“It was tough for me too.” His thumb finds the space just below my eyes and wipes the stray tear. “I felt incomplete, like a part of me was missing. We’d never had a period in our relationship where we weren’t speaking. I knew you were angry and upset with me and I felt like shit that there was nothing I could do to make it better. That I of all people had hurt you. The first six months, the few times I was allotted to sleep, I spent staring at the ceiling thinking about you. If you were okay, if you were safe, if you were happy…” He wraps his arms tightly around me and buries his face into my neck before pressing his lips there. “If you were thinking about me.”

“I was always thinking about you. I was never not thinking about you.” He smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes and I feel like I can hear his thoughts. “I met him a little over a year after you were gone. Over a year with no communication. No nothing. You told me to move on. It almost killed me, but I did it.”

“I know,” he grits out. “I know. And I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself. And… the life we have and who we are in each other’s lives. I’m mad that I lived so long without you and now there’s some other guy in the picture. Some other guy that’s touched you.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “The thought of him… drives me fucking crazy, Whitney.” When he opens them, they’re dark and he looks almost angry. But in the sexiest way. He pushes me to my back and gets on top of me before sliding back inside.

“He’s not going to touch me again. Not that we’re back here again. It’s you and me,” I say with as much confidence as I can, but that small voice of doubt speaks up and the word leaves my lips on its own. “Right?”

“I’m not going anywhere.” “I’m yours, baby. Forever. I’ll never leave you again and nothing is going to tear us apart.”

His words make my heart melt and I let out a low moan as his pace begins to pick up and I succumb to the pleasure coursing between our bodies, all the while trying to ignore the small part of me telling me that he was wrong.

“Ughhh what is that?” I groan as I burrow farther into the warm body next to me that seems like it is moving away. I grab Jacob, trying to keep him and his body heat pinned to me. “Don’t get up.”

He chuckles. “I have to, baby, it’s my phone.”