A Broken Us (London Lover Series Book 1) (17 page)

The sun is streaming in brightly through the
lace curtains. I feel hot and butterflies flutter in my belly at the
recollection that Brody is here—on my tiny twin mattress—with me.
His large arm is wrapped tightly around my waist and I gently stroke the fuzzy
dark hair on his forearm. God, I can’t believe I ever thought I could leave him
so easily.
This is Brody.

I slowly and carefully turn in his arms and he
lets out a big sigh in his sleep. I’m inches away from his face, marveling in
his beauty. He looks so content right now. His shaggy curly hair is perfectly
rumpled from sleep, his milky skin looks beautiful in the morning sunlight and
I notice the familiar freckle that sits right below his right eye. I can’t help
myself from reaching over and kissing it lightly.

He stirs and excitement rushes through me as
I’m giddy for him to wake up and talk or
not
talk
to me. Flutters rush all over my body as my mouth develops a mind of
its own and kisses his freckle again, then slowly makes its way down his cheeks
and neck. I drag my lips from spot to spot so I never have to break contact
from this amazing, gorgeous, sexy man of mine. I reach his chest and try to
shimmy down further to kiss his belly but his arms suddenly grip me tightly.

“No fair,” he moans, with his eyes still
closed. “If you’re going to be kissing me, I at least deserve to be awake for
it.”

His dark blue eyes flutter open and he grins
sleepily at me.

“Otherwise, how can I return the favor?” he
says, pulling me back up and nuzzling my neck. When I feel a flick of his
tongue against my skin, I can’t take it anymore.

I press him flat onto his back and straddle
him. I rake his chest with my hands and he shudders below me. He’s fully ready
for me and I smile, gently easing myself on top of him. His face grows serious
with desire as I begin to move in slow, sensuous motions.

“God, Finley,” he croaks out with his deep,
raspy morning-voice. “You are so beautiful.”

My heart soars at his words. For years Brody
has made me feel like the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. There is nothing
sexier than this man making me feel good about my body in the throes of
passion.

His hands reach out and fondle my breasts
gently and he sits himself up to press his head into my chest. I cry out when
he nips at my breast.

“Brody!” I say, giggling.

He bands his arms around my waist and rolls me
under him. He quickly grabs one of my legs and puts it up on his shoulder,
which deepens him into me. I savor the full feeling of him and my eyes flutter
back open to look into his eyes. His gorgeous, navy-blue eyes. My hands find
their way into his coarse curls and I comb my fingers through them as he
continues moving inside of me.

“I’ve missed us so much, Finley. I’ve missed
you
so much. I can’t lose you again
Finley, I can’t,” he says, his face turning serious as his eyes bore into mine.

“You won’t, Brody,” I say, lifting my head off
the pillow. “I’m here with you, forever now, baby. I can’t leave you ever
again. You’re everything to me. Everything.”

I roll him to his back and take control again.
I need him to know how serious and in control of my feelings I am, and taking
over the sexual position feels like the best way to relay that message. For the
next thirty minutes, that’s exactly what I do.
Relay the message.

When we finish, my limbs are tangled with his,
the lavender-colored sheet covering just our essential parts. The purple
comforter is a rumpled mess on the floor.

“I feel weird saying this, but do we need to be
worrying about birth control right now, Finley?” his voice hangs in the room.

I immediately shake my head, “We’re fine.
There…there’s nothing to worry about.”

He sighs, “Well, I know it never happened for
us before but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen now, Finley. We probably need
to be more careful until we decide what we’re going to do.”

My heartbeat increases and I can feel it
pounding in my chest. I’m not ready to tell Brody there truly is nothing to
worry about. I will tell him soon, but I’m not wanting to pop this incredibly
sexy bubble we have going right now. I wrack my brain to figure out what I can
say in reply to his concerns.

“Um…we can pick up some condoms today if you
want, but for now I’m sure we’re safe. I know where I’m at in my cycle…we’re
fine,” I say, sitting up with the sheet held tightly to my chest, feeling like
the worst kind of liar
.

I glance back at him and see a fleeting look of
sadness, but he doesn’t let it show for long before half-smiling back while
gently scratching my back.

“For the record, you can wake me up like that
anytime you want,” he says, sitting up next to me and nipping my shoulder.

I giggle against him and check the time. It’s
nearly ten.

“Are you feeling jet-lagged? Or do you want to
see the city today?” I ask.

“I feel like a million bucks right now,” he
says, stretching and laying back on the mattress with his hands behind his
head.

He looks so happy right now, I can’t help but
grin right back at him.

“Well, it’s Saturday and the farmers’ market
here is really cool. Wait ‘til you see all the different stuff they have.”

He grins back at me, “I’m not
gonna
lie, I’d be perfectly content to stay in this room
all day long.” He sits up onto one arm and raises his eyebrows at me. “Though,
I wouldn’t mind a bigger bed.”

