Free Keeping Her by Cora Carmack Page B

her dress and said, “I imagined a lot of things. I thought about having you against the wall back behind the curtains.” She closed her eyes and fisted the blankets in her hands. “I saw you in that skirt you wore the first day of school with your legs around my waist.”
    I hooked my fingers around her underwear and slid them down her gorgeous legs. “I wanted you in every seat in the audience.” She made a low noise and tried to sit up, but I braced a hand on her stomach to hold her in place. “I wanted you in every seat so that you wouldn’t be able to sit anywhere in that theatre without thinking about me.”
    “That was already true.”
    I smiled. “Good to know.”
    She laid both of her hands over mine on her stomach, and held my hand tighter against her for a second. She said, her voice small and quiet, “I love you so much.”
    I stood and leaned over her so that I could see her face. She blinked a few times, and I couldn’t read her expression. It was sad and happy and confusing, and she had never had this kind of response in bed before.
    I didn’t know what was going on, but I could feel the panic rising under my skin, at the back of my throat, in the lining of my lungs.
    “Are you sure you’re okay?”
    She shook her head until her expression cleared, and then smiled. “Yeah . . . just thinking about the future.”
    My heart jerked in my chest, and I tried to explain away the sadness and the fear I saw in her eyes. They didn’t have to mean she was having doubts. They could mean a thousand other things. But for the life of me, I couldn’t conjure one more possibility.
    I dropped a kiss on her lips and said, “I did promise you forever. That’s a lot of future.”
    She nodded, and then after a too long moment she smiled. “I’m sorry. But do you think we can . . . just go to sleep? I’m sorry. I know I said I was fine, but I’m feeling a little off after all.”
    I took a deep breath and tried not to read too much into this. She’d been sick. It didn’t have to mean anything else. But damn it, now I couldn’t think about anything else.
    As calmly as I could I brushed her hair back and kissed her forehead. “Of course. Can I get you something? Water? Medicine?”
    She swallowed and shook her head. “I think . . . I think I just need some sleep.”
    I nodded. “Of course.”
    I folded down the blankets, and she slid between the sheets, still only half covered by her dress. I took another deep breath that did absolutely nothing to relieve the pressure in my jeans or the pressure in my head.
    I kissed her cheek one more time.
    “I love you,” I said, slowly, deliberately. I needed her to hear that through whatever noise might be happening in her head. “Get some sleep. I’m just going to go take a quick shower.”
    “I’m sorry,” she called again as I walked away.
    “No need to be sorry, love.”
    Unless she was saying sorry for something else, something she hadn’t said.
    “I’ll make it up to you,” she said.
    “Also not necessary, though I do like the sound of that.”
    She pulled the blankets up to her neck, settling back on the pillow. I switched off the lights and said, “Good night, Bliss.”
    Then I ended our roller coaster of a day with an ice-­cold shower and too many worries to count.
    “ W AIT, WAI T! J UST one more!”
    “Bliss, there are children waiting.”
    And they probably hated us, but I was just so glad to see her smiling that I didn’t care.
    “Yeah, well, they all just jumped on the bandwagon. Most of them weren’t alive when I read Harry Potter for the first time.”
    I turned to the Canadian family behind me and said, “I’m so sorry. This is the last one, I promise.” Then I took one more picture of Bliss pretending to push the luggage cart through the wall at the Platform 9¾ monument at King’s Cross Station.
    A little boy stuck his tongue out at Bliss as we left. I pulled her away before she could follow suit.
    “That kid better