Page 119 of Never Alone
"I'm not going to."
I kept going. I kissed her stomach—soft, warm, with the faint silver lines at her hip that I knew came from Noah and that I loved her for. I put my hand there and let it stay. The place where she'd carried her son. The place where her body had done a thing that mattered.
I kissed her hip. I kissed the inside of her wrist when she brought her hand to my face. I kissed her palm. I kissed every part of her I could reach with my mouth, and when my hand found the scar on her ribcage—I knew where it was now—I put my mouth there for one count, soft, and moved on.
She made a sound.
A small one. Half a breath. Her hand tightened in my hair.
It was not the sound.
It wasn't even close.
Nicholas had lied. Or he had told the truth about a Tessa who didn't live here anymore. Either way, the woman under my hands wasn't his. The sounds she made were hers and mine, and Nicholas could keep whatever he thought he remembered from a marriage that had ended.
I gave him nothing. I gave her everything.
I traced her ribs with my thumb. I traced the curve of her waist. I learned her hipbones the way I'd been wanting to learn them—slow, with my hands, the way I'd learned every other surface that mattered in my life. She was looking up at me with her hair in a halo on the pillow and the gold light from the curtain on the side of her face. There was a flush at her collarbone, spreading. Her breath wasn't steady. Her eyes were green up close in a way they weren't from across a room—wet at the corners, not because she was sad, but because of what she was looking at.
Me.
I had spent thirty-four years not knowing a woman could look at me like that.
I had her.
"Cole."
"Tessa."
I'd been holding back for two minutes longer than I'd wanted to. She knew. She was the one who pulled me down.
I went where she pulled me.
I kept moving. I held her where she needed to be held. I watched her face because I wasn't going to take my eyes off her, because I had been waiting thirty-four years to be the man looking at her like this, and I wasn't going to miss any of it.
Her breath caught.
Then her breath stopped catching.
Her eyes shut. Her mouth opened. The flush at her collarbone spread up her throat. Her hand on my back tightened, and then let go, and then tightened again. A sound came out of her—small at first, then less small, then something I'd never heard before in my life and would hear in my head for a long time after this morning ended.
It wasn't the sound.
Nicholas had never heard the sound she made when a man held her right.
I held her right.
I felt her come apart under my hands, and I held her there, and I watched her, and I gave her every second I had in me to give.
"I've got you."
"I know."
"Tessa. I've got you."
"I know, Cole. I know."
I let myself go after she did. I kept my eyes on her face for as long as I could. The way she looked at me at the end—open, undone, mine—was a thing I was going to carry. I'd been carrying things for thirty-four years. This one I was going to be glad to carry.
