Need You Now (Love in Unknown) - By Taylor M. Lunsford Page 0,100
warm around hers. She never wanted to let go, but he did. He reached up to cup her chin, tilting her head to look at him.
“Love, huh?” His expression went all soft. It might be the pain meds dripping into his veins, but she didn’t think so. “So I have to get stabbed and be in a hospital bed for you to finally ‘fess up?”
Mel laughed, the sound a little watery. God, she loved this man. Everything about him, even his overprotective alpha male tendencies. “Well, if a certain someone's ex-fiancée hadn't broken into my clinic, I would have come by your office to tell you that tonight."
“Yeah?” Blue eyes turned almost electric with happiness as they eagerly moved over every part of her.
She nodded, turning her face to kiss his palm and cup it in her own. “Yeah. It really sucked to be away from you. I know it wasn’t fair of me to keep so much from you. I just…I was scared, Caine. Scared to feel so much for someone, then and now. Getting hurt by you would be a thousand times more painful than anything I felt before.”
Losing him forever, she now knew, would have been almost unbearable. She finally understood how her mother could spend a year trying to block out the world and the pain. To love someone meant risking the pain of losing them; it meant giving them the power to hurt you irreparably when you lost them. It also meant not wanting to miss out on a single one of the memories that could happen between this day and that.
“I will never, ever hurt you, Mel.” Caine patted the bed, urging her to sit beside him. Throwing protocol to the wind, she did. Even pale from blood loss, the man radiated heat and vitality, and all she wanted to do was curl up and stay by his side forever. “I know I haven't said it yet, but I love you, sunshine. So much. You're everything to me. Everything.”
Suddenly shy, Mel laced her fingers with Caine’s. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you about the pregnancy scare. It’s something I’ve worked really hard to forget. I knew telling you was the only way I could think of to end things and keep you safe. After what Portia did to your golf cart, I was terrified of what she might do next and I didn’t want to see you hurt because of me.”
“Would you have ever told me about it if this thing with Portia hadn’t been going on?” Caine squeezed her hand reassuringly.
Mel buried her face in his good shoulder for a minute, taking strength from the clean, masculine smell of him. “I…I think I would have. I’ve never felt so alone as I did during those weeks you were gone. It was hard. Being with you, even as casually as we were, had been a fairy tale for me. Reality hit me really hard and I just couldn’t stand to be let down again. Given time….given time I know I would have trusted you enough to tell you. You have this way of breaking through my defenses and sneaking into my heart.”
“I understand.” Two simple words that meant the world to Mel. Unable to speak, she leaned forward and kissed him. When his tongue darted out to tangle with hers, she pulled back, resting her forehead against his. “Easy there, Mr. Mayor. You’re not quite in shape for that just yet. There’s plenty of time for making up when you’re out of here.”
“Will you come home with me and play doctor?” A teasing light danced in his eyes.
A life of love with her best friend? A life of possibility and laughter? She could do this. There was no way she wasn’t going to do this.
Mel laughed, kissing him again. “That’s the best offer I’ve had in a long time.”
Epilogue
Mel stopped to check for the third time to see if she had something stuck to her back. The occupants of the car that had just passed her had swiveled around to watch her. Again. In the month and a half since the incident at the clinic, the gossips had finally lost interest in her. By now they were used to her dating Caine, seeing them kissing around town. Then suddenly, early this week, the gossipy looks had started again. Micah and Gage told her she was imagining things, but she knew something was up.