someone else. Our love wasn’t ordinary. Extraordinary, instead.
I asked my father not to discuss about our conversation to Damien, and he seemed to keep my secret because Damien never mentioned it to me. And if my father had, I knew Damien would come at me hard, furious I mentioned anything to him.
I sat in bed with a book in my lap, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything I read. My eyes kept glancing out the window, seeing the cold frost the corners of the glass. I wasn’t sure what time it was, but I was exhausted from rehearsal all week, but I was never calm enough to go to sleep and make it through the night. I was always awakened by my dreams, nightmares, fantasies…
Then I heard the familiar sound of footsteps outside my door.
The turn of the locks.
And then the sound of a big man walking across the hardwood floor.
The book was still open in my lap because I hadn’t moved. My heart started to pound inside my chest, vibrate my rib cage, and my sense of hearing heightened, picked up every single movement.
He grabbed the vase from under the sink, turned on the faucet to fill it with water, and then set it on the kitchen island.
He only did that for one reason—because he’d brought me flowers.
Immediately, tears formed in my eyes, and I closed them so they wouldn’t grow. I didn’t want those tears to streak down my cheeks, to let my emotions break me down all over again. It was hard not to picture him doing that all the time, for the rest of our lives, and our children remembering what their father did for their mother when we were gone.
He stepped into the bedroom, pulling off his shirt as he went. His shoes and jeans came off next, his expressionless eyes on me.
I closed the book and set it aside before I turned off the lamp, so no one could see us together through the open window. My top came off, my bottoms, and then my panties.
He didn’t say a word, just like I asked. He moved on top of me and dug his hand into my hair, kissing me softly, cradling my head as we exchanged purposeful kisses, our breaths coming out at the same time, our tongues eager to greet each other.
My arms circled his large torso, moving across his broad back so my nails could anchor in his flesh. My knees parted and squeezed his waist, my ankles locked together against his ass.
He continued to kiss me, his hand slightly shaking, like he couldn’t believe my lips were real, that the strands against his fingertips were really mine. Without saying a word, he showed me how much he loved me, how miserable he was every single day we weren’t together. He showed me his devastation, his agony.
I combated my tears until they were gone, but when I felt the pain in his soul, felt how much he hurt on a human level, the wetness couldn’t be stopped. The drops grew until they leaked past my closed eyelids, dripping down my cheeks to the thumb of his hand that rested against my face.
He pulled his lips away from my mouth and moved to the teardrop that made it to my neck. He kissed it away before he moved to the other, gathering the drops like they were too precious to fall.
When he came back to my mouth, his eyes looked different.
Wet.
Reflective.
Emotional.
My hands cupped his face and I steadied him, so I could look at him, see the same look mirrored back at me. My heart shattered even more, witnessing the strongest man I’d ever known come apart the way I did, show his vulnerability like he didn’t care how it made him look.
He positioned our bodies so he could slide inside me, combine our souls so we wouldn’t have to feel the anguish anymore. So, we could get lost in each other for a while…and numb the pain.
The instant we were done, he got out of bed and pulled on his clothes, keeping his back to me. He dragged the long-sleeved shirt over his head and pulled his bottoms over his tight ass, purposely not looking at me, like that was the last thing he wanted.
Then he exited my bedroom, not saying a word.
I went after him, naked, unsure what I would say, unsure why I was following him at all.
He moved quickly, like he wanted to avoid me, wanted to get out