Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 107710 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107710 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
“Yes. Yes, okay.”
She started to retreat up the stairs as quickly as possible, but August met her halfway and scooped her into his arms, jogging the rest of the distance and into the sunlight. He took the outer concrete steps two at a time, at which point his legs just seemed to give out. Still holding her in his arms, he dropped into a kneel in a shaded patch of grass and instinctively, Natalie curled herself around him. She wrapped every available appendage around this shaking man and clung, moisture pooling in her eyes.
“I’m sorry. Oh my God. I didn’t . . . it never occurred to me the cave might bring back bad memories—”
“Of course it didn’t occur to you. It shouldn’t.” His voice just sort of unraveled into her shoulder. “I don’t want you thinking about terrible shit like that.”
Natalie tightened her arms around his neck and slowly, slowly, he laid them down sideways in the grass and she could feel that his T-shirt was soaked in sweat, his heart still going a million miles an hour. “I shouldn’t have barged my way down there. I was just trying to find a way to help where I wouldn’t be in the way.”
He blew a rocky breath into her hair and pulled her closer. “You’re not in the way, but I appreciate that.”
She stroked his back with her fingertips and he sighed, the tension in his muscles ebbing slightly. “Has this happened before?”
“No.” He cradled the back of her skull in his hand and pressed her face more securely to his neck, as if the position comforted him. “No, I left the team after Sam died. I didn’t see any more combat. I couldn’t. There are dreams occasionally, but no flashbacks or panic attacks. Nothing . . . this fucked up.”
“This isn’t fucked up,” she whispered fervently.
He made a sound like he didn’t believe her. A long minute passed, his pulse beginning to slow. Then he said, “Winemaking was the heart of him. He wanted it so bad. And I already . . . I failed him once, Natalie. I wasn’t supposed to let him die. I was supposed to protect him.” A heavy swallow. “He wouldn’t have let it happen to me.”
Natalie’s tears were soaking into the shoulder of his T-shirt now, a torturous wind in her middle. “I’m not a soldier, August, and I don’t know anything about war, but I know your character. And I know if you’d had the slightest hint of a threat to anyone you love, you’d have done something to stop it. I know that like I know the sun will come up tomorrow.” She kissed his salty skin. “It wasn’t your fault.”
They held on to each other tightly in the afternoon sun, time passing without measure. Natalie pushed the lingering sadness she felt about August refusing her help as far away as possible, weighing it down with sympathy and understanding. And an encroaching, never-experienced-before feeling that was too scary to name.
Chapter Eighteen
Going to dinner at his mother-in-law’s house.
August never thought he’d be so excited.
He and Natalie were dressed in business casual attire as they walked out of the house together and called goodbye to the cat. August opened the car door for Natalie so she could slide into the passenger seat and balance a homemade pie on her lap. This was the kind of evening that made the marriage feel real, and goddamn, he loved it, especially since they’d been orbiting each other without touching or speaking much since yesterday.
When he’d lost it in the wine cave.
Yeah, there hadn’t been a lot of conversation since they’d spent hours clinging together outside the event barn, inhaling each other’s exhales, her heartbeat like a song that he could follow out of the darkness. There’d been a lot of staring, however. A lot of passing each other in the kitchen or on the way into the bathroom and looking. Wanting to touch.
August knew damn well Natalie was waiting for him to make a move—and believe him, not taking her to bed was unmitigated torture, but if yesterday had proven anything to him, it was that he needed Natalie to be in his life permanently. He needed to take this slice of time seriously and not get distracted by her smoking-hot, one-of-a-kind rack. He needed her for sixty years, not sixty minutes. What else was a man supposed to believe when the idea of her getting injured made every molecule in his body scream like a child who’d accidentally walked into a theater playing It?
Descending into that cave had been eerily similar to entering the hideout with Sam three years ago. The same dusty waft of decay, the silence and pitch-blackness of it all. And all he could think was I can’t lose her, too. I can’t.