Thick Love (Thin Love, #2)(92)
“Good, sweetie. You lock your doors, now.” She sounded tired, and the night, maybe, the worry over Ransom, had her voice cracking when she spoke. “I wish you would have come home with us.”
“Don’t worry, Mama,” I teased, hoping the affection in my voice wasn’t obvious. “I can take care of myself.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“Maybe,” I said, laughing. Keira never minced words. Then she yawned, and I laughed despite myself. “Go get some sleep.”
“You don’t wanna know what happened with Ransom?”
Keira was fierce, she didn’t sugarcoat a damn thing, and she could be a little pushy. But I knew it was because she cared and that she thought I was what Ransom needed. Still, I didn’t want Keira or Kona in my business. “Keira, if he wants me to know, he’ll tell me.”
“Don’t give up on him, Aly.” She took a breath as though it was more than the day or her pregnancy making her exhausted. “Ransom was born old. And he kept getting older. I guess I depended on him more than I should have and with everything he’s been through, all that damn struggle, he sees the world a lot differently than most kids his age.” Another breath and Keira’s voice went soft. “You can relate, I know. Please just remember that you matter a lot to him.” She paused. “You matter a lot to all of us. We love you.”
When I’d come back to the lake house after Ransom and I got all the fighting out of our systems, I’d seen the quick relief on Keira’s face. Her world had changed so quickly in three short years. She’d gone from being a single parent for sixteen years, to marrying her college sweetheart, to having another baby and she’d admitted to me that it had taken her way out of her comfort zone. “Sometimes I can’t keep up. You help with that.”
In her voice just then, I heard the worry that that Ransom’s dismissal would have me running out on them again. But I wouldn’t do that to her. Not just because he was retreating to the past again—I couldn’t abandon them again.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good,” she said through an exhale
“But your son pisses me off.”
That laugh was relieved and totally unsurprised. “Oh, honey, he pisses off the world. You’re in it.”
“Not tonight, I’m not. Tonight I’m on planet sleep.” I was already making sweet eyes at my bed. The day had taken its toll.
“Come early tomorrow, okay sweetie?”
“I can’t,” I reminded Keira. December loomed and with it came the recital. Leann was gearing up for some military-level rehearsals. “We’ve got to rehearse, remember? Kona’s doing remote office hours tomorrow.”
“Damn, that’s right. Okay. Well, I’ll see you on Wednesday.”
I hung up with an offer to bring her beignets on Wednesday morning and was just crawling into my bed when I heard the soft tap on the door outside.
That man was stupidly stubborn.
I didn’t run to that door, wasn’t willing to fling it open and let Ransom make his apologies. Some other day, maybe, but I was just too damn tired for that.
“Aly?” he asked, voice low and a louder knock sounded against the door.
For a moment, I listened, waiting to see if his voice would get louder, if he would put up some sort of fight, demand I let him in. Ransom had a temper, but he wasn’t the pounding-on-the-door, aggressive * type. Not that I had seen.
He knocked again and I swore I heard his sigh from across the room. “I know you’re in there.”
One tiny thump, as though he rested his head against the door and then he went quiet. Locking up the access panel had been pointless. He wouldn’t try to get in. Not tonight, not when he was the one who had pushed me away. Not when it was me that got the brunt of his endless punishment.
He knew better than to insist and so Ransom just stayed on the other side of my door. His shadow moved on the stairway, standing like some sort of vapor against the street light.
When I came closer, that shadow had lowered as though Ransom leaned against the door and because I couldn’t stop myself, because having only a thin, wood door separating us was as close as I would get to him, I leaned against it too.
“I don’t want to be this way,” he said through the door, as though I hadn’t heard it from him before. “This weight, Aly, it chains me to the past and I know what you think about me, but it’s not true…I don’t want to be there. I just can’t seem to break away from it. I’ve…I haven’t ever had the nerve to tell that man I’m sorry for killing her. Sometimes I…well. I guess it doesn’t matter, does it? I’m a coward.”
My eyes squeezed tight, I fought with that voice in my head, the one that sounded like the Logical side of my brain. Love wanted me to open the door, but Logic stood blocking it. Instead, I moved my palm to the door imagining the feel of his shoulders, that warm strength he poured into my skin anytime I touched him.
“I’m a selfish bastard. Especially when it comes to you. I don’t want to push you away but I’m petrified I’m gonna hurt you and the last damn thing I want is to hurt you, sweetheart.”
On the other side of the door the wood planks on the steps shifted and when Ransom spoke again, he sounded closer, his voice deeper. “You make everything quiet, give me such peace. You make me want to protect you because you fill my heart up, even though I know you can cover your own ass. You’re stronger than me, braver and I envy you. I wish to God I could be like that.” He got quiet again, voice coming out a little gruffer. “You’re my Fred, baby. Even though I know you can do better. Even though I know you should. But…I want to kiss you.” His fingers slid down the wood, that’s what I guessed that noise was, like he needed to touch something. “I want to sink inside you, get lost, let you get lost in me. Over and over again, until we’re both numb. Until that ache stays in our bones. I want you to feel me so bad that when you walk away from the bed, when you wake up the next day, you still feel me in your hips, in that sweet, sweet *.”