HAPPY FOREVER AFTER

But he did love her. He did. So damn much. Why hadn’t he told her? The answer was right in front of him. He was scared.

Scared of getting hurt. Scared of being taken for granted. Scared of her leaving him…. Because she was so amazing. Who wouldn’t want her?

She wasn’t the only one who was hurt.. and scared and frustrated.Nôvel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.

He loved her. He might not put stock in that emotion, but he believed she believed in it. And in that highly charged moment, he had seen they needed a breather. A reset of some kind. He’d been aware of that for a while now. Since they had started arguing about almost every single thing.

Her words kept eating at him. Was this how she had been feeling since that mess with his family? Stung by a lack of faith so bitter all she could taste was gall? It was a terrible feeling.

The irony was, he hadn’t been giving her the silent treatment as she seemed to think. He had been staying late to finalize a handful of projects and moving meetings so he could take a solid week off. He had wanted them to spend some time together. To do something she would like.

To make her smile again.

And he was also using that time to give her the space they both needed.

She was important to him. He wanted her to be happy. He was concerned about the baby. Constantly. But he was also worried about Emma.

He spent half the night listening for running water, wanting to know if she was feeling sick. Wondering if she needed him. The other half staring at the empty pillow beside him. He wanted her there. Not in some other room.

He wanted to hold her so bad. Make love to her… Till they both forget their worries, certainly, but more than that, he couldn’t relax without knowing whether she was sleeping peacefully or enduring more of that wretched nausea.

Now she would be away. Making it harder to get through to her. He hadn’t had it in him to refuse her a visit with her family.

In fact, he would have gladly taken her himself if she’d asked, but…he remembered her words.

“I want you to stay here and believe me when I say I’m coming back.”

He knocked back his third? Fourth drink? Then set the glass on the edge of his desk and pushed his hands into his pockets.

If she had wanted to run away with his baby, she could have done it anytime before now. He had no doubts she would come back. He knew she would return as surely as he knew she would move back into her apartment when she did.

And he knew that she would insist on paying all her bills herself. He knew she would put herself into hardship to prove her point to him. To deny him another avenue of suspicion or the opportunity to care for her the only way he could.

And he couldn’t blame her. It was his fault. What the hell had made him say those cruel words to her, he didn’t know. He didn’t believe them one bit. But he was angry that moment and in his anger he had hurt her. And he had no idea how to fix the damage he had done.

Did she understand that he didn’t know how to give her what she needed? This shouldn’t be so hard! It sure as hell shouldn’t be this painful.

“I’m starting to question whether I deserve to be loved.” she had said.

That hurt most of all. It hurt in a way he couldn’t describe or endure. It was a psychic sort of pain, pen-etrating into the very depths of his being. Because even as he denied the existence of love, he believed that if anyone deserved to be loved, it was Emma. She deserved it… And so much more.

She was the embodiment of what he had once understood that emotion to be-generous and kind, empathetic and innately beautiful. Abstract and impossible to fully describe, yet stalwart and strong.

Reliant. And joyously uplifting. She was capable of pressing laughter into his dry throat with a glance. She was amazing.

And-he winced as something wrenched open inside his chest, forcing him to confront the gaping hole left by her absence-she was necessary to him.

He needed her. He wanted her.

Desperately.

He remembered her words. “You don’t want to risk getting hurt, so you hold back, but you expect me to tie myself to a lifetime of being hurt.”

And yet, what would he face without her? He was already in agony with them in separate bedrooms. Was he supposed to subsist on an impersonal weekly glimpse of her as they handed their child back and forth like a set of car keys?

His first thought when Karen had told him she was pregnant had been to lock her into his life so she could give his child what his parents had showered him with when he was growing up. Love.

He hadn’t consciously put that together, but he had wanted her to express that emotion to his child and teach him how to express it.

Had he followed her examples? Not lately. No, he had only taught her how to question her own worth.

He had driven her to seek love elsewhere because she had given up on his providing her a shred of it.

His damp gaze hit the ceiling and he released a feral cry of pain, straight from his tormented core. It left claws in his throat that made each following breath sting to the bottoms of his lungs.

Emma hadn’t heard it, though. Because he had let her go.

————————–

Tom Casey lay under the covers, Monica Clayton curled up at his side. He had one arm around her, holding her close. With his free hand, he stroked her face.

“So beautiful,” he said, staring into her eyes.

Monica smiled. “I’m okay. Not as good looking as you though” she smiled. She reached up and planted a kiss on cheek. Somehow the kiss found it’s way to his lips.

He took control of the kiss and pulled her beneath him. She put back her head and he kissed her throat and the valley between her breasts. She moved underneath him, stroking him and making him hard.