I force myself to stop rambling because I can hear the desperation in my voice, and he still hasn’t responded, so now we’re surrounded by an awkward silence. Colton starts to pull away from me, and I immediately prepare myself for the emptiness of him distancing himself when I need him the most. Then I feel his nose nuzzle into the back of my hair and just breathe me in. I close my eyes as chills dance over my skin because I know he’s not going to push me away, but rather is taking his Colton way of taking a minute to gather his thoughts.
“Rylee…” he sighs my name in that way that makes me hold my breath because there’s so much emotion packed in it. He rests his forehead against the back of my head as his hands squeeze my arms. “I can’t talk about it. I just can’t.” And the way he says it tells me that he’s referring to the baby. “I can only deal with one thing at a fucking time, and right now I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I almost lost you.”
He rocks his forehead back and forth against my head. “I’m not used to feeling, Ry. I’m used to being numb … running the first time shit gets too real. And you, us, this …” He sighs “… it’s as fucking real as real can get. I feel like I’ve been sucker punched by what happened when I was just getting used to the new fucking normal. I’m shaken up. I don’t know which goddamn way is up, but I’m dealing with it the best way I know how right now. And that means dealing with getting the image of you looking like a lifeless Raggedy Ann doll out of my head.”
His words reach into the depths of my soul and give me back the tiny pieces of hope I lost with the miscarriage and the fears that ate at me from his silence. So he doesn’t want to—can’t—deal with the baby, at least he’s told me. And as much as I want and need to speak to him about it, reassure him that he’s what I need and everything else can be figured out later, I keep quiet and let him deal with what happened to me.
I shift between his legs so I’m sitting sideways in his lap, my legs resting over the top of one of his. I need to see his face, need to show him I’m okay. I look into his eyes brimming with confusion and reach a hand up to rest on his cheek with a soft smile on my lips. “I’m okay, Colton. You saved me.” I lean in and brush a tender kiss on his lips that I can’t seem to ever get enough of. “Thank you for saving me.”
“I think I should thank you.” He subtly shakes his head. “You’re the one who’s saving me.”
His words rob all thoughts from my head except for the words I can’t tell him. I love you. I love you more than you’ll ever know or I’ll ever be able to express. Doesn’t he realize the only way I could possibly save him was because he finally let me in? When is he going to accept that he is worth saving? Our eyes are locked onto one another’s as unspoken words are exchanged. I’m surprised by the tears pooling in the corners of his eyes and the shuddered inhale of his breath.
“We’re fine, Ry. I just need a minor pit stop to work through all the crap in my head I’m not used to, okay? I’m not asking for space or time apart, just a little patience as I try to figure it all out.”
I nod my head, bottom lip between my teeth because I can’t speak—physically can’t speak—because he’s just rendered me speechless. He gets my biggest fear and wants to assuage it before my mind can over-think and over-analyze everything, as I typically do.
We sit for a bit, the silence settling around us into an easy comfort. “You hungry?” he asks after a while. I just shrug, enjoying my head nuzzled under his chin and his arms wrapped around me. “The first time we came here, you threw me for a loop.”
“Why?” My voice is sleepy and content. There is nowhere else I’d rather be right now.
I can feel his shoulders shrug against me. “I don’t know. I was expecting you to get pissed that I brought you to a beach and fed you salami and cheese and wine out of Dixie cups.” He chuckles. “Little did I know you were going to rock my fucking world.”
Warmth floods through me. Images flicker through my mind of sitting here months ago with this achingly handsome man, wondering what in the hell he saw in me. And I get it now. He saw the pieces of me that could make a whole. Accepted the jagged edges that needed to be healed, because he too had the same thing. And here we sit again, in parts and pieces, needing to be put back together. But this time we have each other to lean on, to look to for help.
“God you were cocky as hell but I just couldn’t resist you, Ace.”
“Oh, baby, I’ve still got all of the arrogance and definitely a whole lot of cock.”
I roll my eyes and giggle. “My God!” I can’t stop laughing as he presses a kiss to the top of my head. “The man has arrogance in spades.”
“Nope,” he says. “Just in aces.”
“Lame!” I say, enjoying the lighthearted banter between us and leaning back to look at his face. “Seriously? That’s all you can give me? You can’t come up with anything better than that?”
“Oh, Ry.” He smirks at me, a salacious look in his eyes, as he leans in and presses a quick kiss to my lips. “No worries about the coming or the getting it up part because you’d be hard pressed to find any man that can give a fucking better than I can.”
Before I can even respond, his lips are on mine, his hands winding around my back, and our hearts entwining in a way I never thought possible.