but I let it go. “Alright.” I moved into her side and wrapped my arm around her waist, my face moving into her hairline. She smelled the way I remembered, like a beautiful summer day—fresh-cut grass, new flowers, sunshine. I kissed her skin, savoring the touch of her against me, treasuring this moment, because just weeks ago, I thought I would never see her again.
She stilled at my touch, affected by my kiss the way I was, like it brought her to life in the exact same way. She stopped eating, even stopped breathing. She subtly turned her cheek my way.
I pulled away and looked down into her face, seeing the single most beautiful woman in the world, the woman I would lay down my life for in a heartbeat, the woman I would sacrifice everything for…because there was nothing more important.
The connection we used to have was still there, as if everything that had just happened never happened at all. She looked at me the way she used to, like I was the tinder to her fire, the dynamite to her explosion, the sunlight to her flower petals.
I lay in bed and watched her undress.
She pulled the sweater over her head, her back to me. Then her arms reached behind her back and unclasped the black bra before she placed it on my dresser. She bent over and pushed off her jeans, giving me an incredible view of her ass.
I’d been thinking about that ass every single day.
Her bag was on the dresser, so she pulled out her little shorts and soft cotton tank. She put everything on, her silhouette so sexy in the dark. She held her small frame with such strength, deepened the arch in her back as she stood straight, stretching.
It was practically foreplay for me.
She moved to the nightstand and put her phone on silent before she took a drink of her water. Her makeup was gone because she’d washed it off when she brushed her teeth. Then she pulled back the sheets and finally joined me.
Man, I could not wait to fuck her again.
My body was still too weak to do it right, to hold myself on top of her without wincing. And I didn’t want to do it half-assed, a compromised version to accommodate my injury. I wanted to be the man she remembered, the man I still was.
So, I had to be patient.
She turned on her side and faced me, so small in my bed. She pulled the covers to her shoulders then stared at me, her hair pushed behind her ear so it wouldn’t be in her face and tickle her nose. She closed her eyes.
I stared at her, watched her eyelashes spread down her cheeks, watched her lips soften as she relaxed. When she didn’t touch me, she kept her knees to her chest and she took up almost no space, like a dog at the end of the bed.
“Come here.”
She opened her eyes.
My hand reached for her wrist and gave her a gentle tug. “Closer.”
“I don’t want to hurt you…”
“You’re hurting me more by staying over there.”
She must have wanted to be close to me too, because she shifted toward me, coming as close as she could without actually touching me. She brought the pillow with her, leaving her face just inches from mine.
It wasn’t exactly what I wanted—but some of her was better than none of her.
My hand grabbed hers and held it on my chest, on my left pec where my heart was. The weight didn’t hurt me since that was one of the few places where I didn’t ache. I interlocked our fingers and stared at her.
She watched me too, looked into my face with her beautiful green eyes, eyes so gentle that she could never hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it.
Her beauty was more powerful than all the pain killers I took. She took away my pain just by looking at me, just by loving me. She brought me peace, brought the stars to my ceiling, brought the summer meadow right into my bedroom. “I love you.” There was no specific moment that those feelings had dawned on me, that she’d said something that suddenly made me feel that way. It had just happened, and when it did, the feeling was infinite, like I’d always felt that way, even before I met her. I couldn’t remember what my life was like before she walked into it, even though it had only been a few months