The Bridge to a Better Life (30 page)

She sniffed loud in the quiet room. “That’s how it was when I would visit Kim. I wanted…to make her stop hurting, but I couldn’t do a damn thing. I felt so…powerless.”

“But you were there for her, and she knew it. Remember how she squeezed your hand after she fell into unconsciousness at the end.” Oh, how his throat ached now, remembering that. “She knew you were there, even then. I…wanted to be there for you like that.”

“And I picked a fight with you…about having a baby. I thought it was the most unforgiveable thing I could do to you, and that you’d let me go. But you…Blake, your capacity for forgiveness blows me away. I’m so sorry. For everything.” If only she’d told him the truth. How different might things have been?

She pressed her head to his shoulder. “I don’t want to keep hurting you. Us.”

“I don’t want you to keep hurting either, babe.”

When she lifted her face, the bleakness in her eyes almost undid him. “Then what are we going to do?”

He brought her hand against his chest. Touchdown crawled onto both of their laps, half on him and half on her, almost like he was joining them together again as a family.

“Let me walk into that dark room with you,” he told her. “I won’t leave you or think you’re crazy. And I won’t
ever
stop loving you.” He felt like he was renewing his vows to her all over again.

Her face scrunched up. “But it hurts, Blake. It hurts so bad. I cried in the shower tonight, and I never cry. I just couldn’t stop it this time.”

So the healing was starting. Now he could hold her through it like she’d refused to let him do before.

“I know it hurts,” he said gruffly, feeling it between them, the agony of loss. “We’ll face it together.”

“I don’t know how….” Her voice broke, like a pane of glass cracking at the center, the slivers shivering out until they touched everything in their wake.

“I never told you why I’m so…free with my emotions,” he said. “Adam used to cry whenever he got upset, but I always tried to be tough. My mom took me aside one day after I fell off my bike and forced myself to shake off the pain. She said I needed to show Adam it was okay for him to cry, or he’d be ashamed of himself.”

Everything in her was trembling against him, and he rubbed her arm to warm her. But this cold wasn’t the kind that was easily exorcised. No, it was one that dug in with its icy claws.

“At first, I did it for Adam. He always wanted to comfort me when I was hurt, and I did the same for him. Of course, it got harder for me to show my emotions as I got older. Some of the other boys in junior high made fun of me, but then I got ridiculously good at football. People started to say my emotions were what made me a great player. My teammates were willing to follow me because I always put myself out there for them.”

“I’ve…always wondered. Your emotions…sometimes they unhinge me, Blake. Whenever you cried after losing a big game…well, I wouldn’t know what to do to help.”

He’d realized that, so he’d tried to dial them back around her. What a pair they were. On some level, he hadn’t believed she could love him in all his ugliness either.

“You helped just by being there, just by holding me. And that’s what we do when the person we love is hurting. Now…tell me what you miss most about Kim,” he said and gripped her hand tight, lending strength and comfort to her as she stepped into the abyss.

Tears streamed down her face, but her lips tightened as though she wanted to hold back the words. Refuse to utter them to keep the pain at bay.

“When I first met Kim, I thought she was your sister,” he said. “You both had the same brown hair and a laugh that would make any man take a good, long look.”

A sob escaped her lips. “She
was
…my sister. Oh, God…I miss her so much.”

Her pain was like a bone that needed to be rebroken before it could heal, so he braced himself to finish the task. “She loved you…as much as she loved Andy and Danny.”

She started crying, the anguished sounds tearing at his heart. “I know she did…why did it have to happen, Blake?
Why?
She was so young. It’s so damn unfair! Sometimes I just want to scream at the sky until I lose my voice.”

He understood the whys. With Adam. With Kim. With Natalie. The answers never came.

“Then scream, babe. Scream it out until you’re hoarse.”

She pushed against his chest with all her might.
“Why?”

The anguished howl broke her—all the way. Her sobs tore through the last of the walls she’d constructed, and when she punched his chest with her fists, he gathered her into his arms and held her while she cried and cried and cried.

It might have been hours, she cried so long. All he could do was hold her, rub her back, kiss her head, pass her tissues when she couldn’t breathe through her sinuses—and swallow the razor blades in his throat because seeing her this broken broke him too.

When Natalie finally fell asleep, he let his own tears come.

When Natalie awoke, dawn’s first rays were floating in through the windows in pink and orange ribbons. Her head felt like she’d been beating it against a wall all night. Her face was swollen, her throat scratchy. Beyond her body’s distress, the sound of Blake’s steady heartbeat echoed in her ears. The warmth from his body felt like a cocoon, as did the arms wrapped around her in a lax embrace.

As she came back to her senses, she could scarcely absorb everything. She hadn’t scared him away by letting herself lose control, by letting out some of the crazy grief balled up inside her. How wrong she’d been to leave him. She knew that now, and regret buffeted her like cold hail.

The last words Kim had spoken to her—ones she’d never told another soul—filtered into her mind.

Hold onto Blake, Nat. I swear…that man loves you more than football. I can’t wait…to see the family you create together. Laugh a lot for me. I’ll find you…when I hear.

She had lost everything, even herself, after Kim’s death. But no matter what she had done to drive him away, Blake had held on. And when her efforts to avoid the pain lurking within her had finally crumbled, he’d held her hand and faced it with her. She remembered something else from last night, something that cracked her heart in two. Blake had started softly crying as soon as she drifted off—she’d sensed it from somewhere in the periphery between sleep and wakefulness.

Pain might have separated them from each other, but last night, they’d made each other make-shift bandages.

