Tears fill my eyes. They do that a lot these days. No matter how much I tell myself that I won’t cry again… or that I’m stronger than that… they spring up more times a day than can possibly be healthy.
It’s grief and loss and pain. It’s everything we’ll never get to be, and I’m not yet to the point where anger has overtaken the ache, though I feel that multiple times a day also. I want to rage at the unfairness. Instead I cry for the love that will be lost and the future we were supposed to have.
He’ll be a widow within months of our marriage. Alone and trying to pick up the pieces.
I’m not sure at this point it’s even fair to go through with it, but every time I start to bring it up, he moves the conversation to the venue, or the guest list, or the officiant, or the menu. So that we’re still steadily progressing toward a day that should be the happiest of our lives. And I can’t find the words to tear it all down. How many times will I break his heart before I’m gone?
“I’m here, Gray.” I can barely get the words out through the thickness in my throat. I’m here for as long as I have left. I seek out his lips and he claims my mouth with a desperation that wraps like a string around my heart, drawing more pain to the surface.
His fingers dig into my hair as his tongue sweeps wetly over mine, and all I can taste is the salt of our sadness. In the way our mouths move and then on his skin as his lips press to my collarbone and mine glaze his shoulder.
He shoves his suit jacket from my shoulders. It’s the same one he was wearing when we went to dinner tonight. The one I tossed on in a hurry right before I raced out the front door of my parents’ house and into the back seat of an Uber. It pools around my elbows while he kisses me, while he slides his big hands over my hips and down to my ass to lift me up and press me against him. “Indy, I need you.”
“I need you too.” It’s been weeks since he’s touched me. Weeks since the ill-handled blow job and the car crash that turned out to be the tip of this fucked up iceberg we’ve hurtled into.
Weeks since he planted me on any flat surface—this side table for instance—parted my thighs and stepped between them to kiss me like he’ll never get enough. That certain something curls in my belly and soaks my panties.
Every word, every look, every touch has been loaded with fear. Until I felt like I would scream if I spent one more moment with him treating me like I’m breakable. I am breakable. I am dying. But God, I don’t want to live that way for however long I have left. I don’t want that to be who he remembers. I don’t want that to be who anyone remembers.
He has me out of that jacket in a matter of seconds. I have the tie on his sweatpants unraveled too. Digging my hand past the waistband, I wrap it around the hardness I find there. He groans against my mouth as he tenses all over.
“Indy, fuck.” He reaches between us to grasp my wrist. “That feels nice, but there’s something I need more. You in my mouth. On my tongue. It’s been weeks and—”
“I need that too.” My heart thuds and my pulse races as I hold onto Gray’s shoulders while he helps me out of my underwear. Then he drops to his knees in front of me. His gray-blue gaze is hazy. His pupils are heavy and make the blue dark.
I jolt as my mind throws up an image of Theo. Of him looking up at me tonight on the ledge. His irises dark with the lack of light. One blue eye. One a swirl of brown and blue.
“Indy, you okay?” One of Gray’s hands covers my knee, the other is on my thigh. He can tell I went somewhere.
He’d never suspect that it was to thinking of another man. A man who listened to me and didn’t attempt to make it all better. A man who somehow got that what I needed was the quiet companionship of a stranger while my world falls apart. There’s nothing sexual or sensual about my thoughts. Even if the timing is terrible.
I shove Theo out of my head. I’ll never see him again. It was pure coincidence that we ended up crossing paths tonight. I spread my thighs wider for Gray. “Yeah.”
“You sure?” He studies me like he’s preparing for the worst. He starts to withdraw the hand on my thigh.
“I’m sure.” I catch his hand and slide it higher. Press it to the spot where I’m wet and aching for him. “Gray, make me come.”
His finger traces my seam lightly before digging in. His lips form a seal around my clit, and I incline back to get the angle better. The back of my skull bumps the wall as he loves me with his tongue. Burrowing my fingers into his hair, I lean into the sweet torture and embrace the feeling of being alive as he gives me an orgasm.
When it’s over, when he’s done bringing me down the same way he took me up and over the edge, he rises to his feet and carries me into the bedroom. He lowers me until my toes sink into the plush carpet, and then pulls down the zipper on the back of my dress before helping me out of it and my bra.
He sheds his sweatpants as I lie on the bed. Climbs onto the mattress beside me, and switches off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.
“Gray?” I reach out for him.
“You’re tired.” He turns me onto my side in his arms.
“I thought we were going to have sex.” I want to have sex. I need him. Need the connection.
“You’re tired and you need all of your strength to fight for me, baby.” He kisses my cheek. Kisses my hair. “We’re starting chemo tomorrow, remember? Radiation next week?”
“Oh.” But won’t that make me feel worse? The doctor ran us through the side effects after he dashed any hope that I would be suitable for surgery. Nausea and tiredness and my hair might fall out. Vomiting and headaches too. Like I don’t have enough headaches as it is. Wouldn’t it make sense to have sex while I still have the energy? “I’m not that tired.”
“It’s four in the morning, Indy,” he reminds me as he wraps my arms to my chest with his own. “And I need you at your best. I need you…”
His pain rolls down the strong lines of his nose and jaw and drips slickly onto my skin.
What can I possibly say to him to stop him from hurting? Everything is such a fucking mess.
