”
I look up at him, my heart breaking at the pain and rawness in his voice. I cradle his face in my hands. “You’re not twisted or fucked up, Jason. You’re human. You’re allowed to feel love again, to move forward. It doesn’t mean you loved Lindsay or your daughter any less.”
He shakes his head again, this time more forcefully. “You don’t fucking get it! I love you! As if I’ve always loved you, and that means… Fuck, that means—”
He stops abruptly and turns away from me.
My heart aches for his turmoil.
I want to help him, but he’s going through so much right now.
I wait for the right words to come to me. Anything to make this easier for him.
When I can’t bear the silence any longer—
“Jason,” I murmur, “guilt is something we create in our minds. It’s not real. It’s what we feel when we think we’re doing something wrong.”
He looks at me then, confusion etched into the lines on his face. “You don’t get it.”
“Maybe I don’t. Maybe I never will. Maybe—”
His lips come down on mine again, if possible even fiercer than before.
The world outside ceases to exist.
It’s just us, here and now.
The kiss is brutal.
The kiss of a man unraveling. A man trying to hold himself together with nothing but sheer will, and even that is starting to crack. Guilt is a living thing inside him, a slow poison that drips through his veins, curls into every thought, every breath. He doesn’t say it, but I feel it—the weight of what he carries, the suffocating burden of a crime he didn’t commit.
I want to understand. I want to reach inside his mind, sift through the wreckage, and make sense of it all. The accusation, the way it clings to him like a second skin. The doubt in his own innocence, as if the mere fact that someone could believe he’s guilty makes it true in some twisted way.
It isn’t. I know it isn’t.
But does he?
And then there’s Lindsay. The woman who came before me. The ghost I can’t touch but will always feel. His wife. His dead wife. I won’t ever ask if he loved her—I know he did. I don’t question the grief, the loss that must have hollowed him out. But I see something in him when he looks at me, something raw, something unspoken. Something that terrifies him.
Love.
Not just love—more than love. Stronger than what he felt before, deeper, messier. And that terrifies me too.
How do you make sense of loving someone more when you swore you already loved another with everything you had? How do you let go of guilt when happiness feels like a betrayal? He’s fighting it. I see it in the way his jaw tightens, in the way he hesitates before he lets himself touch me.
As if touching me is wrong, as if choosing me means he has to leave something behind.
But that’s the thing—he never has to leave anything behind. Love doesn’t work like that. It grows, it shifts, it stretches to make room for what comes next.
But he doesn’t see it that way. Not yet.
I wish I could take the pain from him. I wish I could unburden him, strip away the layers of grief and regret and make him understand that he’s allowed to have this.
To have me.
To want me.
To love me.
I don’t know how to reach him. I don’t know how to make him see that what’s behind him doesn’t have to destroy what’s ahead. That love—our love—doesn’t make him a traitor to his past. That innocence isn’t just about proving he didn’t commit a crime. It’s also about letting go of the punishment he insists on giving himself.
So I kiss him.
I let him ravage my mouth, let him pour all his frustration into me.
His hands are in my hair, pulling me closer. He’s a storm of despair and frustration and guilt, but underneath I sense a thread of determination.
That gives me hope.
I wrap my arms around him and hold him tightly. I trace soothing patterns across his back as his kiss softens into something less desperate, less demanding. He pulls back slightly and rests his forehead against mine as we both gasp for breath.
For a moment we stay there, locked in each other’s grip, our breathing ragged.