Touch & Go (19 page)

Jesus,
she'd told him she loved him before hundreds of times, maybe even thousands. But never like this. Not even that last night when he'd been inside her and, so confident and sure of what he believed to be true, said the words he didn't say to anyone else. Even then, he hadn't seen what he was seeing now.

And it was killing him, because this wasn't just some lie revealed, this wasn't an untruth uncovered, it was just Ava opening her whole soul to him, exposing the raw wound on her heart he'd never even known was there.

He'd wanted to hurt her. Because finding out that the only woman he had to trust had betrayed him hurt worse than anything that had come before. It took something away that he'd counted on for twenty years. Something that made him feel safe and whole, and he didn't know if he'd ever be able to get it back.

Yeah, he'd wanted to hurt her, but now seeing what this was costing her, seeing the truth, the heartbreak, and the practiced acceptance in her eyes—all he wanted was to take that pain away.

Ducking his head, he kissed the tears from one eye and then as tenderly as he could from the other. He felt the quake of her sob against his neck and the change in her breathing. The way she clung to him as though she were terrified to let go.

Maybe she was. Because when this was over—
hell,
maybe he was a little terrified of her letting go as well. Maybe he wanted Ava to hold tight to him for as long as he could convince her to do it.

“I'm sorry, Ava,” he said, the words themselves too small for how much he meant them. “I'm so fucking sorry.”

And because of everything they'd been through, and the honesty of this moment, he did what felt right. He lowered his mouth to hers, taking her lips in a gentle kiss that was more about the twenty years of caring and love between them than it was about her being the most beautiful girl he'd ever known, naked beneath him in this bed.

A tilt of her chin, and Ava was meeting him with a kiss of her own. So soft, her lips glided against his.

She tasted like regret and longing, like the salty tears he'd tried to kiss away, and the girl he'd loved best for all of his life.

“The things I said, Ava. The way I talked to you—”

She shook her head, meeting his eyes again. “It kills me that you would think I would be so intentionally careless with something so important as our friendship. Sam, you have to believe me—all I've ever wanted was to protect what we have.”

He knew it. Now that the initial anger and shock had faded, leaving room for at least a shred of reason to return, how could he think anything else? Yes, she'd kept something from him. Something monumental.

But this was Ava. He
knew
her.

“I know.” He kissed her and said it again, leaving the promise on her lips where he'd laid it.

He kissed her and kissed her, until she was kissing him back with the urgency he'd been holding at bay.

He wanted this. He wanted the connection and the closeness, and all the things that made being with Ava so much more than he'd ever had with anyone else. And physically, there was no denying she wanted him too.

But whether it was the right thing…

“Ava, we can stop.”

The soft pad of her index finger met his lips.

“I don't want to stop. No more lies, no more secrets.” She traced the outline of his mouth, stroking his bottom lip back and forth in a way that had the gentle friction causing a chain reaction throughout his body. “I want you. I've always wanted you. Make love to me, Sam.”

With that, the words were behind them.

Their mouths came together urgently, hungrily. Their tongues meshing and mating, sliding over and against and around each other. Rubbing wet and soft until desire pushed the gentle tempo toward demand.

Sam was plundering her mouth, each penetrating thrust coming in sync with the rock of his hips.

Ava's nails bit into his shoulders and his mind shorted out of anything but the immediate, critical need to get inside her.

To sink deep.

To take her hard.

Make her his—
No.
That wasn't right. Only then he couldn't think about what was right, because their bodies aligned.

He was at her opening. Parting her sweet, tight flesh, and he felt her reaction instantly. The fluttery, grasping response of her body taking his. With each new inch he gave her, she got closer—her breath fracturing into cries until, desperate, she clenched and spasmed around his length. Coming for him as he finally sank home.

Home.

He looked into her eyes, their bodies as close as they could be. She was giving him everything, letting him see her heart and her soul and the love she'd been hiding her whole life. And it was…overwhelming.

Astonishing.

Humbling.

It was all that and…something more.

Jesus.
It was fucking terrifying.

He'd felt like this before. Like he knew he had something worth holding on to, but every time he tried to look too closely, to see what was inside his hands, more of it slipped away.

He hated that feeling. The rising knot of anxiety threatening to choke him, the impotent sense of loss he couldn't wrap his head around. And he wasn't going to let it in. Not now. Not here with Ava when he didn't have to examine anything to know what he was on the cusp of losing.

So he did what he always did and shoved it away. Pushed it back as far as he could and closed it off, focusing instead on the here and now. On Ava.

Beneath him.

Around him.

