“What do you want it to be?” he asked.
“I don’t know that I have a complete answer.” Which was still a lie. I’d been pretty damn sure ever since the day at the pool that I loved him. Like forever-and-ever-amen kind of love, but I wasn’t sure he was ready to hear that yet. “But I know what I don’t want.”
His gaze still didn’t falter, but he was holding his breath, waiting for me to finish.
“I don’t want to always be your second choice. I don’t want Tristan to need you and for you to go running if I need you more,” I said, proud my voice didn’t waver as the night at The Oriental and Russell’s abandonment threatened to consume me.
He tugged on my ponytail with one hand and pulled my hip with his other. “I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that Tristan won’t be a part of my life. She, Hannah, and Molly…I’m responsible for them.”
I closed my eyes, because no matter how much it hurt, I wasn’t going to cry in front of him. He’d already seen me at my weakest too many times.
His lips moved so they were teasing mine. A whisper of a breath at the corner of my mouth. “But Tristan will never be the person I need to see when I open my eyes each morning. If I give up my present for a future, Athena, that future better damn well be yours.”
My eyes flew back open to meet dark-green ones, pulse thudding through my veins.
It was so damn romantic. Like the flowers which meant destiny. So unexpectedly heart-grabbing. And I didn’t have enough words to say back without them being the ones I wasn’t prepared to say yet. So, I answered by crushing my lips to his and tugging at his T-shirt.
He groaned and picked me up, carrying me inside the gym where we found our way to the padded floor, training our bodies in a much different way than planned. Training our bodies to know each other’s as well as we knew our own. Training our bodies for the marathon that would be our time together. Maybe it wouldn’t be forever; maybe it would be months or years or decades, but to have the possibility sitting there was enough. Would always be enough.
♫ ♫ ♫
We fell into a pattern over the next week. While I worked in the mornings for Brady, Nash surprised me by going with Carson to the company offices. He and Carson would return to the manor house in the early afternoon, and Nash and I would meet in the gym to workout. We did workouts that stretched my body to another level of muscle as well as self-defense training. I was getting pretty good at bringing him down, and he wasn’t holding back as much as he had at first. After, if the weather wasn’t too cold, we’d swim or walk around the fields of flowers with him telling me about them. He knew far more than I would have guessed. As the late afternoon sun dappled the earth, we’d go inside to shower and change for dinner which Maribelle always made no matter how many times we protested we could help.
Nash wasn’t big on talking, but he’d said enough for me to know he and Carson had had a heart-to-heart much like the one he and I had had. Whatever had been said, it had gone a long way to healing a wound Nash had been carrying around bleeding for decades.
It hadn’t made the wound vanish. Nash still snipped at Carson, and Carson still returned the snip with an expected silence, but they weren’t quite glowering at each other anymore. In fact, Nash wasn’t really glowering at all. There was an almost permanent curl to the corner of his lips.
Whatever had been said between them, it had done enough for Nash to take the seat I’d been using to play chess. The first night he’d switched the board and taken the first move, Carson had stilled, staring at Nash and the board for a long moment before making a return volley. Neither spoke of the years it had been since Nash had stopped playing with him, but they both dove into the game with a zealousness that screamed how much they’d both missed it. I learned more from watching their moves than in any of the games I’d played myself. Their games lasted hours, even crossing into the next night on occasion.
Whenever Nash and I said goodnight to Maribelle and Carson, our bodies collided together as if we’d been apart days instead of hours. I’d never had this kind of desire before. I’d had moments of longing. Moments of wanting a man’s body tucked up against mine, but maybe because Nash knew what I craved without me telling him, it made me greedy for all of it.
As our final days drew to a close, I found myself reluctant to leave the world we’d built. I was at peace here. Nash was at peace here. The dream we were living would end, and we’d go back to reality. Problem was, I hadn’t given any further thought about what that reality would look like. Would I go back to my childhood home? Would he go back to Tristan’s basement? Would we turn our days spent together into hours stolen here and there? What would happen once he was cleared by the psychologist to go back to the SEAL teams?
On our last day, I spent part of my time looking up flower meanings. I knew my color meanings like the back of my hand, but flowers were new to me. After doing some initial investigation online, I went in search of Maribelle.
She wasn’t in the kitchen but in a small parlor where she sat watching TV while she was knitting. Other than at night, while the men played chess, I
