“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” I say into her ear.

“Well, talk in that voice for one.”

I force myself not to laugh. I can see the goose bumps on her exposed skin. Obviously, my old tricks still work.

“So, you have a hand fetish and you get turned on by the sound of my voice?”

“I never said I had a hand fetish!”

“Really? So you just get turned on by the sound of my voice?”

She wiggles to get away from me, and I have to use both arms to hold her in place while I laugh.

When she finally relaxes again, I gather her hair and swipe it over her left shoulder. I kiss the exposed skin on her neck, and she shivers. I kiss an inch above it and her head tilts to give me better access.

“You shouldn’t — we-” Her voice trails off.

“I love you,” I say into her ear. She tries to jerk away, but my arms are still wrapped around her.

“Don’t, Caleb…”

She’s suddenly snapped out of her little daze. Her shapely legs are struggling to gain leverage so she can get away from me.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not right.”

“It’s not right for me to love you? Or it’s not right for you to love me back?”

She is crying, I hear her sniffle.

“Neither.” Her voice, which is high on emotion, cracks. Cracks my reserve, cracks my game, cracks my heart.

When I speak, my voice is husky. I stare out at the water. “I can’t stay away from you. I’ve been trying for ten years.”

She sobs and drops her head. She is not trying to get away from me anymore, but she’s trying to put distance between us. She leans forward and immediately I feel a loss. I’ve gone so many years without her, I refuse to allow her to try to space me out. I have her trapped and I’m going to take advantage. I wrap my hands in her hair, winding it around my fist, and then I gently pull back until her head is resting against my chest. She allows me to do all of this and doesn’t seem to mind the bondage.

Bondage. I’d love to give the love of my life a well-deserved flogging.

I kiss her temple, which is the only thing I can reach, and entwine our fingers, wrapping my arms around her. She snuggles against me and that familiar ache starts in my chest.

“Peter Pan,” I say.

There is five seconds of silence before she says, “When I’m with you, every emotion I can possibly feel comes spilling out. I drown in them. I want to run to you, and I want to run away.”

“Don’t … don’t run away. We can do this.”

“We don’t know how to love each other the right way.”

“Bullshit,” I say against her ear. “You’re full of love that you can’t get out. You can’t say some things. I’m okay with that now. I know it’s there. We’ve hurt each other. But, we’re not kids anymore, Olivia. I want you.” I let her go and spin her around so she’s kneeling between my spread legs.

I cup her face with my hands, threading my fingers into her hair and laying them flat behind her head. She can’t look away from me now.

“I want you.” I’ve said it before, but she’s not getting it. She still thinks I’ll leave her. Like I did.

Her bottom lip quivers.

“I want your babies, and your anger, and your cold blue eyes … “ I choke on my words and I am the one to look away. I bring my gaze back to her face and realize that if I can’t convince her now, I’m never going to be able to. “I want to go on anniversary dinners with you, I want to wrap Christmas presents with you. I want to fight with you about stupid things and then hold you down in my bed and make it up to you. I want to have more cake batter fights and camping trips. I want your future, Olivia. Please come back to me.”

Her whole body is shaking. A tear spills down her cheek and I catch it with my thumb.

I grab the back of her neck and pull her toward me so that our foreheads are touching. I run my hands up and down her back.

Her lips are moving, she’s trying to formulate words — and by the look on her face I can’t tell if I want to hear them. Our noses are parallel, if I bump my head half an inch forward — we’d be kissing. I wait for her.

Our breath mingles. She has my shirt in a vice grip between her fists. I understand her need to clutch something. It is taking every ounce of my self-control to keep from crushing us together.

Both of our chests are rising and falling like the waves. I nudge her nose with mine, and that seems to break her reserve. She wraps her arms around my neck, opens her mouth, and kisses me.

I haven’t kissed my girl in months. It feels like the first time. She’s up on her knees, leaning over me so that I have to tilt my head back to reach her lips. My hands are under her dress on the back of her thighs. I can feel the material of her panties on my fingertips, but I keep my hands still.

We kiss slowly, just with our lips. We keep pulling back to look each other in the eyes. Her hair creates a curtain between us and the world. We kiss behind it, as it falls around our faces, blocking everything out but each other.

“I love you,” she says into my mouth. I smile so big I have to pause in our kissing to recompose my lips. When we start using our tongues, things get heated fast. Olivia likes to bite when she kisses. It really, really does something for me.

My heart is in my throat, my brain is in my pants, my hands are up her dress. She pushes away from me and stands up.

“Not until the divorce is finalized,” she says. “Take me back.”

I stand up and pull her toward me. “All I heard was take me.”

She laces her arms around my neck, her teeth latching onto her bottom lip. I study her face.

“Why don’t you blush? No matter what I say — you never blush.”

She smirks. “Because, I’m a f**king badass.”

“Yeah, you are,” I say softly. I kiss the tip of her nose.

We make our way back to my car. As soon as we shut our doors, Olivia’s phone pings.

She lifts it out of her purse, and immediately her face darkens.

“What is it?” I ask.

She looks away from me, her hand frozen midair, still clutching the phone.

“It’s Noah. He wants to talk.”

Chapter Fourteen

I spin my wedding band on the sticky countertop. It becomes a blur of gold and then does a little dance before falling flat. I pick it up and do it again. The bartender at the shitty dive I wandered into looks at me with his dead eyes before sliding another beer in front of me. I didn’t ask, but a good bartender can read his patrons. I pick up the ring, put it in my pocket and take a long drag of my beer.