Chapter 223

I deserve it, I know I do, probably worse, it’s not even that painful but as I stare at her again, I can’t hide how much it actually wounded my heart. Sophie has lashed out at me before, sure, in crazy ways, frenzy fueled attacks when lost in her pain or triggered with her PTSD, but she’s never slapped me in the face for anything. This was a direct ‘how fucking dare you’ kind of assault that speaks volumes to the depths of the carnage I’ve caused on her soul.

“You lost me. You don’t get to do that anymore.” She wails at me, pulling my hands and arms from her body and shoves me back with as much force as she can muster. Prickly, seething, hating me with utter crushing heartbreak. She’s breathing as heavily as I am although her pain and hysteria seem to be calming mine and I know I need to stay patient and cool if I’m going to bring her down from fierce.

I know how to deal with her at her worst, I can handle it. I spent long enough finding the ways and I would expect nothing less from her now. This is Sophs in defensive mode. She’s terrified of me hurting her further and I need to keep that in the forefront of my brain and act accordingly. I owe her. I have so much to undo.

“I deserve that and more, Sophie. My life is nothing without you. You have no idea how many times a day I think about you, how much it eats me up every second that I made you leave me. How much I just want you back in my life, even if I only get to be friends.” My face smarts but it’s nothing compared to the pain of watching her break. Her tears cut me to the core, and I sniff back my own, aware she’s ground me down to public crying, because I truly need a way back into her heart. My life is empty. I’m in despair. Hanging by a thread and holding on by the skin of my teeth in this.

“You didn’t make me leave you. You chose someone else and then told me to go. There is an enormous difference. You can’t undo that.” She throws it my way, snarling, her voice rasping with the effort. Nothing she says is wrong and I inwardly shudder that the truths can cause me harrowing pain. I can’t believe I was ever that stupid, especially looking at her now, seeing everything in front of me that I pushed away and all that comes with her. This girl holds the key to my undoing or my sanity.

I try to step to her, but she moves back, glaring fiercely, all claws on show as feral kitty cat and all that ‘phwaaar’ comes out to play. I have no doubt that Sophie will attempt to fuck me up if I get too close again. She’s teetering on her own cliffs and violence is close enough she can’t keep it at bay if I make her snap. The slap was a warning.

My hands are itching to get hold of her, to calm that wild beast she can be and help her breathe through her pain but I also value keeping my family jewels. I know when to stay back.

“I didn’t choose her … I chose to do the right thing and trying to fix all of it, my heart was always with you. It still is. I just didn’t know it until you were gone that I would never be able to fix anything. I never thought about what would happen if you never let me near again, Sophie. It’s killing me. I can’t function anymore, and I can’t keep living every day hoping that I find a way to see you again.” I scrub my fingers through my hair, wiping my face to pull myself together and be the rock I know she needs, even if I’m the source of her pain. Its not that easy when your heart is in distress and every fiber of your being is in panic mode that you only get one shot at this or she walks off and devastates your life all over again.

She has to believe my words, that Natasha is nothing to me, that it was never about loving her more than Sophs. I’m practically vibrating with the sheer need to wrap myself around her and kiss it all away.

“What did you think would happen? That I would stick around, and go back to how it was? That I would play happy families with you and her?” She laughs, a little crazily, kinda scary for her, the kind of laugh that hints someone is at their emotional breaking point and this is not doing what you want it to. She’s too fragile, maybe even drunk too and I’m only pushing her inwards into her own head and making her emotionally unstable and irrational. Panic rises in my stomach and the bile comes up with it, making me instantly nauseous at the thought I’m fucking this up and still losing her. How can I ever make her understand that I made the wrong choice because I never picked with my heart at all, because she always had it. That was never a choice to be made… it was always her.

She startles me by storming past me back to where we were in my garden before, as though she maybe decided we do need to talk, yell, fight this out after all and a flicker of hope rises in me as I gawp after her and scramble around. I follow her like an obedient puppy so not about to lose this opportunity and willing to crawl behind her if that’s what she commanded of me.

