Page 92 of Broken Halo
He stills before his arms constrict around me. Eyes burning into mine, he murmurs against my lips, “Angel.”
I yank at his undershirt and rip at his belt, words spilling from my lips like a levee bursting into a million pieces. “I never stopped. I had to talk myself into hating you just to get through the day, but every moment I’ve experienced since I lost you has been about you.”
His blue eyes turn pained, and when I look into them, it’s like looking into a mirror of my soul. Empty, damaged, grief-stricken.
“Stop,” he demands.
I shake my head and fumble with his pants. “I compared everyone to you. If I went somewhere new, I wondered what it would be like if you were there.” Pushing his T-shirt up, he helps, yanking it over his head, and when I see his beautiful face again, I admit what has haunted me the most. “And after I had Griffin, I’d cry for hours at a time, silently wishing he were yours.”
Trig’s face falls and he grips my hips, hauling me to his body, holding me tight. “Fuck.”
I hold on, gripping his smooth skin over hard muscle with everything I have. “Everyone thought I had postpartum depression. My parents moved me back to the ranch for a few weeks so they could help and I wasn’t by myself with Griffin. They took over and I let them. I could barely look at Robert.”
I rip off my tank and push down my joggers, needing to be as close to Trig as possible, and he can tell. Or maybe he needs the same from me. Either way, he doesn’t hesitate, yanking my bralette over my head right here where we’re standing in the hall.
All the words, all the feelings I’ve kept to myself or denied for what feels like an eternity, flow. “I hated that Griffin was his. I hated that every time I looked at my son, I would think about the child we lost. Was it a boy or a girl? Would it be fair like me or dark like you?”
“Shit, baby. Stop.” He lifts me and I wrap my legs around him, pressing my naked body to his. If I could crawl into his skin and stay there forever, I would. He turns and walks us into the room across the hall, puts a knee to the floor, and follows me down, pressing my bare back to the carpet. “The guilt has dug deep and lived inside me. Should’ve stopped you from going to my dad’s property. Could’ve taken your fucking phone calls. Read a damn text. They haunt me, every single one of them.” He frames the side of my face with his big hand and I see nothing but Trig. “There’s not a day that goes by I don’t think about our baby. Every-fucking-day for ten years. And I never stopped loving you. I know it now because it never stopped hurting. I’m shit at changing diapers, but Griffin is a part of you and that makes him mine, just like you are.”
His words sink into me, settling into my bones and I feel right for the first time in what feels like forever. I wrap my naked body around his. “You love us.”
He’s in the process of freeing his cock and takes no time. He needs me as much as I need him—to be close, connected, and reunited. Will our desperation ever fade?
I hope not. He thrusts inside, warming my heart.
As his lips play on mine, he murmurs, “Fuck, yes, I do.” He pulls out and thrusts back in and I arch my back to meet him. “Love you in a way I’ll never stop, Ellie.”
As our bodies tangle and join, frantic as two lost drifters in the desert longing for water, there’s nothing else to think about besides each other. Trig’s body moves with such force, fucking away the last decade from our hearts. We’re not opening a new chapter, but starting a brand-new book.
I dig my heels into his ass and thighs, doing everything I can to make him stay forever, deep inside me where he belongs. No one’s going to mess with our future this time. We’ve lost too much to allow it to happen again.
My breathing shallows and my head falls back, Trig’s lips hit my neck where he sucks and nips at my skin. His assault quickens and his every muscle tenses under my touch when I fall over the edge and fight for air, the orgasm wracking my body making my brain forget to tell my lungs to breathe.
Trig follows, his orgasm chasing mine like a dream that’s been freed from the recesses of my heart. He groans as he thrusts so deep—like me—he can’t get close enough. His breath is hot on my face, his skin hotter against mine as he stays planted inside, not making a move to pull out.
I put my lips to his shoulder and run my tongue along his skin. We lay like this, my back rubbed sore against the carpet and Trig’s heavy body swallowing mine.
“Fucking missed you,” he breathes. “When will that go away?”
I shake my head. “Maybe never? Hearts can’t break if they haven’t loved. We might never recover from that.”
He leans up on his forearms and presses into me again, reminding me he’s inside me, as bare as the day he was born, and neither of us seem to care. Kissing me, he traces my bottom lip with his tongue. “Then I hope we don’t. Love you more now than I ever thought I could.”
I give him a small smile. “You forgot about your meeting.”
He doesn’t make a move to get off me. “Yeah, I did.”
My smile grows bigger. “You also forgot the condom.”
“So did you,” he quips. “You practically attacked me, what was I supposed to do?”
He’s right. “Watching you love on my son made me lose control.”
One of his hands drops to my body, feeling and squeezing its way down until landing on the back of my knee where he hikes my leg as high as he can—which is pretty damn high since I’m as limber as a wet noodle. “It couldn’t have been me changing his diaper, that’s for sure.”
I shake my head and smile. “No. It wasn’t that.”
He doesn’t return my smile. “What you said … kills me. I didn’t know I could be cut deeper, but that did it.”