He gives me a hilarious unimpressed expression
and I giggle and jump on him.

“You weren’t complaining last night or this
morning!” I say, pushing his shoulder down into the mattress as hard as I can.
He barely budges.

“Promise me you’ll stay completely naked every
time we’re on this mattress and I’ll get over it, I suppose,” he quips back at
me.

“You
suppose
,”
I mimic back to him. “Come on, let’s get dressed and go downstairs. I really
want you to meet Frank. And I’m sure Leslie would love to actually say hi to
you at some point.” I say, standing up butt naked, acting like I’m not the
least bit concerned about it.

His eyes rove over my body and he shakes his
head before jumping up at the speed of light. He rams his shoulder into my stomach
and stands up with my body draped over him. I squeal when he slaps my ass
really hard.

“Ouch, Brody! Damn it!” I scream. “That hurt!”
I cry out, with a big goofy smile on my face as he walks us toward the door.

“What do you expect, woman? You stand up in
front of me like that and you don’t expect some repercussions? I’m going to
teach you a really good lesson in that shower again because there are a few
areas I want to inspect a little closer,” he says, giving me a quick tweak on
my butt.

He opens the door and marches across the
hallway toward the bathroom. I glance down the stairs giggling, and my eyes
land on Frank walking by the lower stairwell with a bowl of cereal in his
hands.

I clear my throat and attempt to stifle the
laughter bubbling up inside me.
Don’t
look up, Frank. Don’t look up!

He looks up.
Aw
frick
, he looked up!
His eyes zero in
on Brody’s bare ass and my naked body draped over his shoulder. I burst out in
a loud riotous laughter as Frank’s spoon remains suspended in the air.

Brody turns to see what I’m laughing at and
gives Frank a full-on frontal assault of his manhood. In epic slow motion,
Frank’s jaw drops and milky cereal dribbles off the edge of his bowl onto the
floor.

My voice catches in my throat, unsure what to
say.

“I,
uhhhh
, Brody!
Turn around!” I screech. I can’t even begin to handle the look on Frank’s
stunned face right now.

“Sorry…uh, yeah…um, sorry!” Brody yells down
the steps and shuffles us into the bathroom and quickly closes the door.

I shake my head incredulously as he sets me
down. Brody looks at me with a huge shit-eating grin.
He’s proud of himself right now, the cheeky bastard.

“Frank is never going to let me live this down,
you big jerk!” I say, shoving him light-heartedly in the chest.

A sweet rumble of laugher shakes his shoulders
as he captures my hand against his chest.

“Who is Frank?” Brody says, laughing at me.

“My roommate! I do not appreciate you showing
him our
ass
ets like that. Damn!”

Brody pulls me into his arms and holds me with
the happiest smile I’ve ever seen on him. “Frank didn’t look like he minded one
bit,” he murmurs, while kissing up my neck to my ear.

“I mind!” I reply.

Brody leans down and consumes my mouth with his
tongue.

I
suddenly mind a lot less.

Brody and I get cleaned up and make our way
downstairs for some coffee. Leslie and Frank are sitting in the kitchen nook
and I smile brightly at them, unwilling to acknowledge the peep show Frank saw
only an hour ago.

“Morning!” I say, cheerily, pulling a
not-so-confident-now Brody behind me into the kitchen.

“
Gooooood
Mooooorrrrnnniiiiiing
,” Frank replies saucily, and Leslie
spits out her cereal all over the table.

I look at Frank and squint my eyes.

“A very good morning indeed, isn’t it, Brody?”
Frank says, looking Brody up and down.

Brody’s adorable face turns beet red as he
shifts awkwardly.

“Brody,” I say, in a warning tone while boring
daggers at Frank. “This is Frank.”

Frank’s lanky body stands up and he saunters
over to Brody. Frank is dressed in another original ensemble of zebra-striped
pants and a thermal long-sleeved white shirt. Oh, bless my sweet Brody right
now. He was so brazen and arrogant an hour ago but now he’s gone shy on me.

“Very, very nice to meet you, Brody,” Frank
drawls out slowly, shaking Brody’s hand much longer than necessary. “I’ve heard
so much about you. And happy to
see
so much of you now, too. I love those jeans you’re wearing.”

Brody clears his throat and digs deep for some
confidence again. He smiles back one of his signature panty-dropping smiles and
replies, “Nice to meet you, Frank. Sorry about giving you an eye full earlier.
I uh, was just feeling pretty happy to be here with Finley, I guess.”

“No need to apologize, pet. By the looks of it,
you were feeling
very
…what was the
word you used? Oh, yes…
happy
.” Frank
smiles ear-to-ear and glances down toward Brody’s crotch.

