Authors: Leanne Davis
The Years Between
his is the sequel to
The Other Sister
and it’s
highly
recommended you’ve read it before reading
The Years Between
.***
**Please be warned that
all
my titles contain swearing, sexual situations, mature content matter and often mild violence.**
Table of Contents:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The Years Between
COPYRIGHT © 2014 by Leanne Davis
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Contact Information:
[email protected]
Publishing History First Edition, 2014 Digital
Digital ISBN: 978-1-941522-07-3
The Years Between, Sister Series 1.5
Edited by Teri at The Editing Fairy (
[email protected]
)
Cover Design by Steven Novak (
[email protected]
)
:
River’s End
Diversions
The Sister Series
The Other Sister
The Good Sister
The Best Friend
The Zenith Trilogy
Zenith Falling
Zenith Rising
Zenith Fulfilled
The Seaclusion Series
~
Published through The Wild Rose Press~
Poison
Notorious
Secrets
Seclusion
~Year One~
August 15, 2007
“You know, I’m not really your wife.”
Will Hendricks glanced across the cab of his truck at Jessie Hendricks. He held his left arm
loosely against his body where he sustained a minor sprain after throwing himself too hard on the ground to avoid a passing bullet. Every time Jessie saw it, the image made her stomach queasy. The oncoming traffic headlights flashed over his face every few seconds. “You’re not really…” he started to repeat, but swore as he cut off his own sentence. “I did that, didn’t I? I signed the divorce papers. I mean, I know I did. It just never felt real to me. I never felt like you weren’t there waiting for me.”
Jessie nodded. “Yes, you thought it was time I moved on. It was time for me to date someone new… so I did. But now, I’m not legally your wife.”
“You’re my wife. I don’t care what any paper says.” His scowl was fierce enough for Jessie to imagine him easily snapping a man’s neck, which she’d actually watched him do before.
She sighed and stretched her legs out before her. “Well, that
’s a nice sentiment, my almost-husband, but it doesn’t change that we are really not married. I mean, I guess it doesn’t really matter, but I thought I’d point out that technically, we are not married.”
He strummed his
fingers on the steering wheel. “I’m sorry. You know? That I did that. That I made you divorce me. That I—”
“Ordered me to date other men?” She slid a glance his way with a weary smile. “Yes, I was thinking this time around, we could skip the separations and dating other men ‘for my own good.’ What do you think?”
He glanced her way, his expression pained, but finally smiled back just as wearily. “Yes, let’s skip you dating other men this time.”
She kept staring at his profile as he drove. She could not get enough of him. She wanted to breathe him in and memorize his every feature. Tonight, she felt like she could make it the purpose of her life to stare at Will Hendricks and relish knowing that he was alive.
“It didn’t occur to me you would be told I was missing. As you pointed out, you were no longer my wife. I didn’t think you were notified about what happened to me. I decided
before
this last mission, as soon as I could, I was coming for you. But I thought I needed to do it in person, in case you were dating someone else, as I insisted you do. And even after I got stateside, I just kept chanting to myself ‘a few more days, a few more days’. If I had any idea you were told I was missing and thought I was dead, I would have called you, no matter what.”
They had been through this before. He spent hours at the Army base telling her about his capture, captivity and escape. He got severely ill with a stomach virus due to bad water or food from being a prisoner. He sustained minor scrapes and bruising while escaping and fleeing to the closest village where he managed to contact his base. He kept brushing it all off as if it were nothing. Each time she saw his face, her pulse increased.
He could have died.
The thought made her want to sink her fingernails into the meaty part of her leg and pull towards her knees, ripping into the flesh. She imagined doing it. And what it would feel like. But she was not actually doing it. So… progress.
She had to draw in a sharp breath and shut her eyes to stop imagining Will’s dead body, and her own bleeding flesh. It was so clear to her from the things he told her, and the images he evoked. It could have happened any number of ways. And there were countless ways for Will to die while serving in the Army. The thought of being strong, living with Will, and going back to face it all sent her head spinning and reeling. She desperately wanted to simply cut her leg. As she used to.
