One Night to Risk It All(97)

                She was sure that the room was spinning.

                “Alex,” she said, her voice trembling. “Are you telling me that you were acting the whole time we were on your island?”

                “No,” he said, “but it was so engineered, all of it. You felt trapped. I made you decide to come with me so quickly I...”

                “Do you trust that I’m a smart woman, Alex?”

                “Yes.”

                “Great. No hesitation even. So do you trust me to know my own heart?”

                “Why? I sure as hell didn’t know mine.”

                She frowned. “Poor man. Well, I know mine. I loved you. So much. And when you pushed me away...when you told me you never even wanted to see our child? I wanted to hit you with something heavy and blunt.”

                “That seems fair.”

                “I gave you my love, you...you jerk. I gave you everything. I would have—”

                He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, deep, desperate. And she didn’t push him away. Didn’t fight him. Because she was too hungry for him. Angry, yes, she was angry. But she’d never stopped wanting him. She’d never stopped loving him.

                He pushed her back up against the fridge, his hands on her waist as he kissed her. She wrapped her arms around his neck, tears streaming down her cheeks as she poured all of her hurt, all of her weeks of anguish into the kiss.

                “Okay,” she said, gasping for air, “we have to talk and not just have sex. The sex is fine between us. We, on the other hand, have problems.”

                “True,” he said, breathing heavy.

                “So why are you here?”

                “Because I have spent the past month drunk and miserable. Because every time I think about never seeing our baby I want to die. And every time I think about never seeing you again...Rachel, I start praying for death to come quickly.”

                “Why?” she asked, her throat tight.

                “Because I love you. With every broken, miserable piece of myself. And I realized this weeks ago but I kept thinking it wasn’t fair to ask you to spend the rest of your life with a man like me. But...but I have to be selfish now and ask that you do. That you spend your life with me because if you don’t then I’m not sure what my life means at all.”

                “Alex, why do you think you aren’t worthy of me?” she asked. “I am... I’m not perfect. And I’ve fought to get to the place where I could say that and just be okay with it. I’m not perfect. I’ve made mistakes. And I’ll make more mistakes. I don’t want a perfect man because I could never live up to those standards.”

                “I would give you a better man,” he said.

                “With all due respect,” she said, “you’re a jackass.”

                “Why?”

                “Because I know what I need. I know who I am. I don’t need better. There isn’t better for me. For me, there’s you. That’s it. Alex, the moment I saw you I fell in love with you. Is that crazy? I would have thought it was crazy until five months ago when I saw you standing there, on a yacht. And you made me want things I never knew I needed.”