Sweetest in the Gale - Olivia Dade Page 0,32
her toward a bench near the sidewalk, beneath a tree blazing with autumn color. At the contact, she cast him another befuddled glance, but she didn’t move away from him, and she sat without protest.
“Umm…” She kept darting glances at him. His hair. His face. His clothing. “Dr. Payne said I should start physical therapy so I can regain my full range of motion and rebuild my strength. As everything heals, I can start lifting weights.”
Exactly what his research had indicated. “But overall, everything looks good?”
“Yes.” Plucking her glasses from her nose, she let them hang around her neck. Her spike-lashed eyes searched his. “Griff, we agreed to share updates via e-mail. We agreed not to exchange physical intimacies. So what in the world are you doing here? Why did you—”
She cut herself off, her eyes turning glassy.
Her hand fluttered to the spot on her cheek where he’d smoothed away her hair. The exact place on her arm he’d touched to guide her to the bench.
“This isn’t fair.” She was whispering, but he could lip-read the words, because she was facing him as they talked. Keeping her promises, yet again. “You’re taunting me with what I can’t have, and it hurts. It’s cruel, Griff, and you’re not a cruel person. So why—”
When he cupped her soft cheek in his palm, she bit her lip again and leaned into his hand. But she was crying silently, her eyes stricken, and he chose his words carefully.
This was the fulcrum of his life, his heart, his future. The moment he crossed over to the other side of his and. If only she’d still have him.
“I told you I have significant hearing loss in my right ear.” He stroked along her cheekbone with his thumb. “I have since I was a child.”
Her brow knitted, but she hitched her head in a little nod.
“That hearing loss hasn’t gone away over time. It never will. It’s changed who I am, forever. And in some ways, it’s made my life harder.” He watched her carefully. Saw when her eyes sharpened in recognition of their common language. “But when someone is speaking to me, my hearing loss ensures I pay them total attention. It makes me extraordinarily, consistently protective and careful of the hearing I do have, because I don’t want to damage it.”
He repeated himself with deliberate slowness. “I never, ever want to damage it.”
Tears spilled over her lashes again.
Leaning in close, he paused. When she didn’t move, when she simply stared up at him, lips parted, he kissed away a stray tear gleaming at the top of her cheek and leaned his forehead against hers.
“Because of my hearing loss,” he added, “I also tend to appreciate those who speak clearly and loudly. Very loudly.”
At that, her lips tipped in a trembling smile.
“Someone who speaks clearly deserves clarity in return.” He gulped. “I—”
And, he reminded himself. And.
“I’m falling in love with you.” There. There it was. “It’s not a betrayal of Marianne, and I’ve accepted that. Our hearts are large. My heart is large. I can keep her there and still love you, still devote myself to any life we might make together, still do my damnedest to make you happy each and every day on this earth.”
She sniffed loudly, and her hand covered his.
“Are you certain?” Her eyes were the stars in his firmament, bright and true. “You have to be certain.”
It was a plea and a demand both. Scared but determined. Essentially, gorgeously Candy.
“If you’ll have me,” he told her, “I would not wish any companion in the world but you. May I woo you?”
“Woo me?” She huffed out a laugh, and its warmth banished the chill of endless weeks without her. “Really?”
He inclined his head. “Woo. Court. Seduce, as necessary.”
She ran her fingertips lightly over his beard, and he shivered at the carnal pleasure of it. “Consider me seduced. You were already devastating, but now...”
Studying himself in the mirror earlier that afternoon, he’d considered removing all his facial hair. Going clean-shaven, as Marianne had preferred. Then he’d remembered how Candy had reacted to the abrasion of his beard against their entwined fingers. Her parted lips. Her desperate swallow.
If that beard earned him open, unguarded heat from Candy, he’d keep it forever.
In the end, then, he’d merely tamed it. Made clear it was a choice, not the exhausted shrug of a broken man. He liked it now, more than he’d expected.
He suspected he’d like it even more soon, once he’d rubbed it against the most