Sex On The Seats (Love After Midnight Book 4) by Elise Faber (most inspirational books .txt) 📗

This time I was the one who’d made myself small.

I was so fucking stupid.

Chapter Fifteen

Archer

One second, she’d looked absolutely distraught, crouched on the floor, her hands in her hair.

I’d gotten up, crossed to her, concerned by the expression on her face.

And the next instant, she’d launched herself at me, knocking me back onto my ass, causing us both to sprawl across the floor.

“Oh, shit,” she said, patting at my chest. “I’m sorry. I just—”

“First, don’t apologize for climbing on top of me.” I waggled my brows then grinned when she rolled her eyes. “Second”—I cupped her cheek—“what was that about an existential crisis?”

Her face shadowed, anger flashing across her face.

Then she sighed, and it melted away. “I left home to live my own life, but I fucking brought that small, stifling existence with me. I made it impossible to ever consider that I wouldn’t disappoint friends or partners. I didn’t even give myself the chance to figure out what I wanted.” Tears in those brown eyes. “I gave up. I failed.”

“That’s bullshit,” I said. A trickle of hurt crept into the lines of her mouth, and I quickly added, “I didn’t mean it like that. I just . . . you figured out work. I only know whatever glossed-over version you can tell people about your job, but I know it’s big and important and that you’re really good at it.” I ran my finger over her bottom lip when she opened her mouth to protest. “I’m not saying you’re not right about the personal stuff, just that when you’re saying you failed, you didn’t.”

“I’ve run from any shred of intimacy since the moment I left home.”

I slid my hand from her cheek down to the side of her neck. “And I married someone I knew I shouldn’t have, just because my parents died.”

Her eyes flashed. “You had trauma.”

I lightly squeezed her neck. “So did you.”

Niki inhaled sharply.

“The past doesn’t define the path we choose now. You can be different. You don’t have to fit into the mold your parents created, or even the one you created.” I gently gripped her neck again. “Today, you can change. Today, you can take one step in the direction of the person you want to be.”

Her breath shuddered out. “How?”

“How what?” I asked. I’d thrown a lot at her in the last few statements.

Eyes sliding closed, her body shifting forward on mine, bending until she rested her forehead on my collarbone. “How can you be so smart and well-adjusted?”

I laughed. “Most of the time, I feel the opposite.” Threading my fingers into her hair, I lifted her head so I could meet her eyes. “But truthfully, I know I’m a work in progress, and after my parents died, I was really messed up. I pushed through to the wedding, I think half just on adrenaline and half because it was already planned. But a week after my honeymoon, I crashed. I couldn’t get out of bed, was depressed. For months, I just shrank into a shell of myself.” I shook my head. “Eventually, though, my baby brother hauled me to therapy, helped me get the medication I needed, and sat in the waiting room for me twice a week while I got my head straight. My baby brother looked after me.”

“He loves you.”

A nod. “The therapy helped. It took a long time to work through everything, to come to terms with the loss, with my failure to live on in some meaningful way when my parents had lost the chance to do the same, the added guilt that came from not being the strong one.” My heart throbbed at the memory, at the agony of my parents being gone, at the pain of realizing that everything in my life had changed in one moment. “Eventually, I was able to wean off the medication, to get back to my art, to start living again, and . . . to realize that my marriage wasn’t working.”

She inhaled. “So, you came up here?”

“Kace reached out, asked if I could do him a solid, and my divorce was just final. A move made sense. I needed a fresh start, and it wasn’t too far from my brother.” I ran my fingers through her hair. “Then some woman glared at me from across the bar a month ago, and it was like everything inside me had realigned, refocused, and I finally felt alive again.”

“Archer,” she murmured.

“Still hate my name?” I teased lightly.

A light swat, though her eyes danced. “It is a terrible name,” she said, “but since it’s the name of the man I’m dating, then I guess I just have to deal with it.”

“Dating?” I asked.

She nodded. “Dating.” A beat, a slender thread of insecurity weaving through her expression. “Unless—”

I pistoned up, slanting my mouth across hers, kissing her with every bit of emotion I felt—affection and warmth, fury that she’d been so hurt, understanding that the past had brought us both together, and desire . . . the raging need this woman stoked inside me.

“Eat,” I burst out, setting her away from me. “The food is getting cold.”

Niki froze, her brown eyes wild, her hair an absolute mess from my fingers, her lips swollen and tempting me to taste her again. Then she blinked and laughed, standing up and offering her hand. “Let’s eat.”

The click-clicking woke me up, and it took a minute for me to process the sound.

Then I peeled back my lids, saw the rectangle of faint blue light shining under the closed door to the right.

I’d slept in Niki’s bed.

After I’d eaten in Niki’s kitchen.

After she’d shared . . .

So much. After I’d shared. After she hadn’t kicked me out the front door, running from the moment of intimacy.

So yeah, that hope, the thin vine that had been growing over the last few days had been fertilized, for lack of a better term, and was now hearty, its roots gripping