The second was falling in love with her. He should have known he was in for it then. But he was suckered in like a pussy-whipped idiot.
Her long legs had been dangled across his lap on his couch while he rubbed deep circles into her thighs, calves, feet. She was drifting, her eyes fluttering closed. She’d never stayed over, never allowed him to hold her while she slept, and he was soaking up every damn minute of her relaxing beneath his touch.
Until her phone rang.
Goddamn. She’d jolted upright, dropping her legs off the couch, digging for her phone in her pocket. He remembered the way her long, slender finger quickly pressed to her lips, silencing him as she hurriedly sprang from the couch and darted into his bedroom.
He’d followed her and overheard the affectionate tone her voice carried and the profession of love she gave before hanging up the phone. It sliced him raw.
She was fucking married.
He had never felt like such a douche bag in his entire life. He’d foolishly ignored his intuition and allowed her to sneak that one past him. He’d fucked another man’s wife.
So he’d called it quits.
Told her to leave.
But then she stopped by his house a few nights later, and no matter what his conscience was screaming at him, he didn’t let her leave. Not until he had her in his bed again. Twice.
It became a thing. He learned the routine of when she was with her husband and when he was capable of seeing her. She would sneak over to his house during his lunch breaks, and make quick visits while her daughters were at softball practice or gymnastics. Yeah, she had kids too. Which only eroded away a completely new layer from the man he thought he was. He was invading a family, but it was like he was a fucking addict. Every time he stopped, he’d get a small sample of her—she’d call or stop by—and he could never tell her no. He was spiraling down an immoral tunnel and couldn’t crawl his way back out.
Then, before he knew it, he was counting down the minutes until he could see her again. Savoring every goddamn second he had her body against his. He was spending his moments without her thinking of her, and his moments with her thinking about how much he dreaded the moments she was gone.
He loved her.
Why? That was a question he asked himself every day. She was charismatic, gentle, and most of the time shy. She had an unusual sense of humor that was contagious, and he would find himself laughing at the most ridiculous things because she found it hysterical. He loved how she was laid-back and unworried with him. And when he got her naked, she challenged him.
He’d liked to see her blush. He’d liked to see her nervous. And he’d loved to see her need him.
But then she left. After their affair consumed him for nearly a year, she left him high and dry without so much as a warning. Just a phone call late one night, telling him that she and her family were leaving Fort Benning and relocating to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The army had already packed and loaded up their shit, and they were leaving Georgia the next morning. That was her good-bye. She wasn’t his. She’d never been his.
And he never expected her to come back to him. But she did.
She’d visited him when she was able to get away and sometimes they would meet for a long weekend somewhere. And that was almost torture. He’d grown accustomed to seeing her damn near every day. Touching her, tasting her, feeling her. Then, in the span of a heartbeat, daily turned to every other month, then every few months—then it was over.
She ended it.
And it broke his fucking heart.
Rafe scrubbed his hands down his face. Just the sound of her voice filled him with a yearning he had hoped he would never feel again. But along with that aching desire to see the face that had haunted him for the last three years was an anger and resentment that now inhabited every nerve in his body.
She had stolen a piece of him—took the piece of his heart that she never gave in return. He knew she’d never intended to leave her husband to be with him. She’d never planned on being his.
And what pissed him off was that she turned him into someone he hated.
Being with her had made him fight every natural attribute he possessed. Rafe didn’t share his woman. He made her his and only his. He took care of her, loved her, cherished her, protected her. It was branded in his bones. It’s what his father’s blood had encrypted in his soul. What he and his brothers held in their hearts. They loved their women hard. Fiercely. Passionately. Profoundly.
But Bridgette was never his to love in the first place.
The handle of the door recoiled into the wall as Rafe shoved through his bedroom doorway. The room he’d shared with Luca growing up looked the same as it always had and the small familiarity of his childhood, of growing up in that house with his mom and his dad—with his family—boiled a guilt inside him. His fist collided into his closet door. Fuck.