“I don’t know … I figured I would fix it, have both of you and no one would get hurt. That I wouldn’t be the bad guy like my dad was when he hurt my mom with an affair. I didn’t think it through Sophie, I thought you would still need me and would still be in my life. I thought our bond would save us. I reacted to what happened and then I thought you needed cooling off time. I never thought you would just cut all ties with me and that we would just be over; that I would actually lose you.” The words are falling out of my head as manic panic hits me with verbal diarrhea, but it’s all true. I even balk at my own idiotness as I listen to myself and the lameness of the decisions and reasons I had back then.

Such a total jackass. I flinch when she spins at me, aggression and snooty bitch expression in full functioning order and throws venom at me.

“I did still need you, but what was there for me in that? Why would I stay? I told you I loved you and I wasn’t going to sit and watch you love someone else!” She shakes her head at me, like I’m dense, which I clearly was when she puts it like that. She’s right, I would have expected her to endure me with someone else for the sake of being the good guy, when the thought of her with another has completely fucked me up for months. Complete hypocrite who was blinded to the actual reality of this situation.

I impulsively move towards her, so desperate to touch her when she’s in pain but she raises her hands away from me to tell me to back off and I swallow it back and clench my fists to pull back. We’re back in the sheltered dimness of my side garden and concealed once more, at least here I can block her in and stop her from running so easily this time.

“I know … I know that now. It’s all I have thought about for weeks. You are all I think about, constantly, Sophs. I was stupid, and crazy to ever let you go, the biggest jackass in the world. I miss you, so much I’m going out of my mind. You have to believe that! When Jake told me you didn’t want me to contact you anymore, it almost ended me. He told me there was maybe a guy and I didn’t know what else to do, so I stayed away as best I could. I know I fucked up, that I no longer had a right to be anything to you; I have lived with it every second, of every day for months and hated myself for being so fucking dumb.” I ramble it out in a woosh of desperation, brain messy with the chaos of flying thoughts and feelings and memories, all truth, all exactly what I’ve needed to say to her since that night. Broken inside and desperate to have her believe me even if I have to repeat it all a thousand times and get back on my knees.

“Missed me so much that you just let me go, right?” she accuses painfully and turns away, seething, trembling with the effort, so sure all these months I just forgot about her. It crushes my soul to hear that new flicker of hurt at my hands.

Never, baby. Not in a million years.

“No! I came for you when I couldn’t handle it anymore and I saw you with Christian. I felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest and I left. I couldn’t bear to see you happy with someone else, knowing that I literally let the best thing in my life go when you offered me everything. You have no idea how much I regret it. I have never stopped wanting you; you’re ingrained in my soul, you’re a part of me. I made a mistake, one that has been ruining my life ever since and if there’s even a glimmer of a chance then I’m going to jump on it, because there’s no alternative for me. I fucked up everything that mattered to me when I let you go.” My voice trembles, hoarse and ravaged because I need her to listen and believe me. I need to undo what I’ve done to us.

She turns her back on me fully, trying to shield her agony but I see through it. This is what she does.

Classic Sophs trying to stop the big bad world from getting in causing her more mayhem. I step forward and instinctively slide my hands over her tiny shoulders, warming her skin that’s cold and goose bumped from being out here in the night air without a jacket. She stiffens at my touch, but she doesn’t fight me, and I relax a little.

“What makes you think I will even care now? That any of this means anything to me anymore?” she shrugs me off with less fire and fight, seemingly exhausted by this and steps away, but not far, wiping her face and pulling on the tough girl stance with that little chin raised haughtily. She isn’t willing to yield but her fury is waning.

I fucking love her so much.

“I have nothing else to lose. Without you, nothing means anything anymore. I won’t let you go again without a fight. I know you, I know when you’re hurt you push people away, and that’s what you’re doing now, so I won’t let you do it. I know it’s what I deserve but knowing there’s no one else. You’re meant for me, you were always meant for me, Sophie. I see that now.” I plead, knowing it’s the only tool I have. Honesty, begging, and sorrys… a shit load of fucking sorry. If I could turn back time, I would.

“Until you think you have me and suddenly you don’t know what you want anymore, right? Or you get a case of guilt again, or cold feet. You’re drunk. Go home. I don’t need this.” She sobs again and each time she does it breaks me. Trembling with emotion and I can’t bear to see her like this. I spent years fixing her, pulling her from her own internal agony, only to be a dumb fuck and screw her up with my own moral fucking code.

