Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 80620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
At least by Marek. He was making it clear that intimacy between us was off the table. For the four days he was gone, which included a game in New York and one in New Jersey, I’ve talked to him every day. Light conversations focused on updating him on how Lilly was doing. They were short and not really necessary, as he video chatted with her a few times a day whenever he could get the time, so he was able to see for himself how she was doing.
“I thought I could walk away from this,” he says from behind me. “But I can’t. I don’t want to.”
My head spins from his words and his nearness. My pulse pounds from need in his voice. Marek’s hand inches under the band of my sleep shorts and my breath catches. But his fingers slide no lower than the scar that runs horizontally just above my pelvis where they took Lilly from me. It’s thin and barely noticeable, yet Marek’s fingers find it as if he’s examined it a million times before.
He strokes the skin there and murmurs, “It kills me what you went through. That you almost died. That Lilly almost died.”
I try to swallow but my throat is clogged up.
Marek widens his hand to cover my entire lower stomach and he pulls me back into him. I feel his hardness at my backside.
“It kills me that you can’t have another child,” he rasps out, and I can tell it took effort on his part to push those words past the thick emotion hanging between us.
My hand covers his and my fingers curl to give him a squeeze. “It’s okay.”
Marek’s hand slides free of mine and comes to my jaw. He grips it gently and twists my head so I’m forced to look over my shoulder at him. He raises up on an elbow and then his lips are on mine.
He kisses me ever so gently.
More gentle than I can ever remember in the hundreds of times we’d kissed. Whisper soft, barely touching. His breath flutters across my mouth, and for a brief moment—a weird moment—I feel cherished by Marek.
And then he’s gone.
Pulling away from me, rolling to the opposite side of the bed. I hear a click and then the room is flooded with warm light from the bedside table. He rolls back to me and I take a moment to notice he’s in a pair of dress pants and a slightly wrinkled but bright white shirt. They must have left the arena in New Jersey and headed straight for the airport to come back to Raleigh.
I gasp with surprise when he rolls right on top of me. My legs spread without any thought to let him settle in between them, and before I can take a breath, his mouth is back on me. Not as gentle, definitely deeper.
But more brief.
His lips are gone again and then he’s sliding down my body. He pushes my tank top up, folds the elastic down on my shorts, and lowers his head to look at my scar. My face heats up from the way he studies it critically, his mouth set into a grim slash across his stubbled face.
Marek lifts his eyes to mine and I think my heart stops when he says, “I’m sorry for leaving you. The way I left you. For making you think you couldn’t trust me with being there for the pregnancy. I’m just…sorry for all of it.”
A surge of shock and adrenaline flows through my veins over his admission, something I never thought I’d hear.
Something I never thought I deserved to hear because my sins were so great that Marek’s didn’t really matter.
“Mar—”
His name on my lips is cut off as his mouth comes to my scar and he kisses it. Brushes over the thin pink line, only to trace it with the tip of his tongue.
My breath gushes out of me so forcefully I struggle to take air back in through my flattened lungs.
Marek’s eyes come back to mine. “Do you want me to stop?”
I shake my head frantically.
“Good, because I don’t think I can.”
“But what does this mean?” I ask him in bewilderment.
His return stare is intense, as if this may be the most important conversation of our lives. “It means I want to be with you.”
“In bed,” I say for clarification.
“Yes, in bed,” he says gruffly. “And out of it as we raise Lilly.”
I raise up to my elbows so I can look at him better. “And in between bed and parenting?”
“I don’t know,” he answers after a brief hesitation. “I mean…what else is there?”
Well, at least he’s honest.
I scramble out from underneath him to prop myself up against the headboard. I pull my feet in, knees to my chest, and wrap my arms around my shins. Marek sits up, leaning toward me with a palm to the mattress.