“One day you’ll see that I’m doing you a favor.”
I can read her lips now. “A favor?” she yells, neck straining. “You are an asshole!”
“Come now, Sunshine, that’s not a very nice thing to say. I’m trying to be honest with you. You don’t want any part of this.” I wave my arm around my room.
Kendall writes on the marker board like a pissed-off headmistress. “You don’t get to tell me what I want. I know what I want. I’ve known what I’ve wanted since I was seventeen. You are going through some shit. I know about going through shit. I won’t abandon you because you’re not feeling like yourself. Let me decide what I deserve. Don’t you think I’ve earned that choice?”
My heart slams against my rib cage the second I let my guard slip. I’m weak. The defenses I’ve set are ineffectual when facing the fury of Kendall’s love. Hasn’t it always been that way, though? Didn’t I fall in love with her because of the way she looked at me? The way she loved me? “You have earned much more than a choice in the matter. I don’t know how to give you what you need.”
“Don’t you realize you’ve already given me everything without even trying?” Kendall scribbles. “That by merely being my friend, you’ve brought me back to life. Maybe I can do that for you.”
I sigh, catching my breath. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
Kendall hops off the bed, a tangle of brown hair swishing as she spins to face my dresser. She pulls open the top drawer and finds what she’s looking for. It’s Natalia’s notebook. My stomach turns when I see Kendall thumbing through the pages. The drawings and poems contained in that book bring me both happiness and pain. She opens it to a page I have turned to countless times. It’s near the back—and it’s a page I have wanted to show Kendall countless times. Gingerly, she sets it in my lap and points. As I take in the quote, Kendall uncaps the marker and writes.
The greatest love of your life will follow your biggest mistake. It balances life’s scales. There’s nothing to fear. Only love to embrace.
I can’t believe out of all of the quotes she could have found, this is the one. “What was my mistake?” I ask, rubbing my lips to hide the trembling. Natalia was wise beyond her years. An angel sent for a short time to better the parts of the Earth she touched.
Kendall wraps her arm around her midsection. “Me,” she says.
Narrowing my eyes, I say, “And the greatest love of my life?”
Releasing me, she signs, “Me,” the look on her face tells me it is both a question and a statement.
I chuckle. “Both? You can’t be both.”
Kendall looks away, out the window, and nods her head.
“Say I believe that and the fact that Natalia was sending us a message, what do you propose I do? Everything in my life is up in the air right now. I may not have a job or insurance or a goddamn purpose in life. There are too many variables for me to make promises I can’t keep.”
Kendall writes on the marker board. “I don’t care about any of that. What’s the point in this moment right here?” She’s bringing us back to the day my whole life changed. A place I don’t visit frequently or willingly. She taps the pen on the question two more times, leaving angry, hot pink dots.
“Maybe that we’re both here,” I growl. And we are now and we were then, and it had to be for a reason, even if it was only that I saved her life.
She signs, “Together.” Tears fall down her face as she rises from the bed and faces the wall. I hate that I can’t see her face. It’s a blindness that I never minded before, but now it’s too much. I get out of bed, keeping a hand on my bed to make sure I’m steady. The acoustic nerve damage also fucks with my balance sometimes.
“Turn around,” I say. Her shoulders jump. I spoke louder than I should have. I try again at a lower tone, but Kendall folds her arms across her chest and doesn’t move.
“Tell me what you want.”
She whirls around and jabs a finger in my chest. “You.”
Maybe it’s the fury at the situation that clouds my restraint, or maybe because I’m a man who has nothing left to lose, but I make a rash decision. Stepping once, I close the distance between us. My hands slide down the sides of her body to end on her hips. Everything inside and outside of me responds to Kendall in my arms. My dick hardens, the air charges, her breaths cascade across my face, taunting me—teasing the beast that has lain dormant for years.
My lips crash into hers because she closes the distance first. I close my eyes and find I’m not afraid of the darkness here. Not while her tongue slides against mine or when my lips own hers. I press my hard-on against her stomach and let the fuck go. I remember all of the times I wish I could have touched her, kissed her, claimed her as my own when she was my friend to cherish instead of my body to fuck. So much of myself was boxed and stored on a shelf in the name of being a good guy. For her. For her marriage. For what I thought would help her heal. She didn’t need another swinging cock trying to bed her. She needed a friendship. Now, though? Kendall. Is. Mine.
“I fucking want you so bad it hurts,” I say, pulling away from the kiss to read her eyes. The second her lashes flutter open, I see the condemnation of my soul. I vowed to never touch another man’s woman, and she is no longer a wife. Maybe I’ve always felt that she’s never been a wife because of how she reacted around me, but there aren’t any strings tethering her elsewhere. “I love you,” I whisper, or what I believe is a whisper into the side of her sweet-smelling neck. Her perfume assaults me, driving my need further—making the ache unbearable. I let my hands glide down to cup her ass and pull her against me as I kiss and lick the hammering pulse in her neck. I feel it. I taste it. I canalmosthear it.
Kendall pushes me back, her shirt askew and her jeans unbuttoned and unzipped, the top of her panties waving hello. “Are you sure?” she signs slowly, licking her lips, eyes a deadly hue of fuck-me-now. I swallow hard. Fuck. Wildest dreams meet reality.
“I’ve always been sure, but you need to know you’re not my biggest mistake.” Through the hazy lust beating between our bodies, she manages a smile. “Not making you mine all those years ago was my biggest mistake.” The smile transforming her face widens.
Neck working as she swallows, she takes a step into my arms. I take both of her hands in my own. I canfeelmy heartbeat in my ears. It’s unfamiliar, a welcome change. She looks up at me. I’d give anything to hear her breaths right now. To be close to her with every sense, but maybe I can get used to this. She signs okay with her hands still inside mine.
If she’s determined to self-destruct alongside me, I should let her. I can be selfish if it makes her happy. Can’t I? It feels as if my life has been composed of work, filling my free time, and waiting for Kendall. Those three things. When I lived in Bronze Bay I was waiting for her to be of legal age. Transferring home and losing all connection with her shattered my soul to pieces, pieces I was willing to live with because of my love for her. Reconnecting with her and finding out she was married was torture. Waiting for her to leave Adam and to finalize her divorce seemed like it took ages. I’m looking at her right now and it feels like my moment. Our moment. Something monumental.
I remember the day I found out she was expecting. A man pining might hear that news and write off a woman for good. End of story, right? I remember sitting there in that fucking Bronze Bay diner everyone goes to listening to someone tell me about Kendall’s pregnancy and impending wedding thinking ‘Well, I have always wanted children.’That’s how bad I’ve had it for the woman. Accepting her in any form was always my only option. Even when I dated other women, there was never moments of comparison because I knew, deep down, my heart would always belong to her. Before I met her, if you had told me I would love a woman I had never kissed, let alone made love to, I would have called you a liar. Whoever is playing chess with human life has a sense of humor, we’ve made it here and I’m deaf. My hearing was the price I had to pay for her. That’s what I’ve reckoned.
