so rich with green, and rustling leaves and the dogs racing at full pelt. I’d never get enough of this and I knew it. I’d never get enough of him and I knew it.
I guess that’s when I decided the future was inevitable.
And if the future was inevitable then so was the past.
I was scared. Staring up at him and wondering how the hell we’d ever get beyond that pile of hurt he’d slammed into me, and how we’d ever get beyond the repercussions that had cost me so much.
But I was more scared of how anyone else would get past it, even if I did myself.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, but I didn’t tell him. Not there in that moment. I shrugged and smiled and pointed out another crazy big oak on the horizon and he told me how it was Millie’s favourite.
He looked at me for a few long seconds before he pulled his phone from his pocket and unlocked the screen.
He pulled up a video and handed it over, and there was his little girl running around that very tree with her palm flat to the bark. Her giggle was beautiful, her eyes sparkling and so much like his it knocked me sideways. Her hair was like his too, the exact same shade of dark, her colouring a perfect match as it blew behind her as she ran. I couldn’t speak. The pain was in my throat.
Because that should have been us.
She should have been mine.
“Let’s play tag, Daddy,” she giggled. “Bet you can’t catch me.”
“Smile for the camera and I’ll be right there.”
She poked her tongue out and did a dance, and the image shuddered as he laughed too loud to hold it steady.
“She’s beautiful,” I managed to say as the recording came to an end.
“She is,” he agreed. “Maybe one day you’ll meet her. She’ll love you.”
That brought the pain up fresh. I took his fingers in mine and kept on walking and kept on breathing, and he raised my damn hand to his mouth and kissed my knuckles, and I knew then I was doomed.
He whistled the dogs when we completed the circuit and got back to the truck. I was trying to wipe some of the splatted mud from my butt before I got in, but he told me not to bother and got right in himself.
We rumbled our way back to the house and my heart was thumping, knowing full well we had to confront the place I’d been avoiding.
He pulled onto the drive and I took the final steps on my trashed shoes, kicking them off by the door and stepping on inside the warm. I shrugged off his coat and he hung it up to dry off, and then we were back through into the kitchen, and he was starting up the kettle and asking me what I wanted.
I sipped on a fresh glass of juice and watched him making tea, and wondered if there was any way on earth we’d make it through this.
He laughed again as he scoped out my legs. “Let me run you a bath,” he said, and I nodded. But that’s when I opted for another round. I undid my blouse and dropped it to the floor, unclipped my bra and slid my filthy skirt down my thighs.
One final high before the low.
His eyes darkened with fire when he saw what I was wearing.
I’d been feeling them all the way, the filthy knickers I’d sneakily taken from the counter top earlier when he wasn’t looking. They’d been the most slippery damp between my thighs all the way round that walk.
“You dirty bitch,” he said, and I slipped my fingers right on down.
He didn’t give me a second. A few long steps and he was down on his knees, his mouth pressed to that filth and sucking hard and his hands gripping my muddy thighs so tight I was his prisoner.
I wanted to be his prisoner.
“You’re a filthy beast,” I whispered, and he moaned against my pussy.
“Takes one to know one,” he said.
He didn’t pull my knickers to the side and I didn’t want him to. I loved him like this.
I didn’t know if my legs would hold my weight as I shuddered, so I gripped the counter to the side. My eyes were closed and my body was burning up and the waves took me like I was drowning in the thrill.
Filth.
It was filth.
His mouth was so wet when he pulled away, staring up