Now or Never(68)

“Hmm?” His fingers gently traced the puffy red mark along her forearm.

“I want it to be over.”

“It is—”

“I want to move past it. Past everything. I want . . . I want to live my life like a normal person. I don’t want to let my past control me anymore.”

“Baby . . .” Jay shifted onto his elbow to look down at her. “What are you saying?”

“I want . . .” Em swallowed hard and forced herself to continue. If she couldn’t even say the words there was no way she’d be able to go through with the act. “Make love to me, Jay.”

“Em.” Jay leaned over her to gently stroke her face and Em’s eyes fell shut. “Look at me.” They snapped open again and she looked deep into his, swimming with uncertainty. “There’s nothing I want more, but . . . you don’t have to do this. Not for me. Em, you make me the luckiest man on the planet. All I want out of this life is just to spend it with you. To hear you laugh, see you smile, hold you when you cry, and kiss away your tears. I don’t need anything more than that. Just having you here . . . I can’t believe you came back.” His voice cracked, taking Em’s heart along with it. “After everything I did, everything I put you through, you still came back to me.”

“Of course I came back to you. I love you, Jay. I never really left.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What?”

“How I deserve someone like you.”

“Jay . . .”

She must have cried in front of Jay a million times, but she could count the number of times she’d seen tears in his eyes on one hand. She saw them now. “He said I hurt you.”

“Who?”

“Mason.”

Em sighed. “Mason doesn’t—”

“He said you were a wreck. Broken. And I did that to you. All I wanted was—”

“To do the right thing. What you thought was best for me. I know that. But can you see now that you’re what’s best for me?”

Jay nodded, solemnly.

“When Mason told me that, I realized what I’d done to you. To us. I was so angry with myself. I thought I’d blown it. The one and only light in my life and I thought I’d destroyed it.” Jay swallowed hard as his gaze drifted inward, and Em knew how difficult this was for him. He was finally opening up to her and it was the most beautiful and terrifying thing she’d ever experienced. “Then my father showed up and . . . and I just didn’t care. I think I might have let him finally do it. Let him kill me.”

“Jay!”

“But then you came back.” Hope shined in his eyes, mending the many pieces of her heart he’d just shattered it into. “You brought back my reason to live. You are my reason, Em. You’re the reason for every breath I breathe. Every beat of my heart belongs to you.”

Em had to swallow back her tears before she could find her ability to speak.

“We’ve both been trying so hard to prove to ourselves that we’re strong enough to do things on our own, but I think we were wrong. We’re not strong enough alone. And that’s okay, because we’re not alone. I have you, and you have me, and nothing is going to change that. Apart, were like broken mirrors, reflecting back these warped and skewed images of ourselves. Allowing the scars to blot out everything else. But, when we’re together, we can glue those pieces back together. We see each other as whole, and remind each other that those good things are there—inside us—even if we can’t see them ourselves.”

“Christ, Em.”

Her overtired mouth had run away with her, revealing more than she meant to, but it had all been the truth, and she was sick of secrets and hiding. Laying herself bare emotionally was as terrifying as the thought of doing it physically, but she was done letting fear rule her. With Jay beside her, she didn’t need to be afraid anymore.

“What?”

Staring down at her, hair slipped into his face as his shook his head softly. Em fought the urge to brush it back before realizing she didn’t have to. “You’re something sort of amazing, you know that?”

The joy of feeling his soft hair between her fingers again brought a smile to her face. “Only when you tell me.”

“Then I’ll keep telling you. For the rest of our lives.”

“And I’ll keep telling you, because you’re pretty amazing yourself.” Jay’s eyes warmed and her body heated as he trailed his finger over her cheek and down her neckline. “I love you so much. I know I don’t have to do this, Jay. I want to. For me.”

She eased his fears as he slowly eased his body over hers, balancing most of his weight on his forearms.