Touchdown snored softly beside her. Blake’s chest had always been massive enough to hold them both. As massive as his heart. She inched her head up slowly so as not to wake him. His sandy brown hair rose in spikes on his head, and his mouth was open slightly, breathing the shallow air of sleep.

The truth stole over her like the stillness after a torrential downpour. She loved him. She really loved him. She’d never stopped. And while she felt hollowed out inside, there was also a peace and a clarity she hadn’t possessed yesterday.

The words he’d uttered last night—the ones from their wedding vows—came back to her.

In good times and bad.

They had certainly been dealt more than their share of bad lately, but before that, there had been so many good times. She had abandoned herself and her needs in the bad times, judging them to be madness, judging them to make her unlovable. She’d thought Blake would react the same way. She’d underestimated him.

As she studied the rise of his brow bone, the curve of his jaw, she thought of the vows she’d made to him all those years ago. At that time, she had lived such a life of privilege—the meaning hadn’t registered. She’d breezed over the words like the carefree bride she’d been, never doubting their love would be strong enough and steadfast enough for any lean winters ahead.

But all that had changed. The depth of her sadness over losing Kim had leached her bones with its coldness. And she had closed the door to herself and the one person who could bring spring back to her.

Blake.

Unable to hold back any longer, she inched her hand up and stroked the stubble on his jaw, feeling the bristles against her fingertips. Touchdown snorted loudly and then rose up beside her, his body shaking like he was trying to throw off water instead of sleep. The precious dog lapped at her face like he used to when the three of them awoke together. Then he looked at her with his sweet brown eyes like he was waiting for her to kiss Blake awake—something she’d always loved to do.

Once she did this, she knew there would be no turning back, and she realized she didn’t want to. So, like a fairy prince awakening his true love from the troubled sleep of dark dreams, she laid her lips to Blake’s and gave him back her full heart, the one covered in scar tissue from her grief, the one that had raised its walls to protect her, the one that was ready to love him enough to allow him into the deepest, most private place inside her: the one that wasn’t always pretty or strong or sane.

His body tensed under her as he awakened, as if he were scared of this fragile, numinous connection between them, but he passively allowed her to kiss him. She supped at his lips to feed the starved part of her that had missed him. She traced the bones of his face to imprint into herself that he was still here after seeing her at her lowest last night.

Angling her head to the side, she fitted their mouths together in deeper union, tracing his bottom lip with her tongue. Under her, his heartbeat thundered now in his chest, but still he made no move to touch her other than to maintain the connection of their mouths and lips.

His skin was warm when she traced it, and as she continued to kiss him, she imagined the pink glow surrounding her heart flowing up with her breath and into his mouth, communicating all of the stored up love she’d hidden away in the locked treasure chest of her heart.

She went on kissing him and kissing him. Her body filled with the light of a million sun drops, burning off her grief like it was morning fog. The joy that rose within her breast made her want to cry out in triumph.

I have come home, and here I will stay.

But still he held back, letting her take the lead, and the realization of what he was waiting for finally thundered through her.

“I love you,” she said, searching for his eyes at last. “I want to come home. Will you let me?”

He cupped her face with a kind of benediction. “Babe, you can always come home to me.”

Their mouths met again, and this time he poured himself into the kiss, nipping at her lips, dueling with her tongue. His arms tightened around her and beckoned her to come closer, to always come closer, as close as she dared.

And she did, laying claim to him again, fitting their mouths together in glorious exploration until she finally had to edge back and give herself life-sustaining breath. His gaze was the loving one she remembered, but it had changed into something even more powerful, like steel forged in fire.

“I love you,” she said again, tracing the planes of his face. “Will you make love with me?”

He only nodded, as if he couldn’t trust himself to speak. Understanding the fragility of the moment, she shuffled off his body and held out her hand to him. He took it, and together they journeyed back to the room that had held such pain the night before.

She shrugged out of her robe and stood naked before him in the morning sunlight, feeling the warm beams alive on her skin. His gaze burned into hers as he tugged off his jeans and briefs. This time she knew she had to take the next step.

Crossing over to the bed, she climbed into the middle and sat cross-legged in the center. Her body trembled with nerves. A shudder ran through his body as he looked at her, and he swallowed thickly. She held out her hand and waited for him to come to her.

He walked to the side of the bed slowly and opened the drawer to her nightstand, like he was expecting to find a snake. Tension pulled at the skin between her shoulder blades. He drew out a condom with a shuttered breath.

The inside of her cheek hurt where she bit it, seeing the fear and longing play across his face.
Could they do this again and not be destroyed?
She knew he must be thinking that, for she was thinking it too. He rolled the condom onto himself. When their eyes met, she raised the hand she still held out to him. He joined her in the center of the bed, and she rose up over him and wrapped her legs around him like a butterfly closing its wings over a newly emerging blossom.

She caressed his face as she fitted herself over him and took him inside her. Desire wasn’t coursing through her yet, but love was. And love was more important than passion right now. His face clenched as her muscles opened to him, and she traced the taut skin of his jaw.

“I love you,” she whispered and pressed close until their bellies touched and her breasts teased the hard muscles of his chest.

His hands clutched her waist as he reached her core. Then he pressed his forehead to hers, his sorrow traveling through the ends of her fingers to her aching heart.

“Look at me, Blake,” she said softly.

He lifted his head, and in his open gaze, she saw the pain and the love and all the pieces of him she’d missed. Her hips pressed forward, and he met her halfway. Something ignited inside her belly, and she undulated her hips again, feeling him shift inside her. On the edge of her mind, she heard a cry and strained to listen.