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  ‘Lucas, I’m so, so sorry.’

  He didn’t take any pleasure in her gasp of horror or any relief in finally sharing the agony of his childhood. It simply brought back that horrible roller-coaster rise and fall of nausea at recalling it, even if he was at least able to discuss it now without breaking down.

  He coughed away the ragged ball of emotion threatening to block his airways. ‘I left home when I could, moved into a hostel and held down two jobs to put myself through medical school. I mistakenly thought I could escape my father with hard work and determination to make a success of my life, but news of his death brought back a lot of those painful memories and kind of hit me for six.’

  ‘You should have told me. Maybe we could’ve got through it together.’

  ‘I think I had some sort of breakdown... I couldn’t think, or sleep, without images of him rearing in my head. The sound of his drunken ramblings, blaming me for my mum leaving; the smell of his foul breath as he loomed over me and even the shame I felt going to school in dirty, hand-me-down clothes—it all came rushing back at once and refused to leave my thoughts. I was just so full of rage and shame...and wanting to be free of it all.’ He let that sink in so he didn’t have to spell out that for a moment he’d believed there was only one way of escaping the pain.

  ‘Even me?’

  There was a creak as she shifted in her bed. To look at him? To get up and lock herself in the bathroom away from his self-pity? It didn’t matter. Now he’d opened the box, there was no way of stuffing all the secrets back inside.

  He let out a long sigh. ‘I never wanted to be without you but I didn’t want to drag you into that darkness. I took it with me. In my head, at least. I know my actions seem selfish but I couldn’t see any other way out. His death triggered flashbacks, turned me back into that frightened little boy, afraid of his own shadow. What kind of husband would that have made me?’

  ‘Mine.’

  He hadn’t heard her cross the room, didn’t know she was there until the mattress dipped beside him. He didn’t know he’d been crying until she wiped the tears away for him.

  That small act of compassion, that comforting physical contact he’d been missing for so long, finally burst the dam, and the emotions he’d thought he’d dealt with came tumbling out once more. This time it wasn’t the liquid pain of his childhood pouring down his face; it was grief for his marriage and losing the woman he’d loved.

  She slid her arms around him, lifting his torso off the bed and forcing him into a hug. He wanted to resist, to keep hold of what little there was left of his dignity, but he’d forgotten how it felt to be loved. If he’d ever really known it at all until now.

  She pressed her warm cheek tightly against his as though she was physically trying to transfer some of his pain to herself. Of course she understood, she was a nurse, but he’d never wanted to be treated as her patient.

  ‘You got the help...the treatment you needed?’ Freya swallowed several times before she got the words out, and Lucas could sense her already attempting to find that professional distance again.

  He buried his nose in her hair and took a deep breath, wanting to savour her sweet scent before he let go of her in case he never had this chance to be this close to her ever again.

  ‘The strong medication wiped me out for the first while. They dulled the pain, quietened the memories but they also numbed the world around me, left me unable to function in any emotional capacity. It was the counselling, talking it all out, learning to process what had happened, that finally brought me back to the man I used to be. I’m just sorry it took so long.’ Perhaps if he’d fought harder to get back towards the light neither of them would’ve suffered so much for so long. They might’ve even saved their marriage or at least found a better way to end it.

  ‘You’re here now,’ she said, her smile shaky in the moonlight, unable to settle fully on her lips. He could see the steady river of sorrow for him glinting on her face, though she tried to hide it.

  ‘And this was exactly what I’d been trying to avoid.’ He brushed away her tears the way she had for him. The weight of his secrets might have finally been lifted from his shoulders but he’d never wanted to dump it on hers. He leaned his forehead against hers, wishing they’d stood a chance from the outset.

  If he closed his eyes he could still imagine it.

  When his lips found hers he wanted to believe he’d really come home again.

  * * *

  Freya had thought her heart would never ache as much as it had the day he’d left her but knowing now what he’d gone through she was worried it might just break for him. For the little boy, so alone and scared, and for her husband, in so much pain she wanted to take it all away. His hand, still cupping her face, tilted her mouth towards him and kissing him seemed the most natural thing in the world, both giving and taking comfort in the soft exchange.

  She rested her palms on his chest, not realising he’d stripped off his top half in the dark. That first touch of his naked skin under her fingertips was electric and her erogenous zones immediately lit up as she reacquainted herself with the smooth undulations of her husband’s muscular torso.

  She’d intended to offer him support, remind him he didn’t have to be alone, yet now all she wanted to do was give in to desire and block out everything except their need for each other.

  He teased her lips apart with the tip of his tongue, gently exploring the boundaries. Freya’s stronger, more cynical subconscious, which had kept her standing this past year, popped into her mind’s eye, wagged a finger and shook its head. Everything in her body language was screaming for her to back away. It was no competition for her soft-hearted inner romantic, who just wanted to love her husband and have him love her in return.

