“I think I know now,” I whisper, turning a few pages until I come to the scene.
“Worse is loving someone who disappears and never knowing if they’ll come back. Because how do you move on if you’re not even sure they’re gone? The answer is—you don’t. When you spend most of your life chasing ghosts, eventually, you become one.”
I smile. “I always liked that part.”
“I know,” he says as he moves closer, grabbing my legs. I yelp as he tugs me down the bed, climbing on top of me once I’m lying flat on my back. “That’s the part we’re filming Monday.”
I want to ask him questions about that, but then he starts taking off my pants and I can’t think of much other than his hands. They’re all over me, followed by his lips as he kisses and touches and loves, going lower and lower and—
“Oh god,” I gasp, tossing everything aside to fist handfuls of his hair when his mouth finds its way between my thighs. He doesn’t tease. He’s not playing around. He gets right down to the nitty-gritty, almost aggressive about it.
I’m writhing, gasping, moaning his name, feeling the tension building, gripping hard as I try to pull him closer. He hits that spot, the one I desperately need, and I feel the sudden rush of pleasure.
Back arching, my breath catches as orgasm tears through me. He doesn’t stop until I relax against the bed, the sensation fading.
Sitting back, he pulls off his shirt, stripping. In a blink, he crawls between my legs, hiking my knees up, his lips crashing into mine as he pushes inside. I cry out into his mouth, his kisses swallowing the noise as he thrusts deep, hitting hard, over and over.
My hands are shaking, the earth around us quaking, as every inch of me is consumed by him. Our bodies are tangled and my heart is so mangled that it doesn’t know how to beat the right way anymore, but some part of me must know something, because everything about this feels so perfect. Me and him, here, like this, and I don’t want to admit it, but ugh…
Ugh…
Ugh…
I love him.
He moves, pulling back a bit to gaze down at me, as if the man is psychic and knows I just thought the words he’s been trying to hear, but I can’t say them, not yet, not until I know this isn’t a fluke.
I’m in love with this reckless, starry-eyed fool who, in two days time, is going to walk out my front door, and all I can do is trust he’ll come back with that same look of love in his eyes, because if he doesn’t, it’s going to break more hearts than just my own.
And if he breaks hers, I’ll never forgive him.
Sunday night.
The sun is going down outside.
Every second that ticks by makes my chest feel tighter, my shoulders heavier as the weight of the outside world comes down on me. Jonathan has to go soon.
He hasn’t told her.
Maddie has no idea.
She sits at the kitchen table, surrounded by crayons, making a card for her Aunt Meghan—it’s her birthday tomorrow. Swinging her legs, she hums to herself, oblivious at the moment.
“Mommy, how old is Aunt Meghan gonna be now?” she asks, as I stand at the sink washing dishes... scrubbing the same glass for the past ten minutes.
“Thirty,” I say.
“Whoa,” Maddie says before mumbling, “That’s a lot.”
I turn, glaring at her for that. I’m not far off from thirty. I don’t say anything, though, because my eyes catch sight of Jonathan as he steps into the kitchen, carrying his bag.
Maddie looks up, hearing his footsteps. Her legs stop swinging. She blinks at him with confusion before asking, “Are we going away?”
He doesn’t answer right away. He freezes, so she looks at me, like she trusts that I’ll tell her since he isn’t.
“No, sweetheart, we’re not going away,” I say, wanting to shake some sense into him, because silence isn’t going to help. “But your daddy is.”
“Daddy is what?” she asks, and I know she already knows the answer, because she clutches her crayon so hard it snaps.
“Going to work,” he says, finally chiming in. “I have to finish making the movie, so I have to go away for a little while.”
“How much is a little while?” she asks. “'Till tomorrow?”
“Longer than that,” he says.
“The one that’s after that?” she asked. “Will you be back on that day?”
“Uh, no,” he says. “It’ll take about a month.”
“A month?” She gasps, looking at me again when she asks, “How many days is that?”
“About thirty,” I tell her.
I see it, the panic that flows through her. That’s a lot of days for such a little girl. She frantically shakes her head, throwing her crayon down. “No, that’s too many! I don’t want you to do that!”
“I’m sorry,” Jonathan says, but ‘sorry’ isn’t what she wants to hear, so it does nothing but upset her more.
Shoving out of her chair, getting to her feet, she shakes her head again as she rushes toward him, grabbing his bag. She yanks on it hard, trying to rip it out of his hand. “No, don’t go! I want you to stay!”
“I know you do,” he says, “I want to stay, too, but I have to be Breezeo, remember?”
“I don’t care!” she says, digging in her heels, pulling the bag so hard that he loosens his hold, surrendering it. She almost falls, but he catches her. The bag drops to the floor, and she tries to kick it away. It doesn’t move, so she shoves him, wanting to put distance between him and that bag. “You don’t gotta be Breezeo! You can just be Daddy, and it’ll be okay! It’s gonna be Aunt Meghan’s birthday, and you can walk me to school, and we have to do the lines together so I can practice, ‘cuz I’m gonna be a snowflake! And how can I be a snowflake if you don’t stay?”
Her voice cracks as tears fill her eyes. She’s still shoving against him, trying to get him to move, but he’s not budging.
She’s getting furious.
Sighing, he bends down to her level, gently grasping her arms when she angrily tries to shove his face away from hers.
I want so much to intervene. I want to grab her, and hold her, and make it all go away, but I can’t. So I just stand against the counter, trying to keep myself together, because me falling apart isn’t going to help anyone right now.
“You can still be a snowflake,” he says. “You’re going to be the best snowflake ever.”
“But how will you know?” she asks, the first tears starting to fall. “Will you still come see?”
“Of course,” he says. “Wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
“You promise?”
I inhale sharply, but he doesn’t miss a beat.
“I promise,” he whispers, wiping her cheeks. “I’ll be back for it. It’s just that, right now, the movie needs me to be Breezeo.”
“But I need you to be my daddy,” she says.
“I’ll still be your daddy, even when I’m Breezeo.”
“No, you won’t!” she yells. “You’re gonna go away, and then you won’t be here no more, and it’ll be just like before!”
“It won’t be like before,” he tells her.
“It will! You didn’t wanna be my daddy then, and now you don’t wanna again! You wanna go away and you’re not gonna live here no more, ‘cuz you have all your stuff and it’s gonna be gone and you won’t be here to tell Mommy she’s pretty so now she can’t never love you!”
Whoa. She blurts all that out in one frantic breath before shoving past him and running off, her bedroom door slamming.
A strangled silence sweeps through the room in her absence before Jonathan slowly stands and says, “I probably deserve that.”
Frowning, I shove away from the counter, stopping him before he can go after her. “Let me talk to her.”
I head to her bedroom, pausing outside to tap on the door.
“Who is it?” she yells.
Now she wants to know who’s knocking before she answers. “It’s Mommy.”