Fix You (35 page)

             
In the bed, Gwen’s shape was discernible beneath the covers as a faint S in the blackness, more a figment of his memory than anything he could actually see. He slid under the covers and swam through them to her, touched her back, the smooth tautness of it beneath the shirt she wore. She came awake with a start.

             
‘”It’s me,” he said, and she didn’t calm, but rolled toward him, breathing still irregular. “Baby, it’s me.”

             
“Oh,” her voice was thick, and he didn’t know if sleep or tears were to blame, “don’t ‘baby’ me, jerk.” The sheets rustled like she meant to get away, but he trapped her with an arm braced on the mattress, moving over her, a knee between both of hers. “You can’t run off and leave me, then come crawling into bed when you feel like it,” she said fiercely. “I don’t know who you think you are – ”

             
He kissed her, or at least tried to; he dropped his face over hers and his lips found her cheek: soft and warm and too long foreign to him. “Gwendolyn,” he said against her skin and she went still beneath him. “I’m so sorry, baby. I really am.”

             
“You can’t just say ‘sorry’ when it suits you and then treat me badly again.”

             
“What if I mean it, though?”

             
He heard her take a deep breath and hold it.

             
“I don’t want to fight with you anymore.”

             
She exhaled. “Have you been drinking?”

             
“I wish. I’ve been talking with my sister.”

             
Her hands settled – tentative, shaking – on his bare shoulders. “You have?” Her voice was high and quivering with relief. “I thought –  ”

             
“I know.” He slid his lips along her cheek and found hers, kissed her so he didn’t have to hear the rest. He knew what she’d thought: that, like his buddy Dylan, he’d sought succor elsewhere. “I know, and I’m sorry. I’ve been such an ass.”

             
Her hands stilled, and then smoothed up the sides of his neck, fingers spearing through his hair. She lifted off the mattress and met his next kiss like she hadn’t in months.

             
All the planets in his universe aligned with a final, perfect
click
.

25

              “
D
amn it
!” Ellie hissed under her breath as she watched her fingernail tear at the quick, a sharp flicker of pain racing along the nail bed. Her eyes, already clouded with furious tears, filled and threatened to overflow. Loath to wake her sleeping babies, she lowered their carriers to the concrete and then made another go at unlocking the front door. She was trembling and breathing in erratic draws. It took three tries before she managed to get the door open and move all three of them inside.

             
Attending Delta’s book club had been an opportunity to kill for. It had also, between tea and finger sandwiches and a barrage of eager questions about her novel, been an unexpected assault on her heart. One of Delta’s friends – a bridesmaid at her wedding – had asked about Jordan. Carly, with her heavy blonde highlights and vacant, sweet smile, had exclaimed over the twins, complemented Ellie profusely, and then let slip that she’d slept with Jordan in Ireland.

             
Ellie had since tried to reason with herself: Jordan had been single when he’d hooked up with Carly; he hadn’t even met her yet. But the sense that she couldn’t turn around without bumping into his leftovers was an intense, fire-breathing thing that put tears in her eyes and left her teeth chattering.

             
The girls, car sleepers, were still dead to the world, so she left them in their car seats, not wanting to wake them. She set them in the living room, in a shaft of warm autumn sunlight, and went into the kitchen after a glass of water and a paper towel with which to dry her stupid eyes. She came to a startled halt when she realized Jordan was home and standing in front of the fridge, still in his breakaway sweats and polo from work.

             
“You’re home,” she gasped, hand flying to the fluttering pulse point at the hollow of her throat.

             
He turned slowly, face impassive, eyes moving over her. “Yeah. You didn’t see my car in the driveway?”

             
She hadn’t, too upset to notice anything. “No.”

             
His brows twitched together, concern creeping across his features. “What’s wrong?”

             
It was his tone more than anything that snapped her: that patronizing, parent-to-a-child voice he’d been using on her the past ten weeks. That voice belonged to the worried stranger who slept without touching her and who waited on her like she was an invalid. “I was at book club with Delta,” she said, voice tumbling out as a broken, emotional mess. “And I met
Carly
.”

             
His expression went blank. “Who?”