  They’d both been through hell and they deserved to take some solace where they could find it. In each other.

  She ignored her arm-folding, tutting common sense to get to know her husband intimately again. The tentative kiss grew more confident, more insistent as she met his tongue instead of shying away from his advance. She didn’t want to think about the past, not even what the future might hold past this night together. Her thoughts, her body were consumed with the need for this, for him, and the knowledge this chemistry hadn’t fizzled out.

  His lips were everywhere, setting the skin at her cheeks, her throat, her neck on fire. His breathing was as heavy as hers, full of want and need, and hot enough to melt the glass walls around them.

  Committed to the moment, she let her hands travel down his lean torso, every inch of skin as tight as a drum. He’d always been trim but there was more definition, an edge to him she’d never encountered before. It told of hard work and dedication during his struggle to survive.

  Lucas sucked in a breath and stilled against her as she reached the waistband of his trousers, casting a shadow of panic over her desire that she’d done the wrong thing by trying to rush this. Her sudden haste had been a combination of pent-up lust, which had been steadily rising since he’d stepped on board the plane, and a need to avoid overthinking this.

  She froze, her fingers tangled in his waistband, her pulse racing, as though she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

  ‘It’s, uh, been a while,’ he admitted, and she could almost feel him cringing with the confession there was no reason why it should embarrass him.

  The thought of him with another woman had been the cause of many sleepless nights and to hear the truth eased part of that associated pain. The separation and subsequent months of abstinence would’ve made anyone a little nervous, including her, but passion had never been a problem for them.

  ‘Good.’ She smoothed her palm over the crotch of his trousers and gave his burgeoning erection a playful squeeze.

  His sexy groan made it all the way down to her belly along with her zipper as he peeled her nightwe
ar away as sexily as though she was wearing nothing but the finest silk. He kissed his way confidently across her exposed skin, and her temperature spiked, any theory that their chemistry could be anything other than explosive proving completely unfounded.

  With Lucas’s assistance her clothes fell to the floor, leaving her naked and exposed to his hungry mouth licking and sucking and leaving her gasping for more. She lay back on the bed, shaking with need and wondering how this had ended up about her, but distraction had always been one of his special skills. Among others.

  He moulded her breast easily into the palm of his hand and she fitted there just as perfectly as she always had. Arousal coursed through her body as he plucked one tight bud between his finger and thumb, leaving her content to change the subject on this occasion.

  For a short time. There was only so much a girl could take before she was practically pleading for more.

  ‘Lucas...’ Okay, a year without him meant she wasn’t averse to asking for more.

  She’d missed this intimacy, not only since he’d left but also in those last weeks of their marriage when he’d been so emotionally distant. Now that he’d given her some understanding of where his head had been back then, and they’d made that reconnection, she felt as though she’d got back the man she loved. Even if only for tonight.

  At one time she’d wanted him to suffer but that had been before she’d discovered the full facts behind his departure and the extent of his true anguish. No one should’ve had to endure what he’d gone through either as a child or an adult. He deserved peace and a little fun. They both did.

  ‘There isn’t much room here,’ Lucas said as he manoeuvred his body on top of hers in the tiny single bed built for stargazing, not reuniting past lovers.

  The rough, stretched fabric of his crotch rubbed against her sensitive mound, teasing her folds until she was sure she’d climax purely with the memory of what he could do to her.

  ‘Yeah, we need to get rid of these.’ Her increased libido was making her brave but also impatient to make the most of what little time they might have together.

  He levered himself up off the bed slightly, granting her access to his fly, which she negotiated in record time to liberate him. That perfect, familiar epicentre of his manhood sprang free as she nudged the remainder of his clothes over his backside and down his legs.

  She giggled as he wriggled on top, trying to kick his clothes off, their naked bodies accidentally thrusting together at the most intimate of places before they rolled completely off the bed. If anything, this proved neither of them had been perfecting their seduction techniques in their interim. It was a tad more uncoordinated and ungainly now than they’d been that first time when he’d practically swept her off her feet and into his bed but she found it heartening. They were learning together like two inexperienced teens, anxious but eager to reach that first sacred destination together.

  Everything about this moment—the fun and the passion—reminded her of that life they’d once had together and everything they’d lost. The tears pricking her eyes told her how much more she was missing Lucas from her life than the family they’d never had together.

  CHAPTER SIX

  LUCAS HAD NEVER thought he would feel as vulnerable as he had sitting in his counsellor’s office, crying and spilling his guts about the punishments his alcoholic father had dished out to him for the purported crime of being born. Acknowledging to Freya it had been a while since he’d performed ran a close second.

  Thankfully his body’s primitive response at the sight of his naked wife had quickly allayed any worries that his masculinity might have somehow been compromised during the course of his recovery.

