He froze in place, other than the slight tremble of his hand on my chin. “You love me?” he asked as if he was clarifying what he heard.
Suddenly, I was unsure again. “I mean, I think it’s love. I’ve never felt like this before, but when you got up and walked away tonight, I wanted to run after you. I wanted to beg you to forgive me. There was this feeling in my chest that my heart was being crushed. Even worse than when I fight with Haylee, and we’re mad at each other. I always want to make it right with her because I love her. Tonight, the feeling in my chest was like ten times that.”
He finally sucked in a deep breath of air, his lips coming down on mine in a hot, frenzied tangling of tongues. “God, I love you so much. Your words just tipped my world on its axis and then set it right again. Right for the first time in eighteen years.” He pressed his palm to his chest and sucked in more air while I ran my fingers through his hair and across his soft beard.
“Are you okay?” I asked, worried when he kept his hand on his chest.
“I’m better than okay. I finally feel like I’m not going to be left carrying a heavy heart around forever when the woman I love leaves me. You’re not going to leave me, right?” he asked, pulling me into him and kissing me again before I could answer. By the time he released me, I had to pant several times to get the oxygen in to form words.
“As I said, feelings complicate this fake marriage, but I don’t plan on leaving you, Bishop Halla.”
He balanced his forehead on mine and kissed my nose. “It’s only a fake marriage if you keep referring to it that way, Mrs. Halla. If you stop calling it that, then we can make it a marriage from this day forward.”
“To have and to hold?” I asked, teasing him a little by licking my lips.
“To have. To hold. To do lots of other naughty things until you can barely walk the next day.”
“Well, that won’t take much. I can barely walk on any given day.”
He dropped his head and sighed. “I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant.”
“Don’t be. I was teasing you. I know what you meant. You meant you were going to use this beard between my legs until my thighs were chapped from your whisker rubs,” I said, stroking the hair on his face.
“True, but I also meant I was going to bury my yardstick in you over and over until you came with my name on your lips.”
“Over and over,” I said, rolling on top of him.
“Promises, promises,” he whispered before he captured my lips again.
I HELPED HER INTO THE house, and she lowered herself to the couch, sighing heavily and with resignation. I went to the kitchen to get her a glass of water and, at the last second, grabbed a wine cooler, too. She might need something more substantial than water. When I got back to the couch, she was texting on her phone.
“Water or wine?” I asked, holding them up.
She looked up at me and smiled. “Am I supposed to call you Jesus now?”
I snorted and handed her the wine, setting the water on the table for later. “No, but you can cry on my shoulder if you need to.”
She held up her phone. “I was just texting Haylee that I’d be over later to see her. I haven’t even seen their new house yet. I mean, sure, I’m familiar with it since old Mrs. Daniels lived there forever. Did I tell you that we once picked her petunias? I convinced Hay-Hay it would be okay, but man, did we get in trouble. I called her petunia ever si—”
I put my finger to her lips and gazed at her under my brow. “Amber, it’s okay to be upset.”
Her head swung back and forth while she screwed the cap off the wine cooler. I moved my hand, and she took a long drink of it before lowering it to her lap. “I’m not upset.”
“You’re not upset that the nerves in your leg don’t work at all.”
“Some work,” she said defensively.
I held up my hand. “I stand corrected. You’re not upset that the nerves from your knee down don’t work?”
“It’s more like I’m resigned,” she sighed, leaning her head back. “Let’s face facts. It wasn’t exactly a surprise. I can only make it bend at my hip, and even when I do that, the rest of it just flops around. I was hoping there were more treatment options than there are, but all I can do is keep moving forward. Being upset or pissy won’t change anything.”
I tipped my head in acknowledgment of that. “I get what you’re saying, but it’s okay to grieve the loss for a moment. I hope you aren’t just saying this because you think I don’t want to deal with it.”
“I don’t want to deal with it!” she exclaimed before her shoulders sank. “Sorry, you know what I mean. I’ve been doing this so long that I know how to internalize it. Nobody likes a complainer or a Debbie Downer. I just have to move forward like I’ve done
