Landon's Obsession: An Endless Series: Book 3 (Series 3) (66 page)

     Kneeling down I took her left hand in mine. Everyone
around us went silent. I was going to spill my guts in the next minute but
because it was for Maya I didn’t care who saw it.  

     “Maya, four years ago you came into my life like a
bright burning star and lit up my life igniting feelings in me I’d never
experienced. You were so beautiful inside and out, and you saw the real me loving
me for me and not who I was.” Tears dribbled from Maya’s dark tempestuous eyes.
“When you left everything turned gray and I was scarcely living.” I kissed her
knuckle. “But then we were given a second chance. You let me back into your
life. You let me be part of my daughter’s life. I will always be amazed at the
compassion you showed me after what I did.”

     She was shaking her head telling me there was nothing
to forgive, but I would always disagree with her there. She could have turned
bitter after what my brother and I did, what my mother did, but instead she’d
shown compassion for me. 

     “I need you, Maya. I need you in my life so everything
doesn’t turn gray again. You make me want to be a better man. I love you and I
want to spend the rest of my life showing you how much. Will you marry me,
Maya? Will you share your light and warmth with me forever?”

     Tears continued to stream down her face as flung
herself into my arms, pressing her wet face into my neck. “Yes.” She croaked.
“I love you so much, Landon.”

     Joy exploded in my chest as our audiences surprise turned
to cheers. I enfolded Maya tighter murmuring in her ear. “You’re my heart,
Maya. Without you I couldn’t live.”

     She inhaled a shuddery breath and hiccupped into my
neck.

     “Nana, why is mommy crying?” Nola asked.

     The anxiety in Nola’s tone had Maya pulling away from
me slightly. “I’m okay, baby girl.” Her voice was thick with emotion and she
looked up at me with brilliant watery eyes. “I’m just so happy that I can
barely stand it.”

     God, she was so fucking beautiful. Leaning down I
kissed her but wasn’t able to deepen it because the next second we were
surrounded by a throng of astonished well-wishers.

     The only people that knew I was proposing today were my
father...who’d only advised me to be absolutely certain. I knew his
apprehension was because of his own disintegrating marriage.

     ….Maya’s mother…who’d I’d felt the need for approval
because of everything I’d put her daughter through. I hadn’t been certain of
her reaction because I thought I was still sensing some veiled acrimony from
her because she always seemed to be watching me so vigilantly…like she was
waiting for me to screw up again. However, instead of telling me
‘hell no’
she’d teared up, hugged me, and said she wished us the greatest happiness. It
had been a weight off knowing that she didn’t hate me.

     “Congratulations you guys.” Evan slapped me on the back
and gave us both a huge puckish grin. “I can’t imagine being with one female
for the rest of my life, but I know this guy couldn’t imagine being with anyone
else but you, Maya.” Evan leaned down and gave Maya a peck on the cheek and
then jumped backwards with a chuckle before my fist met his gut for daring to
touch his lips to her.

     I’d also told Evan of my plans because we’d been
spending so much time together, and hell…I’d needed someone to talk to. He’d
recognized how difficult it had been for me to be away from my family and had
kept me optimistic that the long hours wouldn’t last forever. It also hadn’t
escaped my notice that he was pushing himself to learn everything he could at a
quicker rate, and that could only be for my benefit since I knew the only thing
he was getting out of it was less personal time.

     Evan and I had been good friends before, but these last
few months had strengthened that friendship even further.

     Congratulations ultimately died down. The party went on
for a couple more hours and I barely let Maya leave my side. She appeared to
feel the same desire to stay close because she only moved away if it was
absolutely necessary, and she made sure to kiss me before she left and I kissed
her when she returned.

     It was seven p.m. when the last person left. We’d had
the party late Saturday because the guys had a lacrosse game earlier today.
They’d won but it had been close. While Nic, Seth, and Noah were some of the
best players in the league they were hurting a little bit without me and Evan. The
five of us had been a force to be reckoned with.

