Down to My Soul (Soul Series Book 2)(103)
“What was that second category?” he asks.
My mind reaches for the conversation he and I had a few weeks ago. Reaches further back to the day I sat by Mama on a wooden pew, wearing my pink and white dress with roses she sewed on at the waist. I’d absorbed every word Daddy said like water, as truth. And as flawed as he was, as wrong and broken as he was, and despite his lies and his secrets, maybe there was some truth to what he said because I’ve never forgotten.
“It’s that kind of forgiveness where you just love the person so much, you can’t stand being apart from them. You have to forgive them because you’d do whatever it takes to restore the relationship.”
I finally look up from under my mound of covers to find his eyes waiting for me.
He smiles just enough at me to let me know we’ll be okay.
“That’s the one.”
I drag myself out of the covers and onto his lap to reacquaint myself with his lips, but stop when I notice his right hand beside him on the bed, wrapped and splinted.
“Rhys, what happened to your hand?” I’m horrified. I’m afraid to touch it in case I hurt him. I go to pull back, but his left hand pulls me closer so that I’m straddling him, knees folded under, pressed into his chest.
“Don’t move.” He leans into my neck, inhaling whatever scent I have left at this late hour. “Stay.”
Tears blur my vision for a few seconds, but I blink at them so I can see him clearly. I force myself to speak past the sorrow and guilt searing my throat.
“Baby, oh God. What happened?” I palm his face, catching and holding his eyes with mine. “This is my fault.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I lost my temper, missed Drex’s face and hit a stone patio. My bad, not yours.”
“Oh God.” I cover my mouth, closing my eyes with tears trickling down my cheeks and over my fingers. “But you wouldn’t have been in that situation if it hadn’t been for me.”
“Stop.” He buries his face in my hair, his hand splaying over my back and soothing me when he’s the one hurting. “He put me in that situation when he threatened the most important thing in my life, and I’d do it again.”
I pull back as much as he’ll let me, enough to peer into his face with the beautiful tired eyes.
“Your music, Rhyson.” I shake my head helplessly, a sinkhole opening up in my belly as I consider the implications of this injury. “What did the doctor say? Will you need surgery? What’s the prognosis? Should we—”
“Stop.” He presses a finger to my lips. “All great questions that I’ll answer tomorrow. Right now, I’m exhausted. I just want to go to sleep. We can talk details tomorrow, but that tape is dead and so is your contract with Malcolm. I promise I’ll tell you everything in the morning. Right now I just want to hold you.”
I nod, sitting back on his legs a little to look at him. My fingers shake, but I reach for the hem of his t-shirt and pull it over his head, being mindful of his hand. I had fallen asleep again in my clothes, so I peel my t-shirt off next, my skin heating under his watchful stare. I scoot back until I can reach the buckle of his belt, undoing it, unsnapping his jeans and carefully tugging them and his briefs over his legs and feet until his long, lean body is completely naked. Standing, I strip off my jeans, my panties, my bra. I’m as naked as the day I was born when I lie back down on our bed. His eyes rove over me as hungrily as they always do, but oddly, as much as I know we want each other, this isn’t about sex. I was doing more than stripping away our clothes. I was stripping away the last of my secrets, baring my soul to him. Baring his to me.
I press our foreheads together until I can whisper over his lips.
“I live you, Rhyson.” My voice shakes with emotion. With acceptance. With gratitude that he’s forgiven me. Assuring him that I’ve forgiven him. The words land on a slate that is finally completely clean.
He nods, eyes pressed shut and lips open over mine to make his words simultaneously a kiss, a confession, and a promise.
“I live you, too, Pep.”
I explore the sharp, strong angles of his face and roam into the gorgeous mop of messy, burnished hair. I claim him with the pads of my fingers, with the palms of my hands. He is mine and I am his. Our darkest secrets, shared. Our deepest places, reached. We are completely known. Completely loved down to our very souls.
EVERY MORNING I’M AWAKENED BY AN ocean breeze. The wind whispers through the sheer netting encamping our bed, skipping across my naked shoulders and lifting the hair from my neck. Here in Bora Bora, we haven’t glanced at our phones for the time, text messages—nothing. The ocean is my alarm, but this morning, something else lures me from sleep. It’s music wafting from the deck into our bedroom.
I wrap the soft sheet around my breasts toga style, and notice the nameplate “Pepper” necklace hanging at my neck above Gram’s for the first time. I touch it with a smile. I thought I’d lost it the night we fought and I ripped it away. Yet another thing of mine he held on to. Having it again makes my day before it even starts.
I shuffle across the bamboo floors that give glimpses of aquamarine beneath our overwater bungalow. Rhyson stretches out on a lounger, a pad on the deck beside him and harmonica in hand. He bends to jot down a few notes, sun-darkened and beautiful in just his board shorts, the coppery streaks in his hair deepened by our two weeks here.