             
“The bridesmaid you boinked in Ireland!”

             
Realization dawned slowly and incredulously. “Um…”

             
“Have you slept with every woman in Georgia?” she hurled at him, and marched to the sink, snatched a paper towel that brought half the roll with it and snarled in frustration. Her movements were so jerky that dabbing her eyes turned into stabbing her eyes, which loosed more tears, which embarrassed the hell out of her.

             
Behind her, the fridge shut. “You do know that Mike and Delta’s wedding was a
year
before I met you, right? You were, what, seventeen? And, by the way, sleeping with that assface Kyle.”

             
“I know all that,” she said, wiping her cheeks and sniffling. “I know, okay? I just…keep getting slapped with this.”

             
Jordan sighed. “Okay, we’re not playing this game. I had a stupid sex life. You already know that. Why is it bothering you now?”

             
“Because…” She turned to face him, cheeks flaming as she continued to swipe at them with the paper towel. He had his hands on his hips and he looked just the way he’d looked when she’d met him: calm, indifferent, like back when they’d been coach and student. They’d become strangers in the past few months – like they hadn’t spent countless nights proving to each other that whatever had happened before had no bearing on what they meant to one another now – and that was why it hurt so badly to see his old flings. She felt like she was competing for him. Like she wasn’t his one and only anymore.

             
He stared at her. “Because we haven’t had sex in God knows how long, right?”

             
She nodded, more tears building. “I’m sorry.”

             
He raked his bottom lip through his teeth the way his little sister did, glanced over his shoulder. “The girls asleep?”

             
“Yes.”

             
Her eyes widened, tear production halting in shock, as he reached for the hem of his polo and drew it up over his head, skin stretching over bone and lean muscle. He dropped it to the floor and advanced on her in two long strides that had her pressed back against the counter.

             
“Jordan – ”

             
“Don’t.” His voice was tight with wanting, the narrow lines of his face tense as he ducked his head over hers. “Just…Christ, please stop pushing me away.” The words, just a breath above a whisper, pleading and earnest, dissolved her anger in the span of a second.

             
She laid her hands along his ribs, on the satin smoothness of his skin and the hard bone and sinew beneath. His pulse thundered through his chest. Ellie tipped her head back and watched desperation shred his cool exterior.

             
“I want my wife back,” he said, and guilt twisted in her belly. “I thought you were dying and I…I need you back.”

             
She’d pushed him away, and almost flat-lined, and then been a useless milk machine looking after the babies. And for a little while, she’d forgotten that, under his aloof outer shell, he was sensitive. He needed to be loved. He needed her to be the warm, nurturing one.

             
“Oh, Jordie, I’m sorry,” she breathed, and he kissed her like he meant to devour her.

             
His tongue plunged into her mouth. His hands cradled her face and held her to him, tipped her head back, urged her jaw wider so he could reach even further inside of her. It was a rushed, dizzying invasion: sloppy and artless. When he finally lifted his head, they were both panting.

             
There were a dozen tiny buttons down the front of her dress and he fumbled with them, too hurried to be accurate.

             
“Here.” Ellie brushed his hands away and undid them herself, watched the creamy slice of her skin that was exposed grow deeper and wider, until the dress was loose to her waist. She had a fleeting worry about her figure, her still-soft post-baby shape, but she lifted her gaze and found Jordan’s; he was watching her with nothing less than total reverence.

             
He reached and parted the halves of her dress, pushing the sleeves back on her shoulders, murmuring something unintelligible as he revealed her swollen breasts inside her beige nursing bra. It was the most unflattering undergarment in creation, but his hands closed over her anyway, and she was so sensitive she gasped.

             
He was easy, careful; he cradled her in his palms and traced his thumbs across her peaked nipples, their shapes clear beneath the soft fabric of her bra. “How does this thing come off?” his voice was rough and low.

             
Like hell was she pulling down the nursing flaps. Ellie reached behind her and unfastened the clasp, had to withdraw her arms from the dress sleeves before she could slide the bra straps down. He’d watched her nurse, but this was different –
she
was different – and because it had been so long, and because she wanted so badly for this to have been worth the wait, she burned with self-consciousness. “I know,” she said hesitantly as the bra fell away and the dress slithered to her waist, “that I’m not exactly –  ”

             
He caught her face in his hands again, filled up her eyes with his blue-green ones. “You just had
two
babies. And you are gorgeous.”