     It had been difficult for me and Evan to watch the game
from the stands. We both missed playing the sport, but some things were just
more important. 

     Nola was exhausted from all the excitement but not
quite ready for bed so we set her up in front of the television with a movie so
she could relax. I grabbed Maya around the waist and pulled her down on the
couch into my lap.

     “Finally…just you and me.” I nipped at her ear and
squeezed up her thighs until I was molding her ass cheeks.

     She sighed and cupped my jaw. “I love you.”

     I took her mouth greedily. I was always greedy for her.
It was a never ending hunger. Unfortunately, she pulled away too soon.

     “I have something to show you.” With one more soft
brush of her lips over mine she stood and stepped over to her purse pulling out
a piece of paper. Walking back to me she slipped back into my lap and gazed at
me with deep soft eyes. “I got this today and I so wanted to show you right
away but everything has been so busy and hectic and I wanted to give it to you
at a time when you had time to really look it over and take in what it is and
why I did it…” Maya stopped to take a breath from her long run-on nervous
sentence. She handed me the paper.

     I gave her a questioning look wondering at her
apprehension, and looked down at the paper. I didn’t understand it at first,
but then I identified it as some kind of medical report, and my gut tightened
because there was only one medical report I would be interested in.

     “I had to know.” She rushed out as I scanned the information
speedily with both hope and fear. “It has been hanging over my head for so many
years, and when your brother said he didn’t do it, and that it was all a plot,
I had to know for sure.” Her words poured over me as my eyes finally found the
words I wished with all my heart I’d find. “I don’t think I would have ever
revealed this to you if it hadn’t come back saying you were her father, but I
so very much wanted to be able to give you this if you were.” She sobbed out
the last.

     My eyes unexpectedly watered as I read the proof that I
was Nola’s biological father. No matter what this paper had revealed Nola would
still have been mine, but seeing that she in fact was my daughter expanded my
heart in such a way I though my chest would explode. I looked over at her sweet
face lying on the floor. She was rolled up in a blanket like a burrito and
using a five foot stuffed snake as a pillow. Kris had no more hold over our
lives. Like me, I’m sure Maya had wanted to believe that Kris hadn’t raped her,
but the deception of what my mother and Kris had done had been too traumatic
for either of us to believe him on just his word.

     And while the rape would always hover in the back of
our minds at least Nola’s parentage wouldn’t.

     “Are you mad that I did this?” Maya whispered.

     I looked up at her in happy astonishment. “Are you
fucking kidding me?” I kept my language low as I squeezed her so hard into my
chest I felt her breath explode out. I let up slightly so she would be able to
breathe. “I’m ecstatic. I don’t like that if it came back negative you would
have gone years with it weighing on your heart though.”

     She shrugged like that would have been no problem for
her when I knew it would have. My girl was the strongest female I knew, but a
secret like that would have been a yoke around her neck.

     “In the beginning you said you wanted to know, but then
you never brought it up again. I didn’t think you wanted to know if she
wasn’t.” Her warm breath seeped through my t-shirt to my skin.

     I kissed the top of her head. “It would have killed
something inside me a little, and probably sent me after my brother again, but
my love for Nola wouldn’t have changed. She’s my daughter regardless of what
this paper would have said. The only thing this document does is relieve my
mind that Kris has no hold over our lives. I won’t lie…it makes me happy as
hell to know that she truly is my daughter, but believe me…my love for her
would never have waivered.”

     Maya let out another long hot breath against my chest.
“I know that, Landon, but I wanted so much for you to be her true father.”

     I understood. She’d been living under the cloud of it
for years, and who knows, maybe after years the same desire to find out would
have hit me again. I was just so happy having both of them in my lives, and no
piece of paper was going to change what we had together.

     Pushing aside the berating I wanted to give her for
thinking about taking on years of being burdened with a secret that would have
ate at her a little at a time I instead caressed her hair and let it go.

     “It looks like we all got gifts today.”

