Against All Odds (24 page)

All I want is him.

As I give into the lingering effects of mental and emotional exhaustion, I soak in his body, letting it take me to the only place I’ve ever wanted to be…
home.

I lie next to Kylie and watch her sleep, thinking she looks like an angel. Her breathing is easy and deep. The pain she usually wears is gone, giving her a soft, ethereal beauty that draws me in. Her long eyelashes flutter, and the pouty, full lips that I love to kiss, suck and bite are parted slightly as she releases breaths in small puffs. Her black hair cascades down her shoulders and over her breasts, where her sexy pink nipples peek out between the strands.

Her face looks calm and peaceful, reminding me of the girl who stole my heart with one smile. The girl who took, claimed and owned it from the first time I stared into her luminous blue eyes. Eyes that saw right through me. She’s still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and all these years later, I still love her. I love her with a burning passion that’s hard to describe, an unending flame I’ll never be able to extinguish.

But loving her has caused unbearable pain. A feeling of worthlessness that I can’t even begin to describe. Loving Kylie has left me powerless. Being a man who’s always dominated and taken care of what’s his, it’s left me feeling like everything I’ve ever done has failed. She’s fucked me in more ways than one and has the power to demolish me completely.

The last two years have changed me as a husband and as a person. The pain that tore through our lives brought an acute awareness that life sucks. That people you love can destroy you.

After we lost Kayla, I thought I’d never again feel that gut-wrenching chasm. That pain that ripped me to pieces, leaving me crippled and out of control. But I was wrong. Really fucking wrong. The pain Kylie handed me was just as bad, slamming a sense of reality into me that I never imagined would come from her.

Her.

My wife.

The woman who owned me.

The woman I’d pledged every part of myself to. I had loved, cherished, and promised the world to her. She broke me and made me bitter. I’ll never forget the day she shattered my world.

It was a shitty, rainy day. I walked into the kitchen and found her throwing up. It caught me by surprise. I thought maybe she had the flu. God knows I wasn’t fucking her, so she couldn’t be pregnant. I was a loser. Something was wrong with me. Something I couldn’t control. I had fought so hard to touch and love her, but I couldn’t do it.

I needed to get myself together, and I never thought I wouldn’t get that from her. I saw her suffering. I saw her spark dimming as she struggled to get out of bed every day. She reached out to me constantly, trying to find solace in me. She cried at night when she thought I was asleep. She prayed quietly, begging God to fix her, to make things better between us. And I lay there, incapacitated by my own feelings of failure. Debilitated by thoughts over which I had no control.

I’d let her down. I had watched her give up
our
child. I had watched her break, and I’d lost complete control of the situation. I’d never felt so desolate, so blindingly lost. The day I had to go to my daughter’s funeral alone was the lowest point of my life. I went from feeling on top of the world straight to the burning depths of hell. I was powerless.

Completely fucking powerless.

Over the next months, my best friend had stepped in to do stupid things I should’ve been doing but couldn’t. Kylie and I dealt with stuff differently, and I never thought Kylie wouldn’t be there, wouldn’t give me the space I needed.

When she’d approached me about opening our marriage, my stomach ripped open. I thought she’d lost her mind. I knew she felt as though I didn’t love her, which was the furthest thing from the truth. I was dealing with my own failures as a man. I couldn’t function over the loss of my child and the pain my wife was going through. I was having intimacy issues with the woman who ruled my world. I tried my best to skirt around things, but it all became unbearable. I brought her to her breaking point. When she dropped that bomb on me, I thought she was crazy and overreacting. So I shut down.

I never thought she would do it. I was the only man who had ever seen or touched her. I owned every part of her body, every ounce of her soul, and every moment of her life. She belonged to me. Flat out belonged to me, and me to her. I never thought she’d actually fuck another man.
Wrong again, motherfucker.

She did, and she did it all in one day.

She doesn’t know this, but I followed her the night she met with him. I followed and watched her meet him for dinner, watched her sit there and smile uncomfortably. Rage beat through me that night. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to rip apart the son of a bitch, but I had faith that my wife would
never
fuck me over like that. She just wouldn’t do it. I thought I
knew
her, could trust her. She was mine.

All mine.

When he held her hand and led her into the hotel, my heart dropped. I followed them and watched her walk into that room, but I still believed she would run out of there. I believed in the girl I married. There was no way she’d let another man touch, undress, and love her.

I waited and waited. Each minute that ticked by incapacitated me. I should’ve gone in there, but I couldn’t. What did I have to give her? Nothing. I prayed she was the girl I thought I knew. The one who would never hurt me that way. But forty-five minutes later, she came running out looking just fucked. In that moment, everything changed between us.

I dug deep and found a way to contain the rage and pain flooding my veins. I didn’t know her anymore. She’d betrayed me, and I used that betrayal to fuel my hatred of her. I needed that to continue living. It was the only thing I could use to drive my inner rage, because the truth was, I was to blame. I was inadequate as a man. I was the one who drove her away, and I was naive enough to believe she would wait.

