Unravel Me (Playing for Keeps #3)

by Becka Mack

Her lower lip slides between her teeth as she thinks. “I think my deepest fear is just… losing it all. Connor. He’s my whole life. So, swimming after nearly drowning? Hard as it is, it feels like nothing more than waking up on a rainy morning in comparison to even the briefest thought of life without each other.” “Do you think about that often? Life without each other?” “Mostly I think about having to say good-bye, how impossible that would be, but having to do it anyway. How hard it would be knowing it was the last time I’d see his face, praying that the world would be kind to him without me to protect him.” A tightness squeezes in my chest before it rolls up my throat. “That’s…” “Sad,” she finishes with an anxious chuckle, shifting like she wants to pull away, hesitating because she can’t. “I know. It’s embarrassing. Most people don’t have such morbid thoughts.” I catch one of her hands in mine, pressing a kiss to the inside of her palm before wading to the stairs with her in my arms. “Your thoughts are painful, yes, but not morbid. I can’t put myself in your shoes, but I’d stand in them if it meant one less minute where you felt that pain alone.”