Page 74 of Everything But Mine

“Amanda, you need to understand that, unless you ask, nothing can make me step away from the two of you.”

I smile, and bask in the warmth of his declaration as if it’s a blanket. I shift closer to him, our fingers now intertwined over the child growing in my belly. His callouses brushing over my knuckles help soothe the wounds and fears our conversation tonight has opened.

“Do you want to go back to the reception?” he asks. “You barely got cake.”

“I want ice cream.” I pout. “Let’s order sweets. We’ll see everyone at breakfast.”

He snickers. “Ice cream?” He sits up and undoes my shoes.

I groan the second the sandals hit the floor. “I don’t think they’ll have flan.”

Eric arches a brow, his thumb working my ankle. When I prop myself up, he’s trying to smooth the strap lines. “I’ll drive around until I find flan.”

I grab his forearm and shake my head. “I’d rather you stay.”

He looks down at where my hand rests on his skin. Then, he stands up, unbuttoning his shirt. I get up to change and use the restroom.

“We’re not done talking about this, are we?”

“Tonight we are.” I give my back to him and pull my hair to the side. “Unzip me?”

Eric traces the zipper, all the way down to the small of my back and then back up, before pulling it down. As the zipper lowers, his fingertips brush my skin, and his breathing fans the back of my neck.

“I’m not going to make the same mistakes again, Amanda.” His palm presses flat against the center of my back, and his lips land on the base of my neck. The second his hands leave my skin, I’m overwhelmed by the cold, as if I have only been feeling his warmth and not my own.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

ERIC

Iwake to light filtering through the blinds, thin and gold, against my eyelids, and to the gentle pressure of fingers along my jaw. They’re warm, careful, threading into my hair and guiding my face to the side before I’m fully conscious. When I open my eyes, Amanda is close enough that the tip of my nose brushes hers.

Her brows aren’t relaxed, although she’s not frowning either. Her hair spills forward around us, wafting vanilla and rightness at me. She brushes the stubble on my jaw back and forth—an absent gesture that sends a lazy pang of want down my neck and into my chest. Her breath ghosts across my mouth, hot and damp.

If I lean forward, I could kiss her.

She tightens her grip on my hair when I slide my palm over her hip, feeling the familiar line of bone beneath my fingers, then the softer curve of her stomach, warm through her shirt. Amanda hikes her thigh, sliding it over mine, then around my waist until she’s straddling me. Her hair falls around us, creating a cocoon as our foreheads touch. My heart trips over itself, thinking this might be it. After everything yesterday, I finally got something right for once, and she’s going to kiss me. I’d return the hell out of that kiss, and we’d finally be together, patching up every fucking mistake I never should have made.

Amanda’s breath turns uneven against my lips. Her eyes flick down to my mouth, then back up. I mirror her without thinking, already leaning into our last first kiss.

Then, her lower lip trembles, her ribs shaking against me, and my every ounce of hope dissolves. It fades, unreachable, with the way her tears press against my chest, seeping through the shirt until my skin feels wet. Fuck. I wrap my arms around her and let her cry on top of me, warm and soft. Every sob runs through her ribs into my palms, into my forearms, into my chest, her grief having nowhere to go except through me.

Her hands fist the fabric at my sides, twisting it until it rides up. Her breasts flatten against me when she breathes in too sharply, her whole body hitching with each broken sound.

These years without talking about how I held our history in my hands and ripped it to pieces have been like slapping a Band-Aid of silence on a bullet wound, and then tearing it off just to see if we’d healed. We haven’t. I haven’t. My self-hatred is wild this morning, gnawing at me with claws and incisors instead of nails and teeth.

I hold it together, though, for her. All I’ve done is let myself crumble, but I don’t think she ever allowed herself to cry over me. For a few minutes, we exist in this quiet, broken version of peace. She pulls back, rising above me and then away, on her knees at the end of the bed, as if she’s come to her senses. No lingering fingers or whispered apologies. Her absence clings and lingers on the wetness of her tears, my skin rising into goose bumps as they dry.

Amanda wipes her face with the heel of her hand, and when her eyes lock on mine, she’s scrubbed the vulnerability off her skin.

“We should get ready,” she says. Her voice is hoarse and clipped.

I push myself up on one elbow. “Amanda⁠—”

“We’re already late for brunch.” She swings her legs off the bed, tangled hair and red-rimmed eyes. She grabs her phone and locks herself behind the bathroom door.

She’s rebuilt every wall. Silly me, I thought I had climbed them. I drag a hand over my face and sit up. Run through my options, deciding it’s a great day for a swim. This time, I’m not letting her retreat away from me. Fuck that.

The hotel terrace smells of chlorine and late spring blooming lilacs, the sharp scent drifting up from the pool below. White umbrellas cast wide patches of shade over wrought-iron tables, their fabric snapping every time the breeze cuts across the water.