When she left his room I wanted to die, but more than that, I wanted to hurt them like they did me. So I kicked the motherfucker’s ass until he couldn’t see or stand. Then I went home and waited for her. Ten minutes later, she arrived. I watched her try to sneak in. When she saw me, it was impossible to disguise my brokenness. I tried, but failed. I watched her break too, and as sick as it sounds, a part of me liked watching her suffer. She destroyed me and I wanted her to feel that. I knew things between us were irrevocably broken. I gave up on us. I couldn’t take the pain she’d so coldly handed out in the span of a day.

For the last two years, we’ve been hurting each other. No matter how screwed up it is, we can’t sever our ties.
But tonight…
Tonight things changed, and I’m scared to death. I don’t know if I’m ready. I knew before I made love to her that putting myself out there could send my life spiraling out of control. But I did it anyway.

For the first time in a long time, I let go. I couldn’t deny my urge to be close to her. It went beyond desire, skating along the edges of pure, primal need. I wanted to own a piece of my wife again. The first touch of her lips was enough to send my senses soaring, igniting the burn I had been dousing for so long. I needed to touch, hold, and feel her against me. I needed to be inside her. I wanted desperately to be reminded of what we were before all of this shit happened to us.

Kylie has the ability to reduce me to
nothing
. She has such a tremendous amount of power over me that it can become impossible to breathe without her. If I go there again and things get worse…

It’s not that I don’t want to fix this, because I do. I want to reclaim her. I want to give her everything I promised I’d give her. I’ve never wanted to hurt her. All I’ve ever wanted was to love her, give her the world, and fuck the life right into her. But what price will I have to pay to have her back in my life? Is she going to annihilate me again?

I look at her and try to see the girl I married. The one I wanted nothing but the best for. The one I loved with all my heart. I see her in there, but I also see a woman who has cut me deep, slashing the illusion of happily ever after right out of my mind.

I trail my hand across her silky cheek as I watch her eyelids flutter slightly at the contact. I can tell she senses my touch. She curls in close, almost purring. My heart slams against my chest, and my dick comes to life from awareness of her mere existence. But something else happens too—my stomach clenches in pain.

She holds one too many cards in my life, and I don’t think she has a clue what kind of power she holds over me. In the last two years, I’ve done a good job leading her to believe I don’t give a shit. I needed to do that for my sanity, to keep myself numb and block out the constant pain. But in doing so, I’ve hurt us both.

At what point does the torment we’ve created stop? When do I say ‘enough’ and fight the demons tearing us apart? Do I just say fuck it and put myself at risk to be shattered again? When I look at her like this, relaxed and nestled against me, I want to. I want to take a chance. The truth is, living without her is miserable. But what kind of relationship can we have without trust?

She’s disabled the part of me that can be open and trusting. Sex, no matter how amazing, won’t fill the crater that has taken root inside me. It’s not going to fix the constant burning in my chest when I look at her. It’s not going to erase the haunting images of her with other men.

Seeing her in the shower tonight gutted me. She’s suffering just as badly as I am. I have the power to fix it. I have the power to change our lives. I need to dig deep and find a way to fight for her the way she seems to be fighting for me. Having her in my arms again is a wake-up call. I could lose her, and I don’t want that to happen.

Grayson said something to me in the office a couple weeks back that scared the living shit out of me.

“What the hell is wrong with you, man?” he seethes.

“What do you mean?” I look at Gray, trying to calm myself down because all I want to do is plant my fist in his face. I’m sick of him meddling in my life.

“You’re going to lose her,” he whispers.

I know what he’s trying to tell me. I see it in the way things are unraveling around us. I just don’t know if I can, or even want things to change between Kylie and me. There’s too much to work through, and I can’t take the risk of her coming back and stabbing me in the heart.

“You know I care about you, bro. I care about her too, though,” he says. “More than you’d care to know.”

My pulse throbs. I feel myself starting to hyperventilate from the rage and jealousy pitted deep in my stomach. It snakes its way right up my fucking spine. Is this bastard trying to make a move on my wife?

“What do you think you’re doing with her, Gray? Because you know you can’t fucking have her,” I snarl. If he goes there, I will hunt him down. “I’ll kill you if you touch her. I trusted you with my wife, but I’m starting to think that was a goddamn mistake.”

He paces, and my pulse spikes as my anger explodes. I slam my fist into the center of my desk, pain shooting straight through my hand. His head swivels around, and his eyes connect with mine.

“Don’t you fucking go there.” The monster I try to keep tucked down deep bubbles out of me hard and fast.

He runs his palm over his face. “What did you expect? What the fuck did you think would happen?” He throws his hands up, his body stiff as his eyes bore into mine. “I’ve been cleaning up after you for so damn long that something was bound to happen. She’s a beautiful, soft-spirited, broken woman. Her heart is pure gold. I can’t help but fall in love with her. I want to see her smile, watch her bloom, and bring back the life that has died in her eyes. I love you, bro, but you don’t deserve her.”