Because it always worked for Jessie. It always stopped her crazy head and emotions because everything else was eclipsed by her physical pain. But no, no she wasn’t that Jessie anymore. She wasn’t crazy. She could control it. No matter how much her hand squeezed her leg. She wasn’t cutting it, and that was the key. That’s what she would no longer do.
“Jess?” Will asked softly. He reached across the cab and took her hand. He had an uncanny ability to know when she doing something to herself, and knew her head better than she did.
She turned and smiled for him, trying to reassure him she wasn’t crazy Jessie Bains any longer. “I just keep thinking…”
He suddenly steered the truck to the side of the road. “I know what you were thinking.”
Startled, she squeaked in surprise when he slammed the gear shift into park and reached across the console, unlocked her seatbelt, put his hands on her waist, lifted her up, despite his hurt arm, and brought her toward him, plopping her onto his lap. She was inches from his chest, straddling him with the steering wheel pressing into her back.
“Will? What are you do
ing? Your arm!”
“My arm is fine. What’s not, is you.”
“What are you talk—”
She stopped talking when she raised her eyes to meet his, which were drilling into her. They were full of such love, and such tenderness,
for her
, she nearly whimpered in shock. No man besides Will ever looked at her like that. And no man ever loved her, not like Will did.
“Will?” She touched his face. What could prompt him to suddenly stop on the side of the road? Will didn’t stop on the sides of roads, and didn’t normally do anything impetuous. Especially something that seemed to be driven by his emotions. He could control them better than anyone she ever met. Unlike her.
He raised his hands from her waist to cup her face. “I was wrong. About all of it. To leave you
twice
. To make you think you had to be with someone else because you weren’t well enough to be with me. Or perhaps, I guessed we weren’t well enough to be with each other. I was so wrong, Jessie. I almost lost you, and I had no one to blame, but myself.”
He suddenly hugged her to his chest, squeezing her so tightly, she couldn’t breathe. But she was too happy, relieved, and in total shock to be there and would rather have gladly died from lack of oxygen than admit to Will he was clasping her too tightly. That he was holding her at all, alive and breathing, was a miracle to her. One she would never get used to or get over.
They had been reunited all of a couple of hours. They were on the way to her sister’s house to get her stuff, and then go home. Together. Their old home, the apartment they co-habited in while they were married, but never lived in together as couple. In the last few hours, she learned her father was dead, and her husband… almost husband, was for sure alive and wanted to be with her again. It was a lot to take in. Her mind was spinning. It was impossible to fathom it all or how she felt, other than Will was hugging her right then. Here. They hadn’t had even a day to make sense of it all. It was overwhelming, yet, the only thing she needed to happen to her. Ever.
Will was alive. And he wanted to be with her.
The muscles in his neck felt taut under her hands. She rubbed them with her fingertips and turned her head so she could kiss his jaw and neck. He closed his eyes at her soft kisses and a shudder traveled through his body.
“What is it?” she asked softly while kissing his chin, cheek and neck. “Besides… well, everything?”
“I almost died.”
She drew in a sharp breath. “But you didn’t. You’re here. Now. With me. Alive. We’re both alive and the general is dead. We finally have a chance, Will.
A chance we’ve never had together.”
“It’s not that I almost died, it’s that I almost died and you thought I didn’t care about you.”
“I always knew you cared about me. Even the first time you left me. I knew, deep in my heart, through all the terror and scars and sadness and grief,
I knew,
you were the one person in the entire world who cared about me. Who saw me. Who felt me. I knew that even then.”
His head shook back and forth. “I never made you feel like you could be with me. I realized it as I was sitting in that godforsaken, forlorn cell I feared my life would end in. All I could think about was you. How you endured that. How you survived conditions so much worse than mine, and instead of holding you, caring for you, I did nothing, but push you away. Leave you. Leave us. And then tell you to find someone else.”