     I got another hot sigh and she fanned out her hand
displaying the engagement ring I’d gotten her. “You know, you really are an
artist. It’s way too much, but the ring is so beautiful, Landon, and knowing
that you designed it yourself makes it more special.”

     I’d gotten her a large diamond surrounded by small
black opals. I told her it was meant to signify that our love was more powerful
than the darkness. The opals represented troubles pushing at us from all sides
but our love—the diamond—was strong enough that it would never defeat us.

     She straightened in my lap and looked at me with a
determined expression. “I have one more thing I need to show you.” Jumping up
she dashed out of the room and I heard her run up the steps to the second
floor. Seconds later she was running back down and climbing back into my lap
holding more paper.

     I instantly recognized the parchment. She was finally
showing me the drawings I’d done for her years ago. The ones she should have
ripped up and thrown away after I dumped her brutally, but instead had kept
them.

     I opened them for her benefit acting as if I hadn’t
seen them until now. “Why did you keep these, Maya? After what I did to you why
didn’t you tear them up and throw them out?”

     I looked at her in heartrending bafflement. For four
years I’d tried my best to forget about her. It hadn’t worked, but I’d spent
years convincing myself that I had. Finding out that she’d kept the sketches I’d
made for her had been another punch in the gut for me.

     Maya looked down at them with a frown. “I tried to get
rid of them, as you can tell.” She said referring to the creases in the one
sketch. “But I couldn’t. I hated you…but it hurt me even more when I crumpled
up that drawing. So I folded them up and put them somewhere I couldn’t see them,
hoping I’d forget about them, about you, but I didn’t. I would pull them out every
so often, but I couldn’t open them…I’d just look at the folded up backs of
them. It would have been too much to look at the pictures. Up until a few
months ago I wouldn’t have been able to tell you why I kept them.” She gazed at
me, eyes meditative, not sad like I expected. Hearing her talk about it was
constricting my heart though. “I hated you, but my love for you never died. I
didn’t realize it until you came back into my life, or more like, I didn’t want
to admit it. Admitting it made me feel like a brainless twit. I mean, how could
I love someone who hurt me so badly?” She smirked at me surprising me with the
humor I saw there. “But I can’t deny it any longer. I’m a brainless twit.”

     I smiled back at her through the ache in my chest. Hearing
that I had been in her heart all these years was a balm to my soul, and while I
could see that she was letting go of all the hurt in our past, I was still
working on it, but I’d probably get there eventually. The one thing I wanted
most besides her and Nola was to be the best man I could be for her.

     “I must be one too, because my love never died either,
Maya.” I lifted her up slightly and situated her so that she was straddling me,
her hot core against my impatient cock. Nibbling up her neck to her jaw I
murmured. “Neither one of us wanted to let go of our love, so we packed it away
in the back of our minds and hearts. It remained there safe and protected for
when we came back together. The reason we declared our love for each other so
quickly was because we didn’t have to fall back in love again. The love was
already there. We were each other’s buried obsession.”

     My hands skimmed up her back to grip her neck at the
same time my lips met her mouth. I dove deep and she let me, and then countered
with feverish ardor of her own, moaning huskily.

     After several minutes Maya pulled back and gazed at me
dreamily. “You are the most romantically poetic person, and I love you so
much.”

     I wasn’t sure I agreed with the ‘romantically poetic’
part, but I didn’t feel the need to quibble at this moment with her in my lap
grinding on my hard-on. “Guess, what?” I said hoarsely sucking on her
collarbone.

     “What?” She panted, rocking and running her hands up
under my shirt.

     I groaned as her nails scrapped over my tight abdomen
and slipped beneath the waistband of my shorts. “Our daughter is sleeping.”

     She straightened, eyes brightening. “So we can go up to
bed?”

     I laughed gruffly at her eagerness. “You, darlin’, are
insatiable.” And she was. Maya was on me whenever there was chance we could
have sex. Not that I didn’t do the same thing.

     She leaned forward pressing her breasts into my chest
and nipping my lips. “I told you…I have fours years to make up for.”