Brody clears his throat, “Hi, Les!” he says,
releasing Frank’s hand and making his way over to sit next to Leslie. He gives
her a hearty hug. She smiles back, obviously enjoying the little show Frank and
Brody are putting on for our enjoyment.

Frank looks at me, batting his eyes innocently.
I glare back, keeping my eyes trained on him as I walk backwards into the
kitchen for coffee.

“I’m going to take Brody over to the farmers’
market if either of you want to come,” I say, softening my death glare on
Frank. “I thought I’d pick something up for dinner tonight so we can have a big
family dinner if you guys are going to be around.”

“Sounds great to me!” Leslie says. “But I have
work to do today, so I’ll just join you for the actual eating of the food, not
the shopping and cooking…that sounds terrible. I’m the type who likes to eat
the sausage, I don’t need to see how it’s made.”

I give her an unimpressed look and then turn to
Frank.

He lifts his eyebrows up at me trying to
decipher what I want him to say.

He raises his chin up high and replies “I
willlllllllll
not
come…” he finishes, the word dropping his chin slowly to his chest, “…in
that
way…but I will eat?” he says with a
question mark, like he doesn’t know what I want him to say.

“Yes, Frank. You will eat.” I smile at him. The
saucy bugger is obviously not as offended at seeing Brody’s naked bod as he was
by seeing mine. “And we will all be fully clothed. In fact, let’s make it a
fancy family dinner and dress up a bit!”

This perks Frank right up. “You’re lucky I love
clothes, Fin-Bin. Otherwise, there’s no way I’d agree to a dinner with that
hunk-of-a-man in anything but his birthday suit.”

Brody laughs hard and I crack a big smile, no
longer able to continue my façade of being put out by this situation.

“Ha
ha
. Okay, Frank.
You’ve seen Brody naked. Now piss-off about it already or we’re going to force
you to even the score.”

Frank does a quick twirl and says, “Even away,
love! And let me tell you,” he pauses, and shoots a sly expression Brody’s way.
“The carpet
definitely
matches the
drapes.”

Leslie spits out another mouthful of cereal all
over and Brody laughs, wiping some spray off his face. I shake my head and
smile at my crazy roommates. I feel a sense of peace with myself now that Brody
is here to experience all of this with me.

***

Brody and I eventually leave and spend the day
alone at the farmers’ market, sampling various foods and purchasing necessary
supplies for supper. We do a lot of the same things Frank and I did on my first
day here. It’s fun. It’s light and carefree and I’m excited to cook for Brody
again. It was always something I loved doing in our relationship and he loved
everything I made him, even though there were many
Pinterest
-fail recipes that
definitely didn’t turn out like their pictures.

It feels good to be hand in hand with Brody,
walking the streets of London. It feels natural and normal. Brody and I were
together for five years and never really took a vacation like this before, so
this feels new and exciting to both of us. So much has changed since then. Not
just with me, but Brody seems different, too. The same, but different. We
forgot what it was like to just be together. To just be
us
. The world of baby-making feels like another life to me
now.
 

It still amazes me that Brody and I managed to
stay close and passionate during all our months of trying to get pregnant.
There were so many times that we
had
to have sex because I might have been ovulating and the sex wasn’t passionate,
it wasn’t fun. It was forced and it sucked. Thankfully, Brody was so incredibly
good at making me feel beautiful and desirable that just when I didn’t think I
could do it again, he’d find some special way to make it feel spontaneous.

“You seem different,” Brody says, as we stand
in line to pay for the ears of corn we picked up.

“Do I?” I ask, not knowing how to respond.

He’s standing behind me and grasps my hips,
splaying one hand over my belly as we wait for the line to move forward. He’s
had his hands on me most of the day, unable to break away for more than a few
minutes at a time.

“I feel like I’m home again,” I reply, turning
in his hands and facing him. His face looks pained for a fleeting second, so I
stroke his hair encouragingly and kiss him lightly on the lips.

“You feel like you’re home, in London?” he
asks.
 

“I like it here a lot,” I say, pulling out of
his embrace and standing next to him with my head on his shoulder. “But having
you here with me makes it really feel like home.”

I quickly pay for our stuff and we make our way
down the busy sidewalk, swerving around people and vendors.

“You told me you loved London because of how
your books romanticized it, but you never seemed that serious about ever coming
out here,” he says, waffling his hand with mine and taking the bagged corn to
carry it for me.

“It seemed like a pipedream back then. You and
I were settled and had a plan. When things changed and Leslie was out here, it
just seemed like the best place for me to go to. It was different enough. I
needed different.”

Brody slows our pace dramatically as we
continue down the sidewalk that leads directly to Frank’s house.

“I still don’t even understand what changed. I
didn’t think what we had and where we were was so bad,” he says, looking sadly
at his shoes as we walk.