Tears filled her eyes as he spoke, falling over her eyelids. There was no point in trying to stop them. It made her so sad to talk about her past. Her history. Her mistakes. Her rapes. And Mexico. Yet, it was where she found Will. So it was confusing. Without Mexico, there was no Will. Without Will, there would have never been a remotely healed Jessie. Without Will, there would be
no
Jessie. Of that, she was sure. “But I didn’t. I never found anyone else. I never could find anyone else, Will. You must know that. You must feel that.”
“I feel it,” he finally said softly. She closed her eyes and leaned her head onto his shoulder. His arms were strong and solid around her. She was trapped against him by the steering wheel and his bulk. He was the only person alive whom she would allow to trap her. He was almost the only person alive whom she would allow to touch her anymore. “But, don’t you see the things I did wrong?” he persisted.
“I see the things we didn’t know how to deal with. But who would have? Who could have known? Who could have dealt with Mexico any better than we did? We’ve done our best. You and I both did the best we could. From what we had to deal with? What more could we have done? No one else would have known what to do either. Come on, you taught me that.”
“I should have picked you up, clasped you to me and never let you go. When I saw you huddled there in that fucking cell in Mexico, that’s what I should have done,” he whispered into her ear. He kissed her temple and her cheek and held her hand. She shuddered at the image it evoked, and the stifling fear and terror that clenched her heart and ripped through her gut as the staggering images were unleashed in her brain.
But the thing was: it was nothing new.
She’d been dealing with those flashbacks for three years. It was doubtful she’d ever not have to deal with them. But what Will forced her to do, and no one else could have made her do, was to find a way to accept them.
“You know that, right? I should have never let you go.”
Tears freely fell from her eyes and over her cheeks. He watched her cry more times than not. Now, however, when she glanced up, he had
a sheen of tears in his eyes. She swallowed the painful lump in her throat. His lips touched her skin again and traveled from her ear to her cheek, kissing the tears he could reach. She tilted her face into his. His mouth hovered over hers.
She shook her head. “No. You should have left me because I would have never improved. You were right. You know that. Maybe the second time, you just couldn’t believe I could change from that… that
thing
I was after Mexico.”
He smiled softly, “That
thing,
is the only woman I ever loved,” he said gently. “Don’t you know that?”
She leaned back and caught his eye, smiling finally, as tears shimmered over her face. “That’s the only thing I really, truly know. I know that you love me.”
He leaned his head closer and his lips touched hers. She sighed at the feelings the contact of his lips on hers unleashed in her. It was dizzying to experience, and a joy so intense, she thought her quickening heart might just explode in her chest. If she could have breathed in the essence of Will, she would have. His mouth stayed closed. He kissed her upper lip, her lower lip, and her lips together as his hands cradled her head. She didn’t like him to kiss with his tongue. Therefore, he rarely kissed her that way.
But… he almost died. Suddenly, she opened her mouth and touched her tongue to his lips. She felt his spine stiffening in surprise under her hands. She loved him, his tongue, every part of him, because he was here and alive and near her. So she wanted to kiss Will with her tongue.
Hesitantly, like a little schoolgirl, she touched the tip of her tongue to his lips. He groaned softly at the contact. She could feel him growing hard under her bottom that was wedged tightly against him. She pressed into him. His fingers gripped tighter around her waist. He pushed her harder onto him.
She could take or leave sex. It wasn’t something she often thought about doing with pleasure. So much of it had been brutal in her life that it had a different connotation than it did for some.
Except, she liked to have sex with Will, and “like” was pretty far for her, considering her history.
Knowing Will, he hadn’t been with another woman sin
ce he was last with her, six months ago. There was something strangely chivalrous about him. And even though they were technically broken up, and after he proclaimed they were no longer together, she sensed he hadn’t yet slept with anyone else. And even if he did, there was one thing she was confident of: Will wanted her. Not other women. Not anyone like he wanted her. And that feeling, that power, and knowing he loved her, was something that made having sex easier for Jessie.
His hand slid up her from her waist, to her back and her head, which he held as his tongue touched hers and slid slightly into her mouth. Her heart melted. He always did that. He was hesitant, almost always timidly asking her permission before going further. If she gave it, he didn’t hold back. If she didn’t, he simply stopped.