Page 21 of One Vow

She shook her head.

“Longing, maybe. I guess I’m just a little sad that you didn’t wait…” She paused, even stopped walking and rolled her eyes. “An entire decade. Pretty silly, huh?”

We started walking again because I couldn’t, didn’t want to tell her I’d waited. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us to tell her no other woman measured up to her. That the eleven days I spent as her husband were the best days of my life and carried me through some long, lonely years. Not that I’d been alone all that time, but aside from a few one-night stands, and a couple of friends with benefits, nothing ever stuck.

“Not silly at all.”

She cleared her throat and shoved her hands into her pockets. “Does your…fiancée know you’re staying with me?”

I didn’t miss the pause or the squeak in her tone when she said the word fiancée. The question was reasonable, but I didn’t like having to answer it. I didn’t like Felicity thinking anyone had power over me. Because in truth, the only one who had the power to keep me from making my own decisions was her. Felicity Lorelei Fields Makenzie. The only woman I would die to protect. And by die, I meant marry Beth Cooper.

“No, but she wouldn’t care. We don’t have that kind of relationship.” And wasn’t that the saddest thing I’d ever said? I might have been a guy in the minority, but I wanted a woman who needed to know where I was, who cared about who I spent time with when I wasn’t with her, who didn’t mind that I needed and cared in the same ways.

In our blissful eleven days of marriage, I’d never noticed that Felicity was a tongue-clucker. Apparently, she was because she did. “I would care.”

She stopped walking again and this time moved in front of me.

“You wouldn’t trust me?” I couldn’t blame her. I wasn’t entirely sure I was in a situation where I could be trusted.

She slid her hands up my chest, over my coat but I felt the touch like it was her palm against my bare skin. Everything burned.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.” Her gaze caught mine, held, and I didn’t want to move. Ever. Again. “I wouldn’t trust me.”

Her tongue swiped her lower lip before it disappeared into her mouth. Her eyelids fluttered. Her fingers curled into the fabric of my coat. I wanted to stay this way for the rest of my life.

The fact of the matter was that we were standing in the freezing cold Maine winds on a public street with our arms wrapped around each other, and I was engaged to someone else. And even though it was the very last thing I wanted to do, I pulled my arms back and took a step away.

“We should get out of this wind.” If there was a more chickenshit way out of this, I was certain to find it, but for now, this had to do.

She nodded, and we started walking.

How I’d let myself get talked into leaving her or signing those divorce papers or becoming engaged to someone else when all I wanted in the world was Felicity would always be one of those mysteries for me that I would never figure out how to solve.

One Decade Ago

Felicity busted through the bathroom door, red-faced, and out of breath. Beautiful and sexy, also about three minutes too late to join me in the shower. “I don’t want you to go to jail.”

To this point, even though we all knew it was a possibility, no one had mentioned the j-word. We hadn’t talked prison cells or striped jumpsuits, flip-flops for shoes, or no touching on visiting days. Although I’d thought a lot about it. Especially since we’d all, Jameson, Keaton, Ryder and I, been called to the police station, all given statements, all been kicked off the team and suspended from school pending investigation, but no one had said jail until now, and I certainly didn’t expect it to be her.

Completely naked, hair still dripping, body mostly dried, I wrapped a towel around my waist and crossed my arms. “I don’t want to go to jail.”

She still had her coat on, but she walked in, put her forehead against my chest, and tucked her freezing cold hands between my wrists and my sternum. I inhaled a sharp breath then folded my arms around her, trying to soothe her because it was what we both needed, but my body always responded to having her so close and my towel didn’t leave much room to hide. Still, I held her.

After a few minutes, she lifted her head and looked into my eyes as her teeth worked her bottom lip. “I’m going to talk to my dad.”

I’d dragged her into this enough as it was. Even though, honestly, I didn’t mean to. There was a video out there of us together and it had been edited to make her look like she was the aggressor in our interlude. And there were snippets and four-second pieces of her asking me to do things nobody ever wanted to say publicly. If she was my kid, the last thing I would have wanted to do was help the bastard who let her be humiliated like that. I didn’t expect the chancellor of the university, who hadn’t even been able to look at me as he told me I was suspended, to be different.

“No, Lis. I could never ask your dad to help me.”

She stepped back and leaned against the wall, her pose mirroring mine against the vanity. “You’re not asking. I am.”

Then, as if the discussion was closed, she walked out of the bathroom, hers because I’d been staying in the apartment she shared with Sofia since I got kicked out of the Alpha house. It smelled better, the furniture matched, and I spent every night with the most wonderful girl I’d ever met. If I had to get kicked out of the frat house, this wasn’t a bad alternative living space. Not at all.

After I pulled on my clothes, I walked into her room. She’d shucked the coat, kicked off her boots, and tossed her bag onto the bed. “You want to tell me what happened?”

The mattress dipped when I sat beside her, and I brought her knuckles to my lips for a kiss. If there were a thousand hours in a day instead of the meager twenty-four, and I could spend them all with her, I would spend as many as I could touching and kissing her anywhere she’d let me.

“Beth freaking Cooper happened. She’s…”