             
The feel of his skin against hers was better than she remembered. His kiss was desperate, and his body was tight as a coiled spring beneath her hands as she ran them up and down the lean stretch of his back, across his shoulders, around to the flat planes of his abs. Her breasts ached, but she pressed them to the hard wall of his chest anyway; felt the kiss of his stomach against her soft one.

             
His thumbs brushed gently across her cheeks and then his hands traveled south, framing her throat, spreading across the tops of her shoulders, migrating from her arms to her back, to the stiff cotton of the dress that still rode her hips. He reached beneath, palms and fingers flat, smoothing the dress to the floor and sending her panties with it. His hands on her bare skin sent a shiver rattling up her spine as he tucked her hips into his. His erection was proud, straining, searching between them and her guilt was washed with the need to ease him. He’d been so patient for so long, and she didn’t want him to have to wait anymore.

             
When she reached inside his sweats and wrapped her fingers around him, he came in her hand.

             
“
Shit
.” His fingers dug into her hips and he pressed his face in the hollow of her neck, breath catching.

             
“It’s okay.” She gripped his shoulder with one hand, his pulsing erection with the other, and worked him through the spasms. “Not one and done, right?” she said with a breathy laugh. “I can wait a minute.”

             
Jordan groaned. “This is not the way I planned this.”

             
“I know, baby, I know.”

             
In the shafts of incoming sunlight, Ellie glanced down at her own nakedness, at her hand inside his pants, and was struck with the ridiculous urges to laugh and cry at the same time. When she felt him flinch, too sensitive to be touched any longer, she withdrew her wet, gummy hand and stepped away from him, went to the sink and worked soap through her slippery fingers beneath the tap. She watched the water swirl down the drain and wondered if washing her hands would offend him, if, after their time apart, he’d feel cheated that she was washing away some part of him.

             
When she finished and turned around, toweling her hands dry, her heart gave a happy leap to see that it wasn’t with disgust, but with boyish shame that he watched her. “Jordie.” She set the towel aside and stood up on her tiptoes, laid her hands along his lean face. “Let’s start over.”

             
This time when he kissed her, it was slow, and gentle, and sweet. His lips molded hers and his tongue slid slowly between, giving her a real chance to respond and open to him. His hands went to her breasts and were careful in their exploration.

             
It was a strange mix of pain and pleasure that threaded across her sensitized skin. She felt every glide of his fingertips; his palms lifted and his thumbs teased her engorged nipples until they throbbed. He’d always been a chest man, had never been shy about appreciating hers, but it was with added fascination that he fondled her now. By the time his mouth left hers and trailed down her throat, her insides throbbed with a familiar, quickening need.

             
One of his hands spanned the softest part of her belly, where the line of her C-section scar was still pink, fingers digging briefly in a gentling reassurance, and he pressed her back against the counter, dropping to his knees in front of her.

             
Through the screen of her lowered lashes, she watched him lean in; watched the first brush of his lips against the full underside of her breast the instant she felt it. Nameless sensation streaked through her. Her hands found his head, fingers threading through the short waves of his hair. “Oh,” she murmured as he kissed her.

             
The first flicker of his tongue at her nipple turned her knees to butter. When his mouth closed over it, she dug her nails into his scalp. How many times had she fitted Jane and Lizzy’s tiny mouths to her breasts and felt them sucking…but that stirred nothing but maternal warmth in her. She’d forgotten – she’d thought her body would no longer respond the way it once had – what it felt like to be just a woman. Just
his
woman. And it wasn’t warmth, but fire that licked through her now. All things maternal were pushed from her mind in favor of the erotic spectacle of her husband suckling at her.

             
When he moved to her other breast, his hand went gliding up her thigh and between her legs, finding where she was already wet.

             
“Are you still sore?” he murmured against her breast while he stroked her. The tip of one finger probed at her entrance and then slid inside a fraction.