“I love you! I’m in love with you! Every tiny little fiery, hellcat, difficult, yet beautiful part of you, and every part of me wants only you. It’s not alcohol Sophs, it’s in me every second of every hour, every day, and it never stops. Anytime I see you it only serves to remind me how badly I’m suffering. How stupid I am. I knew I loved you as soon as I lost you. That’s never going to change. I’m not confused about this anymore. My heart left when you did, and I don’t want it back if it doesn’t come with you attached.” I break for her. Voice, emotions, fucking tears, man. She brings it out of me so easily. No one has ever destroyed me the way she can, and she has to see the power she holds over me. This was never one sided. Sophie can literally yank out my heart and stomp all over it with little to no effort. She always could.

She glances over her shoulder at me accusingly before spinning furiously, a new fire in her belly and I’m the target. My words obviously hit a nerve.

“You’re an idiot … you had me! You couldn’t see what was in front of your face. Why would I listen now? Why would I let you have the power to cut me open again? To hurt me like you did, over and over. Just go away. You don’t deserve me.” She turns away again, and I’m starting to see the pattern.

Anytime she loses resolve starts to break, she hides it from me and tries to get her control back.

Because maybe I have the same power over her that she holds over me. And this is most definitely a two-way thing, I see that now. She still loves me even while telling me to leave. Isn’t that what Sophs does. When she’s mad at me, desperate for me to reach out and fix things, she tells me to go away.

Only in the past I’ve been too mad or impulsive and stormed off and left things hanging. Not this time, never again.

“I know. I have no excuses, only how sorry I am, how much I regret all of it. And I do Sophie, I am… I’m so fucking sorry.” I catch her by the upper arms and turn her, vowing to cut through her act and save her, save us both. Ignoring the slaps on my hands which are pitiful compared to the previous and I can tell for sure her words are empty, and her needs are to have me stay with her. I’ve been here with her before, long ago when she snarled, glared, and tried to chase me off from getting too close.

I handle her how I would have four years ago, knowing that’s what she wants from me. Softly, guiding her to me and persistently bringing her close while ignoring her lash outs, she avoids my eye completely, but she doesn’t all out resist me like before. The thudding of my chest is so extreme I swear I might have a heart attack and my hands are shaking as I carefully bring her to me.

“Just leave me alone.” Tears pour silently down her face but there’s no real physical fight in her and I sigh with relief that my stamina is outliving hers. She’s dwindling down, all her fight fizzling out. I exhale slowly and try like mad to be that calm force she has always needed to help her find her feet again.

“Tell me you don’t love me anymore and I will.” I breathe her way, my face crumbling with the very real possibility she may tell me she no longer cares and actually mean it, even though my gut is saying that’s not what this is. I catch her quick glance and hold my breath, longing for the answer I need and not the one that might actually kill me. Always so much calmer when allowed to be near to her, to touch her and so much more convinced that her presence is the only thing in life that will ever cure me of my emptiness.

“Stop it.” She pleads turning her face from me, pushing my hands in a second bid to escape me but I’m not going to. I keep hold of her arm even though she gets out of my hug. I swore I would only need one chance and I would hold onto her with everything in me. This is it and that’s what I intend to do. My one chance to have her come back to me, and I won’t stop until I get a real answer either way. Hope, to bring her home to me, or nothing left to fight for.

“Tell me that you no longer feel anything for me, and I’ll walk away, Sophs. I’ll leave you alone knowing that you no longer see me that way. That I really did lose you.” She isn’t the callous or cruel type who would outright lie to me, even to wound me in this way. If she says honestly, she has nothing left then I’ll accept it, even if it kills me. My heart pounding but the swirling gurgling of my stomach is telling me I have a shot.

She shakes her head at me, and I hold my breath.

“Why are you doing this?” she pleads brokenly, whimpering a little and I pull her slowly closer, needing to ground myself with the feel of her.

“Because I need to know, I need to hear you say you don’t love me anymore, in any way. I can’t risk missing even the tiniest hint of hope that I can get you back.” I’m close to tears again, so scared of the answer but desperate for the truth. This is everything right here, she’s everything.

