He stopped pacing and met her gaze, hurt and anger warring in his eyes.
“You of all people should understand leaving the past in the past.”
His shoulders dropped just a fraction, but it was enough for her to know he’d heard her. She went to him and took his hand, feeling inexplicably calm. She led him back to the blankets and pulled him down beside her. Then she straddled his lap to get his undivided attention and caressed his jaw, hoping to soothe the tension there.
“You want to protect me from my past, but that’s over with, Justin. The same way we can’t change what happened to your mother. I didn’t tell you that story to make you mad. I wanted you to see that even when we are looking for all the signs, we can still be blindsided. Even smart people make bad decisions. Your mother was young, and your father may have seemed like a completely different man when they met.”
“I hear you, but…” He wrapped his arms around her and touched his forehead to the center of her breastbone. “The thought of that guy hurting you…”
She kissed his head and gently cradled his face in her hands, lifting it so she could look into his tortured eyes. “I know how you feel because I want to go back in time and save you from all the stuff your father did and from being there when your mother died. But we can’t do any of those things. All we can do is look harder, listen more carefully, and try to make sure it never happens again.” She kissed him softly, again and again, light as a feather, until the tension in his jaw dissipated. “And love the hurt away.”
She took off her shirt, and his eyes found the scar on her chest. She saw him putting the pieces of her past together.
“Baby,” he said in a pained, craggy voice. He brushed his fingers over the scar, held them there for a moment, then pressed a kiss there. He lifted his gaze to hers and lowered her to the blanket, whispering, “Nobody will ever hurt you again.”
She wound her arms around him and said, “You can’t save me from the world, Justin.”
“I’ll never stop trying,” he promised.
“How about if we make enough happy memories to silence the bad ones?”
He lowered his lips to hers, kissing her tenderly as he undressed her, loving all her newly bared parts as if he were discovering them for the very first time. He kept his eyes on her as he stripped off his clothes and came down over her, muscles taut with remnants of all they’d shared, his beautiful, distraught eyes gazing into hers. They didn’t speak, didn’t kiss, and didn’t move. In the silence she heard whispers of bad memories vying to remain in the forefront. But as she ran her hands up his arms and over his back, his tension slowly dissipated, and she felt her own following suit, seeping out of her pores. She willed all those bad memories to follow the smoke from the fire up the chimney and fly away into the night.
“Chloe,” he whispered, a plea and an affirmation in one.
Their bodies came together with the grace of the sunrise and the heat of a storm. He didn’t kiss her as their passion built. He sank deeper, holding her gaze. The clarity of emotions in his eyes pushed all those ghosts to the side, telling her all the things his mouth couldn’t. She didn’t think their lovemaking could feel any better than it had. But this was different, like they’d finally broken the remaining chains that had weighed them down and allowed their hearts to truly beat as one.
Chapter Nineteen
CHLOE GLANCED IN her rearview mirror at Justin following her on his motorcycle as they headed to Summer House to meet their friends for breakfast Thursday morning. It had been four days since they’d confessed their deepest secrets, and Chloe was learning about the freedoms that came with trusting someone so implicitly. She could tell him anything, and that made what they had feel deeper, and truer, than anything she’d ever thought possible.
Over the nearly three weeks since he’d shown up at her house for that midnight dance, his romantic heart had her redefining her thoughts on what romance really meant. There was no doubt that bringing her flowers and creating a beach were romantic. The beach had been epic. But it