  This night together wasn’t something he had planned beyond the logistics of their accommodation but he’d never expected her to give him another chance any more than he’d intended to tell her about the demons that had driven him away. Despite the damage they’d suffered, there was obviously still a special connection between them that refused to be broken.

  He mightn’t be the smooth operator he’d once been, but being with Freya felt so right nothing else mattered but lying here with her. Those secrets he’d kept had meant holding back a part of himself in the course of their relationship but after baring his soul he now had the freedom to love her the way she’d deserved all along.

  As Freya let her hands drift over the trunk of his body, and bit her lip as she dared ever lower, there was no questioning her desire for him either. This wasn’t pity over the hard times he’d shared with her, or sleeping with him for old times’ sake. She was seeing him as the man he’d never thought he would be again—her husband.

  Lucas tangled her hair in his hands and kissed her as though they were the last two people on earth. Tonight, in this glass bubble, they were. Their mouths crashed together and the shadowy recesses of the past faded into insignificance against that need to make love to his wife.

  He’d missed her, he loved her, and as their bodies joined together, he knew there would never be anyone else for him.

  Those nights he’d spent without her, those vivid dreams when he’d imagined her lying next to him, only to find his bed achingly empty—he channelled it all through his body into hers. He withdrew and plunged back inside her again and again, each time feeling like the first.

  The quickening clench and release of her inner muscles around him and the tilt of her hips meeting his started the pressure building inside him too. She was clutching at his back, her head thrown back in ecstasy whilst his every muscle quivered in anticipation of her climax.

  Freya’s visceral cry of release took him by surprise. Although they’d always been passionate together, he’d never heard her so vocal. It was a primal scream of unleashed pain and passion from a very different woman than the one he’d left behind, and it shook him to his very core. She was stronger, more self-assured than he remembered, which made her sexier than ever and brought his orgasm swiftly. That gunshot intensity reverberated through his body with such force he thought he’d never recover.

  Relief and a sense of peace claimed him, body and soul, as he let go. As if the year of emotional turmoil had physically left him, and he’d finally been liberated from the past. He didn’t have the energy for anything more than to lie here on the floor, holding Freya close and wishing this could last for ever.

  ‘I’ve missed this,’ she whispered into his chest.

  ‘Me too.’ Lucas eventually summoned up enough strength to snag the duvet off the bed and pull it over them for the night. He knew he’d sleep well tonight with her wrapped around him like ivy around a tree trunk. There would be no nightmares or waking up in a cold sweat in a too-empty bed. Tonight he had everything he wanted. For now he was content to believe it could last.

  * * *

  Freya wanted to stretch out every muscle and revel in that glorious post-sex ache winding through her limbs, but that would entail breaking contact with Lucas’s warm, familiar body and she wasn’t ready to do that yet.

  Right now she should be lying like a starfish in her double bed alone, in the home where she’d always imagined their family. This seemed a much nicer place to curl up for the night. Sleeping with her ex hadn’t been part of her plan but neither had this whole extended stay.

  Would it have happened if he hadn’t been honest with her? She couldn’t say, but finally opening up to her, exposing that vulnerable side he’d tried to hide throughout their short-lived marriage, had given her the excuse to act on those feelings for him that had never gone away. The husband who’d walked out on her was also a man who’d been in turmoil himself and on the verge of goodness knew what. Seeing and hearing the evidence of that trauma for herself had immediately demanded her forgiveness. It wasn’t a time she would ever forget, or easily move forward from, but at least she understood why it had happened.

  She could see now how con
sumed she’d been with her own past to remain so oblivious to his pain. Her grief over losing her baby had driven her to the point of obsession of having another one when she should’ve been happy she’d found someone special. Both of them had let the unhappy previous lives they’d led contaminate the one they could’ve had together.

  This quiet afterglow was tinged at the edges with a little sadness. If they’d explored this honesty during the course of their relationship they might have avoided the nuclear fallout of their break-up. A year ago this conversation would have swung her into action on his behalf, to save her husband’s mental health before things became too much for him. She would’ve got him the professional help he’d needed, been there when he’d needed to rage or cry, been someone to comfort him for once in his life. Peter had had to step up as his nursemaid, his confidant and apparent bodyguard, fending off hysterical abandoned wives he’d deemed might damage him more. He’d been the one to save him and not her, because Lucas hadn’t let her. Whilst she was grateful for those who had intervened on his behalf, it had cost her her place in his life and a year of being in divorce limbo.

  Lucas laced his fingers through hers and brought them to his lips. There was no need for words when his love was there in the gentleness of his kiss, his apology for ever causing her pain there in his eyes. Nothing could change what had happened to either of them but she was hoping now that they could start looking forward instead of behind them.