“Is that a question or a statement?”
He chuckled and twined his fingers in mine. “It was a statement of awe. I don’t deserve you.” He brushed a kiss across my palm. “Not in the least little bit, but if you’ll have me, I promise to take care of you, love you, and make up for all those years of making love that we missed out on because I was a shallow, pigheaded, well, pig.”
“You’ve been taking care of me and probably loving me this whole time, right?” I asked, and he nodded his head as if he was desperately seeking forgiveness for the transgressions he thought he’d made. “Then we have to put the past behind us and move forward.”
“How do we do that?” he asked into the quiet room. “We have years of history together.”
I leaned up on my elbow, and my tank top slipped down to reveal a strip of my breast. Mattie’s gaze strayed there for only a moment before he met my eyes again. “I don’t want to put all our memories behind us. I want to put the self-loathing and hatred, the guilt, the anger, the pain, and the idea that we can’t be best friends and lovers behind us. I want to start fresh and not be weighed down by the painful part of our situation. Most people would say I shouldn’t trust you considering the scars you’ve left on my heart, but I’m not most people. I didn’t go through all of the pain and heartache to collect those scars just to walk away now. Maybe that’s one of the pathways in my mind that works differently, but I don’t see the logic in that. I know what I want, and that’s to take my life back at twenty-eight and finally be happy.”
He lay next to me, his arms wrapped tightly around me. “I want to make you happy. I promise right here, tonight, that you’re the most important person in my life now. I mean, you always have been, at least in here”—he tapped his chest—”even if my head forced me to pretend you weren’t for so many years. I wish like hell I hadn’t listened to Far all those years ago. I wish I had told you how I felt. I wish for so many things that I can’t get back. Like my virginity, for one.” His finger traced my cheek, and he sighed. “I wish I could give that to you the way I pray you’ll give me yours.”
I grasped his hand and smiled, turning my head to kiss his palm. “Then we’d be two bumbling newbies in bed,” I said, winking. “At least you know what you’re doing.”
He kissed my lips tenderly for a moment. When he pulled back, his finger traced the wetness on them. “You’re making it out to be harder than it is, honeybee. Sex is physical. There’s nothing else involved other than the physical act, but making love is about the emotions. I know you have the emotions down,” he said, kissing my lips hard and then gently, showing me rather than telling me the difference. “I feel your love, trust, and joy every time we kiss.” He was gasping for air, and I rubbed his chest until he could speak again. “It’s not that hard.” He swallowed as his eyes drifted closed. “Actually, it’s incredibly hard.” He laughed, the sound turning to a moan at the end as he squirmed to get more comfortable.
I traced the length of him over the front of his boxers, curiosity driving me more than bravery. He bit his lip and let out a moan. “We aren’t going to do this tonight.” His words were concrete when he spoke them. “You need more time to know that being with me is what you want.”
“Mattie, I’ve had twenty years to know this is what I want. I don’t think I need more time.”
He grasped my hand to stop my exploration of him. “I don’t have any protection, Honey,” he groaned. “I’ve been celibate for a year. We have to stop.”
“I’ve been on the pill since my surgery, Mattie,” I whispered. “We don’t have to worry about it, unless you aren’t . . .” I moved my hand around in the air until he grasped it in his.
“Clean? No, I’m clean. I never had unprotected sex. I might have been stupid, but I wasn’t that stupid.” He brushed his lips across my knuckles and sighed when I didn’t say anything. “What surgery did you have? I don’t remember you having surgery other than when you had your appendix taken out. Or do you mean your arm?”
“It wasn’t my appendix,” I said on a grimace as I rolled to my back and stared up at the ceiling.
He rested on his elbow while his other hand rubbed a circle on my belly, lifting my shirt to look for a scar that wasn’t there. His hand stilled when his eyes met mine. “I don’t understand. Where’s the scar?”
I ran my hand along my bikini line. “Here.” I showed him the small scar without making eye contact.
“Why would they cut you that low for your appendix?”
“I just said it wasn’t my appendix.” I sighed and shook my head again. “I made your parents tell you I had my appendix out because I was embarrassed.”
“Embarrassed about what? You’re a virgin, so you weren’t pregnant.”
He rolled over onto his belly and took my hand in his.
“No, I wasn’t pregnant. Do you remember when I went to the hospital in so much pain? Birgitte was convinced it was appendicitis.” He nodded, so I continued. “Well, it turned out that I had a tumor in my uterus. My uterus was dying from lack of blood, or something like that anyway. I didn’t understand it all, but they had to go in and take it out.”
“Wait, you don’t have a uterus?” he asked, sitting up and holding my waist.
“I have a uterus. That’s why I’m still on the pill. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have to worry about birth control.”
The obvious hit him, and he rolled his eyes at himself. “Right, I’m an idiot. You’re saying they removed the tumor. Was it cancerous?”
“Fortunately, it wasn’t. It was something that had been there since birth. When the doctors went in to remove it, they discovered I had several abnormalities in my uterus. They repaired them all and said I can still have children, but they’d want to do a C-section rather than let me deliver naturally.”
“I’m glad to hear that. For you, but also me. I want you to have my child someday. I want to lay our baby in Mor’s arms and show her it was all worth it.”
My heart nearly pounded out of my chest at his words. “You want to have a baby with me? My bloodline isn’t exac—”
His finger came down on my lips. “There is nothing wrong with your bloodline. Your problems stem from your mother’s stupidity, not from genetics. Do you understand me?”
I swallowed and lifted his finger from my lips. “Except maybe this uterine condition.”
His lower lip caught between his teeth while he eyed me. “This wasn’t your mom again?”
