Better Hate than Never (The Wilmot Sisters, #2)(87)

“You’ve held on to what you have left of the people you loved most and treasured it,” I whisper. I draw him closer, cupping his face, holding his eyes. “And with me, you did what you thought was right—” My voice catches, the sadness of what we’ve missed, of what we could have had, mingling with the relief that so many years of misery now make sense, cast in the light of this twisted sacrifice he believed we had to make, for him to live the way he needed, for me to live the way I needed, too. “Even though you were so completely wrong, you were just doing what you believed you should.”

“I was wrong?” he asks quietly, his hands settling on my thighs, sliding up and down them, as if it soothes him, as if it helps him remember I’m still here.

“So wrong,” I tell him through new tears. “Christopher, you grossly underestimated me, what we could have had, if I had known years ago the man I’ve spent the past month learning . . .” I shake my head, my thumb sweeping across his cheek. “You would have had me from the moment I knew I could be yours.”

Air rushes out of him, pained.

“That day you came home,” I whisper, “when you moved back in, boxes in your arms, and I saw you from the porch, I . . .” Swallowing nervously, I take his hand and set it over my heart. “A storm was coming as I saw you, and this . . . electricity crackled right through my skin. I told myself it was something in the air, the promise of what the sky had up its sleeve. But then there you were, serious and strong. You felt so different from when I’d last seen you, and yet so . . . familiar. After a whole childhood of being the little kid you ignored, it felt different, like we were both . . . equals, like maybe things could be different. I realized I wanted it to be different,” I tell him, cupping my hand around his neck, drawing his head down to press a slow, soft kiss to his lips.

“I wanted to curl up to what was familiar,” I whisper against his mouth. “The sound of your voice. Your belly laugh. The way a shirt stretched across your shoulders and that curl at the tips of your hair.” His touch kneads my breast, wraps around my thigh, to my hip, tucking me closer to him, until our bodies meet, our chests heaving for air. “And I wanted to learn everything that was new, every part of you I didn’t yet know.”

Wordless, he pulls me closer, cradling my head, kissing me deep and slow. And for just a moment, that’s all the world is—the two of us, arms wrapped around each other, in a kitchen filled with memories—sad, beautiful, bittersweet—fading into the corners, making space for what’s to come.

I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss his jaw, his throat. “I need you.”

His hands settle low on my waist and rock me against him. “I need you, too.”

Christopher wraps my legs around his waist and walks us slowly through the kitchen, toward the foyer, where stairs lead up to the second floor.

I nuzzle his nose, then pull away just long enough to glance around, drinking in the truth of what Christopher said.

Nothing’s changed.

The family room’s just as I remember it, and through the pocket doors, the music room, too, where his mom taught piano, the dining room with the same table, same chairs I sat at as a tiny girl.

My heart twists. Now I know why he wouldn’t want just anyone to see this place. Because the polished, devil-may-care man with his fancy this, latest that, lives in a home whose heart was built by his parents thirty-five years ago, a home rich with their lingering presence and memory. The man the world sees doesn’t live here. The man holding me in his arms, who’s opened his heart, lives here, straddling memory and moving forward, living with what he’s lost, cherishing what he could keep.

I feel his eyes on me as he slows to a stop in the foyer.

“It’s as lovely as I remember,” I tell him.

He stares at me steadily as I meet his eyes. “I know I should change it.”

“No, you shouldn’t. Well, only if you want to.” I set my hand on his heart, soothing it. “I love it, just as it is.”

“You do?”

I nod, wrapping my arms around his neck again and pulling myself closer. “I love old things. The memories they carry of the people who touched them, who loved and lived with them. But I could see why you’d be wary of welcoming just anyone into this. If they didn’t know you . . . like I do.”

Drawing me close in his arms, he hugs me hard, his head resting on the crown of mine. We stand like that in the hallway, arms around each other, quiet, still. Against my hair, soft and hoarse, he says, “Thank you for saying that, Kate.”

A lump settles in my throat. I squeeze him tight in my arms. “Thank you for giving me the chance to.”

His sigh is heavy and content as I nuzzle his chest, listening to his heart’s steady lub-dub, lub-dub. Christopher bends his head until our mouths meet. We’re quiet as we kiss, as he walks us up the stairs and I cling to him.

“So,” I tell him. As we turn into his bedroom, it hits me like a freight train. Nerves wrack my system. He’s so experienced. And I’m so not. How many women has he had in this bed? How many wild, erotic things has he done that I can’t even imagine?

“So,” he says, kissing me, sweet and slow.

“This is where you . . .”

He gives me a funny look, flicking on the light switch. “Where I sleep?”