“You’re an asshole. You don’t deserve my love.” She sobs it out and covers her face with her hands again, breaking and turning into my vulnerable little angel, the one I swore to always shelter and protect. A hint of her softness, her genuine vulnerability is a hint that she still on some level feels she can break in front of me. The tough girl act lowering, and I tense with a little leap of joy as it soars.

I step to her and wrap her up in my embrace again, needing her here, needing to console her. I wrap her tight, arms sliding about her frame and burying my face against her neck. Inhaling that sweet tropical candy smell that’s all her and almost sagging into the familiarity. Squeezing her with need of months of loss and brokenness. Only she could make every single cell in my body ache with this kind of all-consuming pain.

“You’re right. I am an asshole, Sophie, and so much more. I am so fucking sorry for what I did to you, to us. There are no words to tell you just how sorry I am. How much I regret every second of this. I love you, that’s all I have, and I mean it. One hundred percent, hand on my heart, I will swear on the lives of everyone I care about, that I love you, Sophie Huntsberger, in the way you once told me you loved me.”

I hold her tighter, grip on for dear life, hoping my truth translates as genuine and she believes that I truly do love her in the way she needed me to. I’ll never let her down again.

Sophie breaks down, more intent on sobbing than fighting me now, her energy is fizzling away, and her body is sagging and weakening in my embrace. Her tears dampening every part of my neck as her cheek leans in against me intimately. It’s all I can do to keep breathing normally. Overwhelmed with this huge weighty gut-wrenching ache because I’m getting to hold her in ways I have been dreaming of for months.

“Don’t do this to me.” She weeps softly, broken and crumbling fully. Sensing the change in her fight, I lift her face, angling in so I can get my forehead against hers and it forces her to look up at me. Tear stained, sobbing and so beautiful it almost ends me.

“I need you … I want you back. I’m a mess without you. I love you so much that I literally can’t breathe anymore, and I want to be worthy of your heart again. I won’t stop trying to put the pieces back together if you let me in. Let me come home to you.” My tone is low, breathy and one hundred percent begging for forgiveness. I’m hers, a slave to her in every way possible.

“You hurt me! You broke me, and then you left me alone.” She whispers it and I know I’m getting in, slowly and surely. The wall is crumbling just enough that I can get a foothold. I brush my thumb across her cheek to wipe away the rolling tears and she closes her eyes at the familiar contact. Her words another knife to my heart and a reminder how much I fucked up.

“I know, baby. I despise myself for every part of that and what I did. I’ll never hurt you again, I’ll never leave you alone again, I swear. Just give me a chance please, let me fix this. Let me try, Sophs. I’ll do anything. I love you. I really, really, love you. An all-consuming lost to everything but you, kind of way, which I will never recover from and I don’t want to recover from it.” My tone is soft and steady, eyes locked on the face I adore so much, and I swear internally to never abandon her again, for anything in the world. I could never leave her after this, after losing her. It just brought home all the reasons I will never deserve her and yet I can’t ever give her up. She squeezes her eyes closed as though my words cut her too.

“I hate you.” She sobs brokenly but it’s a weird little soar of my heart. Only my Sophs would throw those words my way when she doesn’t really mean it. Her age-old go-to slap back when she was mad at me but never hating genuinely on me. Sobbing heartily as though to drive home the fact that her words are empty, and she needs me to fix this. Like I always did. She’s as lost as I am.

“I know you do.” I whisper, watching her and melting at my girl’s ability to be both so cute and childlike, while also being sexy and gorgeous and combining it all in a hysterical mess that still makes me want to kiss her. I tilt her head slowly, making it obvious that I intend to, that I need to, and pause for the rejection that doesn’t come.

Feeling braver and knowing she’s caving, I lean in and softly, carefully graze my lips against hers. My heart somersaulting at the intimacy of what I need so badly. My nose nestling alongside hers as I push closer and make it more real. Being wary, but kissing her properly, feeling her lips part as she not only accepts but starts to unravel and think about kissing me back. My stomach lurches and my heart flips at the real possibility she may not refuse this again.

