Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
“We’re just getting started and I didn’t want this to ruin what we’re rebuilding.”
“Nothing’s ruined.”
She sighs and shakes her head. “I know better. It just got away from me.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. This is a complicated situation. One you’ve been dealing with—and really well—for years. I remember you saying stress and lack of sleep can contribute to this happening. Don’t forget you’ve been working on the biggest project of your career and trying to develop something new for this overall deal.”
I bend to kiss her hair.
“All that combined with the confusion of the love of your life reentering the picture,” I say with a straight face. “I mean, I know the sex is phenomenal, but that’s just one more thing to deal with.”
She snickers and pinches my arm, but doesn’t otherwise respond.
“Are you laughing at me being the love of your life, or me saying the sex is phenomenal?” I ask, only half joking.
“You are the love of my life,” she says, her expression sober, but some humor lighting her eyes.
I wait for the second part, and when she doesn’t confirm the sex is phenomenal, I press her back into the couch.
“Don’t make me prove how good the sex is,” I mutter into the curve of her neck.
She giggles like I hoped she would, arching into the gentle kisses I leave along her collarbone. This won’t be the last time we deal with this, and I want her to know it doesn’t have to feel like an existential crisis. I trace the sleek line of her brow with my thumb. She stills, closes her eyes, leans into the contact like my touch is exactly what she needs.
“You know,” she says, eyes still closed. “I was sitting at Tessa’s side, and all I could think was that I almost lost my best friend.” She looks down at her hands. “And then I kept imagining you sitting where I was. You worried that I was dead or had done something stupid. That’s not the life I want for you, Monk.”
“You are the life I want.” I lift her face so our eyes have no choice but to lock on each other. “You tell me I get to have you, but this is what we’ll navigate, I’ll take it. No questions asked. I got shit we’ll have to navigate, too. Things you’ll have to put up with from me.”
“Like your snoring?” she deadpans.
“Dammit, I had a cold!”
We both laugh, letting the moment lift as we lay in the security of each other’s arms.
“I have a lot to learn about bipolar,” I say, serious now. “But I know it doesn’t go away. It’s for the rest of our lives.”
She lifts her head from my chest, peering up at me tentatively.
“Our lives?”
“That alright with you?” I ask, tensing, but forcing myself to wait, to give her space to articulate whatever is turning over in that beautiful brain of hers.
“I love you, Monk. God, so much and for so long.” A tear streaks over one smooth cheek. “But I don’t… what if we don’t want the same things?”
My heart stutters and my hand automatically seeks hers, squeezing like that will stop her from leaving me.
“You don’t…” I clear my throat of the disappointment, the fear that makes it hard to speak. “You don’t want to be with me?”
If there was uncertainty in her eyes before, it dissolves. Her hand lifts to my jaw, caressing, then cupping it. She strokes her thumb across my mouth, her gaze pinned there before she lifts it back to meet mine.
“I want to be with you more than anything.”
“Then what—”
“But as much as you like to deny it, you’re pretty conventional when it comes to family. You want the fairy tale. The fifty-year anniversary your parents never had. The picket fence. The kids and the dog.”
“Babe, I don’t even like dogs.”
“You monster,” she says, grinning. “My point is that you’re going to want marriage, and that terrifies me. The idea of someone chaining themselves to me, thinking they can handle all my shit, and then it gets bad and they realize it’s too much and they feel trapped, or leave. I can’t take that. Not from you.”
“I would never leave you.”
Her laugh is bitter, shattered into a thousand fragments. “So many partners said the same thing, only to end up in court fighting for shared custody with someone who doesn’t want them to have access to their own children anymore.”
“That would never be us.”
“That would never be them, but it was.” She bites her lip and drops her eyes. “I don’t want to create that situation. We don’t need a piece of paper binding us to each other. When you want to go, you can go.”
“What if I never want to go? What if no one else has ever been in my heart the way you are? And never will be? What then?”