that she seems so uncertain. Doesn’t she know how much I want her? How much it physically hurts me to not be with her every possible minute?
Two more steps and I close the distance between us, cupping her face into my palms. “Not tonight. I want you to get a good sleep. When I see you next, I want those dark circles under your eyes gone, okay?”
She nods and yawns.
When I press my lips to hers, it’s easy to tell by the lack of pressure how tired she really is.
She wipes at her eyes. “You said you’re going swimming tomorrow morning, right?”
“Yeah. I don’t want to get too out of it.”
“Makes total sense. So, I’ll see you at the hospital later, then?”
“Yup. I’ll be there as soon as I’m done with my training.”
“Sounds good.”
I lean in to give her a chaste goodnight kiss before sending her off to bed, but either she’s hornier when she’s tired, or someone’s just woken up. Her hands disappear into my back pockets, and she pulls me to her like a woman on a mission, a moan slipping past her delicious lips.
My earlier hard-on comes back with a vengeance, and I know I need to take care of that before I have a chance of getting some sleep.
As much as it pains me to do, I end our kiss and take a step back, still holding on to one of her hands. She groans in protest, and I chuckle. “I know, babe.”
Her gaze snaps to mine, her eyes smoldering with heat. Out of reflex, I rub my thumb over her wrist, just to freeze when I feel the raised skin under my finger pad. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
My gaze is fixated on her tattoo, on the birds mid-flight that look so peaceful and free. “We never . . . we’ve never talked about it again.”
“I know.” Her swallow is audible in the quiet night. “Do you want to know?”
I nod and somehow find the strength to look at her. She’s more alert than before, her eyes bright and awake.
“It happened about a year after I got my transplant. It had been a long year and a half since I’d gotten sick. Things happened so quickly, and the time after the transplant surgery was no walk in the park. It wasn’t an instant fix. The surgery itself and all the medicine was hard on my body, I had a lot of side effects, which meant a lot of experimentation with medicine dosages and different mixes. One night in my bedroom, I just felt so overwhelmed and cut my wrist.”
To imagine her doing this feels like a punch straight to the gut.
Her shoulders lift. “I don’t even know what I expected, or what I wanted to happen. I just wanted for things to be easier.”
“I’m so sorry, Chlo. So fucking sorry.” I pull her to me, not sure how to ever let her go again.
But a few minutes later, she’s the one pushing me away. “Now, let’s both get some sleep. You have to be fit in the morning. And someone told me I look like a zombie, so I better haul my ass to bed too.”
She’s smiling, but there’s strain behind that smile that she can’t hide fully. For Chloe to have become so desperately unhappy that she tried to take her own life . . . that she didn’t want to live anymore . . .
It takes every ounce of self-control to not shudder.
Without a doubt, there are levels of grief. Sometimes, I can spot glimpses of Chloe’s until she covers it up with a lighthearted comment or shrug.
But not only did she survive, she’s thriving.
After one more kiss, I finally peel myself off her, even though it’s so much harder after hearing that brief but poignant story.
Leaving this woman is hard.
Leaving her after everything I know, is extra hard.
Leaving a piece of my heart with her might be the easiest of them all.
Twenty-Nine
Chloe
"Stop it. You look beautiful.” Noah puts his hand on my thigh and squeezes as he drives down a street that’s lined with lush green trees on both sides. “Everyone will love you.”
Why did I say yes to going to a kids’ birthday party again? Oh yeah, because I’m a sucker for this man. How could I forget?
Noah told me all about his friends, the other “kings of the water” as the press loves to call these four. Ryan and Jace, who I’ve briefly seen when I met with Eadie at the cafe but