With him in a way that was familiar and new all at once.

Drawing him back into that pleasure-driven cycle of give and take. Of more and harder and deeper and
yesss.

Her breath was coming in torn little puffs, punctuated by quiet moans and less quiet cries as he slid full length in and out of her. He was giving her everything and then taking it all away. Over and again, making her mindless for that instant of completion, making her beg until he sank home again.

“Sam…like that…oh, don't stop…”

He didn't want to. He never wanted to, but Ava was about to come again. And through each slick shaft, he could feel her inner muscles spasming around him, clenching and drawing him deeper. Clinging tight.

And when she let go—when he heard his name break across her lips and watched her shatter beneath him—there was no way he was going to be able to hold back.

Another thrust and her eyes pinched closed, her teeth sinking into the sweet swell of her bottom lip. She was there.

Coming hard around his quickening thrusts, digging her heels into his ass and clutching tight at his hair as he sent her to the edge—

“Tell me,” he demanded. “Say it again.”

“I love you, Sam.”

—And followed her over.

Moments later, they lay on their sides together.

Ava stared at the spot where her hand pressed against his heart. “I've dreamed this was mine. So many times. Everything would have been so much easier if it had been.”

The words were like a knife through his gut—a sharp, immediate pain, issuing a wound he knew would trouble him for a long time to come.

“Ava,” he said, apology overflowing in her name alone.

“I'm not trying to guilt-trip you. But after twenty years of not being able to tell a soul, of feeling like I couldn't confide in anyone, now you know. And it's a little overwhelming, actually, to be able to finally share what I'm thinking with another person. A person who cares, even if he's the one I can't have.”

He brushed a few dark stands from her brow, tucking them behind the neat shell of her ear. “You never told Maggie?”

“I wanted to. Heck, I probably
almost
told her a hundred different times. But in the end, I always kept it to myself. I was too scared of what would happen if she slipped up, and somehow gave it away.” She let out a quiet laugh. “I couldn't risk it.”

He thought about how easily he'd cracked with Mitch. How the words had been clawing to get out, eating at him.

After less than a month.

What would it have been like to hold on to a secret like that for years?

“I can't believe you didn't tell your mom.”

Ava rolled her eyes, giving him that look that said she couldn't believe how stupid he was, but she loved him just the same. A look he'd seen more than a few times over the years and always brought a smile to his face.

Only this time, he didn't feel much like smiling.

He wanted to understand, but the understanding was breaking his heart.

“Seriously, Sam, you think if she knew how I felt you'd have been in the dark all this time? You don't think she would have been
not so subtly
trying her very best to marry us off? Don't you remember when that Lindsey girl got a crush on you and suddenly a girl who I hardly even knew was that centerpiece of every conversation for more than a month?”

He remembered. Mrs. Meyers had been brutal. Relentless. She'd been determined.

He looked into Ava's face and smiled, thinking how the apple didn't fall far from the tree.

“So you were worried she'd spill, huh?”

Ava's brows pulled together. “I knew how you felt about my parents. I knew how hard it would be for you if they got something in their head about us being together and you weren't interested. I knew you needed them, all of us, more than I needed someone to talk to. Besides, it wasn't like someone else knowing was going to change what was in your heart.”

No. But it would have made a difference for Ava. It would have meant her having someone to share her feelings with instead of having to hide them for so long.

It might have meant some relief.

Or maybe even the right person giving her the right advice to get her past the feelings she should have been saving for someone who deserved them.

Ava yawned, her eyes getting heavier and heavier.

He pulled her in close, letting her wriggle and adjust until her back was to his front, her ass tucked snug against him.

She didn't ask if he was staying. He didn't check if she wanted him to leave.

He just held her, listening to her breathing slow and lengthen until she was asleep in his arms, sweet and warm and slipping further away with every second that passed. The clock rolled past midnight. Past two. Past four.

There was no sleep for Sam, just a methodical accounting of everything he knew.

Everything he had to lose.

Everything he wanted to save.

Everything he hated and everything he loved.

And when Ava woke to the new day, turning in his arms and pressing a tender kiss against that place she'd wished could be hers, he realized it already was.

Not in the way she'd wanted. But enough that the next words he spoke came without hesitation or doubt.

“Marry me, Ava.”

She was still asleep.

Dreaming, obviously, because no way was Ava waking up in Sam's arms to a
marriage proposal.

“Ouch! Jesus, Ava, you pinched me,” Sam coughed out in surprise.

She shimmied across to the far side of the bed, because, yeah, she was awake all right.

