when I was awake and followed me into my sleep. I had to know. But I wondered if it would change anything.
Jericho’s gaze flew to me, and the blatant alarm I saw inside weirdly soothed my aching heart. Slowly, he shook his head, but it wasn’t from hesitation. It was disbelief that I would ever think so. “No, Braxton. I don’t.” He took a tentative step forward, and when his hands found my waist, I let him keep them there. “I love you.”
“Why? Why me and not her? What did your wife do wrong that I did right?”
His eyes narrowed just before his hold on me tightened. It was my only warning before he slammed my back against the wall and trapped me with nothing more than his anger.
Sweet, sad, gentle Jericho was gone.
I was looking at Rich.
The forceful, vengeful reckoning he kept hidden from the world.
One smelled like berries, and the other set me on fire.
“Listen up, and God help you if you make me repeat myself,” he cautioned me. “My feelings for you have nothing to do with her. I won’t compare you because she doesn’t compare. You want to know why I love you? Fine. But don’t think for a second that I gave you my heart as a fuck you to her. Don’t diminish yourself when you set the standard. The girl I fell in love with would know better.”
“Rich—”
He shut me up with a harsh grip on my chin. “Have I made myself clear, Braxton?”
My mouth filled with cherries while my pussy throbbed and my stomach warmed and twisted itself. Yes. I understood him. I heard him loud and clear.
Apparently, admitting it to myself wasn’t enough, though.
The look he gave me warned me that I’d better speak up soon.
“Yes.”
Rich stared down at me for a long while, waiting for even the smallest sign that I was lying. I almost wished that I was when I felt my toes curl at the thought of getting more of what he gave me in Connecticut.
Shaking his head, he leaned in, bracing his forearm on the wall and caging me in. “I want to kiss you,” he gently confessed as he brushed my lip with his thumb.
Kiss me.
“But I can’t. I need you thinking with a clear head.”
“Cocky much?”
He never lost that serious expression when he dropped the hand that held my face to squeeze my ass through my jeans. There was so much possession in that simple gesture. It made me consider how far he’d come from the drummer I’d met nine months ago. The one who played the background and let his friends call the shots because he didn’t like making waves. To my heart, it was now painfully clear why he preferred it that way.
Because the waves Jericho caused were tragic on the soul.
They were one-hundred-foot tsunamis.
“No.” He let me go, took a step back, and slid his hands in his jeans as he looked at me. “When I’m not eager to fuck you, all I can process is fear. I’ve been wracking my brain since the moment I found out you knew about Emily. I didn’t think you’d ever forgive me, but then you did, and it gave me hope. I clung to that seed until I realized what I’d truly lost. Trust. You’d given it so easily, and I didn’t understand until this moment as I’m fighting for the words to get it back. If I’d known losing you would turn me this inside out, I would have told you about Emily. I would have told you the moment I wished that it had been you I’d given my name. I hadn’t even kissed you yet. Did you know that? I wanted to marry you long before I ever kissed you. So much that I filed for divorce the next day.”
While Jericho gathered his thoughts and I replayed everything he’d confessed so far, we stared at each other, longing for what could have been.
“I know you feel guilty for me loving you,” he said, “but there’s no reason for either of us to carry that weight. I stopped wanting Emily long before we met, and she has no one to blame but herself.”
His lips set in a grim line, and his brows dipped as he remembered the past.
“We were married for only four months before she cheated and then six before she ran away because I told her if the baby wasn’t mine, we were through. I don’t know if it was anger that