Choosing to ignore that statement, I say, “You
seem different, too.”
 

“In what way?” he looks up.

“Your hair is longer,” I smile, ruffling my
fingers in it. “You haven’t had it cut since I left, have you?”
 

He gives me a small smile.

“Well, you see,” he starts, and I’m relieved to
hear lightness in his tone again. “I had this really hot chick that took care
of all that stuff for me. When she left, a lot of stuff went to shit, I’m
afraid.”

I smile back sadly at him and he returns the
same despondent look.

“I think I like it, actually,” I offer.

We pass a small children’s park and he pulls me
down onto an open bench just inside a shaded grass area.

“What’s going on with your job? Were they okay
with you coming here?” I ask.

“Yeah, they were cool. I would have come sooner
but I had to finish an estimate for a new visitor center building. Once that
was done, they were fine with me leaving for a few days,” he replies, putting
his arm around me and tucking me in closely next to him.

His smile fades and he turns to look at me
intensely.

“I still need to know why you left, Finley,” he
says. “I’m trying to go slowly here for you because I don’t want to spook you
and I don’t want to lose you again. But you have to give me something, Fin.”

I pull my legs up onto the bench and hug them,
facing him.

“I wish I knew the reason too, sometimes,” I
begin. “Or at least had an easy and obvious answer. At the time it felt like
the right thing to do. To say goodbye to you and leave. To start a new life.
Our life together, it just…mostly, it just all became too much, too hard…too
painful.”

“Too painful to let me help you?” he asks,
tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.

“I guess. I don’t know,” I say, dropping my
feet down onto the ground and looking down, shamefully.

“In a million years, Finley, I would have never
seen that coming. You leaving…I would have never guessed you’d just leave me
like that.”

His words cut me deeply. I feel a sickness roll
over me for what I did to him and what I did to
us
. I turned something pure, and beautiful, and magical into
ugliness. A broken ugliness. I shake my head, willing these painful thoughts
away.

“We were trying to make a baby together, Fin. I
mean, that’s heavy stuff. I know you and I never wanted to get married, but was
that part of it? Did you want me to ask you to marry me?” he asks, looking at
me with wide blue eyes.

“No!” I reply. “No, Brody, it was never the
marriage thing. I still don’t care about that. I hate the idea of doing stuff
because other people tell us it’s right.”

“That’s what I thought, Finley, but when you
left…I felt like I didn’t know you anymore. I‘ve been wracking my brain trying
to figure out what would cause all of this. What would cause you to throw away
everything we had?”

Tears form in my eyes at his completely honest
and raw question. I look up from the ground and into his eyes. Without having
the ability to stop myself, my hand goes to his cheek and strokes it softly.

“I love you so much, Brody. I’m horrified,
seriously
horrified
that I’ve done
this to us.” I start crying and have to look away from his beautiful face
because it hurts too much.

“Look at me, Finley,” he says, but I don’t look
back at him. He grabs my cheeks in both of his hands and turns my wet eyes
toward him.

“Don’t ever hide your tears from me, baby. I
need to see them. I need to know you’re not hiding this whole world from me
again. Not again. Not ever, ever again.”

I swallow a huge lump in my throat as the guilt
mounts to an all new level. I know now is the time for me to open up and tell
him everything. I need to tell him what the doctor said. I need to tell him I’m
scared to adopt because I’m scared it isn’t what he wants. I’m scared once he
knows the entire truth, he won’t want me anymore.

It’s the last fear that prevents me from coming
clean and I reach over and hug him tightly, relishing the time I have with him
right now. I have no idea if Brody will want me when he discovers the truth,
but for right now, he’s mine.

“I cannot believe you’re here with me and
wanting to love me still. I don’t deserve it, Brody. I don’t deserve any of it.
But I will take it, babe. I will take it and cherish it and do my best to never
ever hurt you again,” I say, into his shoulder.

He pulls back and kisses me softly. His kiss is
so soft and sweet, I cry through it. I can feel all his love and adoration for
me and it’s painful to accept, knowing what I know. I break the kiss, wipe my
cheeks, and make an awkward noise with my throat to try and lighten the mood.

“Let’s hurry back to the house. We have some
time before we need to start cooking, and there’s plenty I’d still like to show
you in my bedroom.”
 

He jumps up dramatically and starts sprinting
down the street, leaving me sitting shell shocked on the bench. God, he is so
funny. He’s this tall, hot, incredible guy, yet he has no qualms about making
the biggest ass out of himself at the drop of a hat. I love this man.

Just when I think he’s not coming back for me,
he spins around, sprints back to me, grabs my hand, and throws me up onto his
shoulder like a rag doll.
 

With another slap on my butt, he says, “I’m so
sorry, baby. I totally forgot you hate to run…and exercise…and well, do
anything sporty.”