Ben stared at her. It echoed his own childhood experiences in a way he couldn’t deny, resonating in the tightness of his chest. She was on a roll, the words tumbling out faster.
“It’s a feeling of comfort and safety so strong, you know that’s the place you’re meant to be, your haven in the world. Whenever you were counseling me, or playing games with me, or carrying me piggyback to throw me in the pool in the backyard…I felt that. You didn’t realize how much I liked the way your shoulders felt under my hands, how you felt against my body. You know I dreamed about that, the way it felt to have my legs wrapped around you?”
“I’m not surprised.” He tried for a humorous note, but his voice was too thick. He had his fingers tangled in her hair, and he stroked his thumbs along her temples, holding her, just holding her and listening to her. Really listening, perhaps for the first time. Seeing the truth instead of pushing it away.
“I felt safe with you, but more than that, I felt I was where I needed to be. When we were together, everything was right and balanced. When things happened, and you wrote to help me, you were telling me about yourself at the same time. I wrote to you about losing my virginity and you told me how it was supposed to be. How, the first time you had sex that meant something, you’d wanted to hang onto that feeling of closeness, no matter how much of an illusion it was, because you’d sensed that was the important part, the seed of what it was really supposed to be like.
“You didn’t use those words, but the meaning was there, between the lines. I’ve become a master of reading between the lines. I know I became the confidante that you were to me, no matter how you want to deny it. Then there was the most important thing. The way you—”
She bit her lip, coming to a full stop, cheeks flushing. “I’m sorry. I went into pushy mode, and I wasn’t trying not to do that. I promised myself…after the other night, I was never going to do that again.”
“Hmm.” Cupping the side of her neck, he let his thumb play over her windpipe, watched her register the constriction, get short of breath not from the physical reaction but the psychological effect it had on her. “You know 1 Corinthians 13 also says ‘It does not insist on its own way…’”
Marcie gave him her shy smile, strained at the edges. “That part was put in by the patriarchal guys who wrote the Bible and didn’t want women telling them what was good for them.”
“No doubt. They were wise to fear a determined woman. What was the most important thing?”
Marcie knew it might sound childish, such a small thing, but it was like the day he’d forgotten to give her those shoes, turning her out barefoot. He didn’t miss details unless they were his blind spot. And Ben O’Callahan’s heart was his blind spot.
“Did you look at the back of the forget-me-not pendant you took from me?”
His brow creased. Then, as her heart caught in her throat, he shifted to reach into his slacks’ pocket. He was carrying it with him. Not the collar, just the small pendant, but he was carrying a part of her on his person.
He tilted his head, looking down at it, and she couldn’t resist. She stroked his hair away from his forehead, a gesture of tenderness, of love. He had to understand when he saw it.
His eyes darkened, his mouth tightened, and his fingers clenched over the disk. Nodding, she wrapped both her hands around his and lifted his knuckles to her lips, closing her eyes. “Will you say it out loud? Please?”
“Always yours.” His voice was husky.
“You started signing your letters that way on my twenty-first birthday, Ben. On the very day, in the card you sent me. Though we didn’t correspond much during those two years, whenever I got any kind of card, email, letter or gift from you, that’s how you signed it. Every time. Always yours. That kind of timing couldn’t have been coincidental.”
Ben stared down at their closed hands. She was right. It couldn’t. He’d missed it entirely, yet there it had been, all the time. The way her submission had been there. Lucas and all of them had noticed it early, but he, the man who didn’t miss details, had blocked it.
“Your card,” she spoke softly now. “You said you were sorry. Is that your way of saying goodbye?”
How could she even ask? But it made sense. She knew her side of things—she was still trying to figure out where he was on all of it. As he paused, she bit her lip, looked back out toward the marsh.
Touching her chin, he brought her gaze back to him. Passing his thumb over that luscious lower lip, he curved his hand on her nape. Her brown eyes widened, then fluttered closed as he brought her to his mouth and kissed her. Deep and long. It wasn’t an erotic, take-her-to-her-hands-and-knees-and-fuck-her kind of kiss. But in its own way, he thought it was the most all-absorbing, overwhelming kiss he’d ever experienced, because everything she’d just described happened in that kiss. He became everything and nothing at once.
Sliding his arm around her back, he turned her so she was cradled in his lap, her legs over the chair arm. Bracing his other hand on her hip and buttock, he took the kiss even deeper. She made a helpless little noise in her throat. Her hand slipped down, fingers tangling in his tie. His arms constricted around her, mashing her breasts pleasantly against his chest, and his grip on her hip shifted, so he was cupping her buttock to hold her even closer.
When at last