As soon as her mouth moves in time to mine, igniting a real two-way kiss, I sink in, euphoria consuming and warming me to my core. I slide my hand up around her throat delicately to hold her in place and kiss her like I’ve wanted to for months. Holding her to me to savor the feel and smell of her, lip to lip, pressed securely, perfectly fitted. Her taste in my mouth her lips and mine snugly fitted in the most painfully perfect way. The girl I should have been kissing all these months, the one who fits into my body like she was made for me and kisses in a way that turns my head inside out with need. This is what heaven feels like; completion, contentment, a feeling of being whole and home, all rolled into the flawless little package of beautiful that belongs to me. I never had this with Natasha, not once and I can’t believe I walked away from all of this for her.

Sophie slides her arms around my neck, and I’m lost to her fully. I push her mouth open with mine, teasing her seductively and go for a full-on French kiss, tongues exploring, and longing for more and she doesn’t knock it back. My heart and libido soaring in unison because she does crazy things to me with the briefest of responses.

She clings on, kissing me back, melting me to mush and makes my year by kissing me with the same growing passion and fervor I have. I get as close as humanly possible without actually humping her in the garden. Wrapping her tight and devouring that sweet soft silky mouth as my tongue explores and caresses hers and raises my blood to instant boiling pot levels. I squeeze her in, overcome with so many emotions and pick her up so her small height reaches level with mine, feet free from the ground and no chance in hell of escaping me now. She has no idea how ablaze she can set my body when she kisses me like this, and I’m instantly engulfed with insane horniness and a crazed need to push this further.

I’m drunk and crazy in love with my beautiful, wild, adorable, funny, sweet, and perfect girl. I want nothing more than to own her body in everyway and make sure she never leaves me again. If I had taken that step that night, I would have released how desperately I needed her, this, us, and how much letting her go would fuck me up. If I’d let nature take its course and made love to her that night, I would never have doubted that depths of infatuation I have for her. She’s everything I want and need. She always was.

She tightens her hold around my neck, one hand sliding free to skim my shirt collar and then scrape her nails up into my hair before tangling with the longer length on top. Igniting a million toe curling sensations and pushing me into lust fueled frenzy. Sophie knows how to push my buttons and I internally moan with how good she feels, how quickly this goes from sensual romantic reunion to hot, steamy, ‘I need to bang you and impale you against this wall before I self-implode and cum in my pants’

kind of longing.

Almost impulsively, I press her back against the house, needing her against something solid so I can apply some body grinding pressure and free up a hand to feel her out. She has me crazy and all thoughts of anything that are not about sex, fly off in the breeze. Consumed by my passion and desire for her, wrapped up in the one place I’ve needed to be for so long, I kiss her with abandon and pick up where we left off so long ago.

Sophie pulls my bow tie off, raking her nails over my shirt, making it clear that what started back in my apartment the night I lost her, is what we need to finish to start something new. Her body responding to mine, her kiss fevered and turning aggressive with small bites and nips and hints for me to throw caution to the wind and fuck her. I should never have stopped this back then.

No holding back, no doubts, no interruptions. Just me her and my entire fucking devotion and commitment to never walk away from this girl as long as I live. I want her, I need her and I’m not letting her out of my grip tonight at all until I’ve made love to her and completely claimed her as mine.

Hot, burning up inside with an erratic heartbeat and shallow breaths, I lift her up and get hard when she wraps her legs around my waist, fitting her warmth snugly against my erection and pushes me further into lust overdrive, almost insanity, by biting on my lower lip and teasing me mercilessly. I know I probably should be cooling this off, pulling back and taking this gently, easing us into soft and lovemaking, but I’m insanely drunk and almost seeing double. I’m still swaying on my feet and I’m so horny for her I may just throw her on my bed and make her scream my name out multiple times first. I fully intend to make love to my woman, but I also fully intend to fuck her brains out and give her absolutely no reason to ever leave me again, for anything in the world. To show her the level of need I have for her. How she makes me feel and wipe out any doubts that I am not completely devoted and addicted to every piece of her.

I’m going to make her crazy and give her as many orgasms as I can tonight, strap her to my body and make sure she needs me in every way I need her, and then some.

Sophs is mine, I’m hers. Body and soul. She’s never getting rid of me again.

End of POV