Inching out of the bed, she wondered if she'd be able to get some coffee before Sam spoke again. But then he was sitting up himself, the sheet falling across most of his lap and one thigh, leaving the other heavily muscled leg and a calendar-worthy expanse of the rest of him there for her viewing pleasure.

He was so beautiful.

And he'd just asked her to marry him.

Time to snap out of it.

Ava made a grab for the thin top blanket and wrapped it around herself as she backed across the too small space.

“Um, Ava, where are you going?” he asked, raking his fingers through his tousled mess of hair.

Mexico, Switzerland, Canada? Anywhere she could avoid having to talk to the guy she'd loved her whole life but who happened to have gone round the bend while she'd been sleeping.

“The lobby. They have coffee.”

Sam rubbed his palm across the lower half of his face, but she could see the hint of his smile from between his fingers. “And you're going now? Like that?”

Glad someone was enjoying this.

The breath left her in a frustrated huff and, one eyebrow raised, Sam stuck a couple of pillows against the headboard and leaned back. Patting the mattress beside him, he said, “Come here.”

She hesitated, but only a second before climbing back into bed. And when she did, as much as she wanted to snuggle into Sam the way he was inviting her to, she adjusted her pillow, giving her a few inches of space between them. Just enough so she could think.

One of them had to.

“Sam, I'm not going to marry you.”

She'd been calm.

Clear.

There was no room for misunderstanding.

“Why not?” he asked, cupping her cheek in his palm and leaning in so they were eye to eye. “Honestly, I don't know why I didn't see it before, but this is perfect, Ava. We're completely compatible. I mean, how many of your more ‘conventional' couples get along as great as we do? We like the same things; we've been practically living together for the past six years—sharing our meals, spending all our free time together—”

“Heck, you even show up at my apartment after you've finished screwing whomever you happened to pick up that night,” she countered with more bite than she'd intended. “You must be right. This
is
the perfect setup—at least for one of us, huh?”

Sam's brows pulled together, his voice going deeper.

“That's over. Ava, if I'd had even a clue about how you felt, I'd never have been so insensitive. Now that we're together, though—” He shook his head. “I don't need anyone else but you.”

If only that were true. But Sam wasn't a one-woman guy. She could count on one hand the number of women he'd dated for more than three weeks. And more than three months—there might have been two.

Sam didn't settle in. He didn't settle down. And whether he could admit it or not, the truth was, part of why he loved her so much was that she'd never kept him from anything. She'd never stood in the way of what he wanted.

Well, except now, she supposed. But that was different.

“Ava, I haven't been with anyone else since we've been together. I haven't even been tempted to. And if you want the honest truth, the night after I heard about your date, I actually tried to make myself look at another woman the way I had before, but I couldn't do it.”

That shouldn't mean something to her. It shouldn't pull at all the places she was trying to shut off from this man, but God help her, it did.

Only then it had her aching all over again, because if he wanted her like that, why couldn't he love her? How was it even possible for him to separate sex and emotion so totally?

“We'd be great together, Ava. I know we could make this work.”

“No,” she said quickly, not entirely trusting herself to say more.

“Why not?” he demanded.

“Because this is more about you not wanting me to leave than
wanting me.
”

“What difference does it make?” He was getting frustrated then, as if he'd been so sure she'd be the easy, grateful conquest he was accustomed to. “I don't want you to go, Ava. You're my best friend. I thought I was yours.”

How could he not understand? “It makes a difference to me. I've been living half a life for too many years to think about, Sam. It was by choice, and for so long, it was enough. It wasn't your fault, but it
was
because of you.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that I want to find someone to love. Who loves me back.”

“I love you!”
he shouted.

“But the kind of love that's between us isn't the kind I want for my happily ever after. I want a family. Babies.”

And like that the anger dissipated. His eyes darkened, his stare fixing on her belly. “I could get you pregnant.”

Chills ran up and down her spine at the thought, at the sound of that rumbling declaration. But still.

“I'm sure you could. But Sam, can't you understand I want something for my life I'll never have if I go back to Chicago with you?”

“That's bullshit, Ava. I'm offering you the vows, the love, the family. I'm offering you forever. The you-and-you-alone—”

“But you can't promise to love me the way I love you—
with my whole heart,
Sam. Completely.”

“Ave—” he started, but this was what he needed to hear. To understand.

“After twenty years of telling myself I could live without the one thing I wanted most, of pretending I wasn't missing out on all the things I'd dreamed of for my future, I'm done lying to the both of us. I need more than the half-life I've been living.” She met his eyes, letting him see the truth through the tears in hers. “I need this to be goodbye.”