Revive Me, Part Two: The Affair (New Haven, #3)

by J.L. Seegars

Now you know why I want to spend the rest of my life on my knees with my face between your thighs.”

His lips and tongue working over my heated flesh with fervent strokes that mean to do one thing and one thing only: break me.

I don’t mind at all. I guess that’s the thing about being shattered more than once in a lifetime. You learn how to be comfortable in devastation, to thrive in it, to look forward to it.

but with Chris trust is implicit. Inherent in how we move, breathe, exist together. And even though it’s a part of us, Chris still looks grateful for it. Appreciation is etched into every line of his handsome face.

Everything is so still and quiet, and I relish in the feeling. In the calm I’ve found at the top of a mountain, at the side of a man I never thought I’d be close to again. It shouldn’t surprise me that he was right about this place giving me peace, after all, he’s still the person that knows me best.

All of my secrets, all of my truths, all of my lost hopes and dreams are known to him. Clear to him in a way that they aren’t always to me.

from being about the asshole who hurt me to you proposing to your wife, and I still love you. I still spend the days when my grief is the freshest crafting a narrative that will make it easy for you to keep the people I love—the people we both love—in your life because even though you chose to go back to them, I think you deserve better than your sucky ass family.”

The sky is pink and purple, but it’s the chestnut eyes of the man I love that make my heart flip. He’s laying next to me. Both of us are on our sides,

but I’m the only one under the covers. I blink slowly, pushing away the fog of exhaustion that swept me away last night and bringing his features into focus.

don’t know how to say that here, in this place where my brother has never been, is where I’ve felt closest to him since he died. Everywhere else, all the places that were ours, feel like they’ve been drained of his presence. Soaked up by people who I thought needed to feel him more than I did.

Shame tries to wash over me, but I push the feeling down because there’s nothing shameful about grieving, about feeling deeply. There’s power in owning these feelings, peace in acknowledging that they exist. I can tell that Chris was prepared to tell me the same thing if he needed to, and when he realizes that he doesn’t, pride shines in his eyes.

“We could make love and forget that anything and anyone that isn’t us exists. We don’t have to do this.”

“Your pain has always been real to me and so has your strength.

I let him walk into my life with a knife in his hand and held my arms open when I should have been bracing for an attack. Preparing for the slicing, stabbing, carving of my flesh that happened when I was in his presence. Wrapped in his words. Caught in his eyes. And listening to his apologies. I saw him coming, and even with the scars of our past burned into my skin, I still wasn’t ready.

We were supposed to be partners, Chris. You were supposed to respect me. You were supposed to believe in me and my ability to fight my own battles.”

Angry tears spring in my eyes as I realize that’s what hurts most of all. Knowing that his faith in my strength was a lie. That the pride that shone in his eyes when he iced my hand after I sprained it on Trent’s stupid jaw was only there to cover up the plans he was making to take care of a situation he didn’t trust me to handle myself.

There was no one thing Chris did that hurt me. It was a series of choices. One on top of the other, on top of the other until the tower toppled over and crushed me. That is the source of the pain echoing in my chest. That is the result

Allowing him to see all of my beautiful, broken parts without the constant noise of me insisting that I was whole.

“Logic goes out the window when you’re trying to keep the person you love safe.”

To love her. To be with her. To spend every day begging for her forgiveness, reminding her why she trusted me in the first place.

That poison dagger laced with fear and anger that you held tight but never used because the only person you wanted to hurt with it had the ability to hurt you even more.

A black flower that blooms on the inside and works its way out, sending its roots to feed on any bit of joy he’s managed to find.

It’s a rhetorical question, but we both know the answer: because I love him, and I’ve always loved him. When he was here and he was mine. When he was gone and he was, for all intents and purposes, hers. Even now, when he’s going, ripping out another part of my foolish heart that only beats when he’s holding it in his hands, I love him.

“I’m not leaving you. Every day of the last six years has been about getting back to you. It’s the only reason I found this information. You’re the only thing I’ve ever wanted, Mallory, and I know you’re angry with me, but I can fix it.”

“A future with you is the only one I want.”

“We won’t ever be done, princess. If we’re both here on this Earth, breathing, living, existing, then we are happening. Nothing is ever going to stop me from loving you.”

Small bursts of time together, of belonging to each other, that burn bright and fizzle out while we savor every second of the flame.

Not because they were so in love that arguing with him made everything feel wrong but because he liked to play dirty. To wait until everything settled down and you felt like you’d gotten your point across, to throw a bomb in your lap and send you right back into a free fall.

Panicking as you speed towards the ground while he watches from the safety of the plane he tossed you from.

For my amber-eyed princess who holds her grief like a cherished secret and spreads love like it’s her job. She can still make it out of the water safe, with no new wounds to tend to, no new scars marring her skin. I can save her. Keep her safe the way I always intended to by eliminating the possibility of her ever being touched by the darkness surrounding me. All I have to do is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. All I have to do is exactly what she asked me to do before I left New Haven. Let her go. Open my hands and release her heart, accepting that it will never be mine to hold again.

Hope is a dangerous thing. It holds you close like a lover, whispering promises it never intends to keep, and just as soon as you relax into its arms, it lets you go. Sending you spinning into an abyss of nothingness. When I sent him away four years ago, he promised he would come back to me, and even as I asked him not to, I hoped that he would. Hope. I tucked it deep inside of me, underneath the scars of our before, beside the dreams of our after. Hidden like contraband. Guarded like a treasure. Broken like every promise that ever fell from his lips and hit my ears. Eventually, I got tired of hoping, of waiting for him, and I plunged my hands inside my own heart, ripping past scar tissue and muscle, veins and arteries to root it out. Hope. He conspired with it to make a fool of me, and when I freed myself from it, exorcised that pointless dream, I promised myself that no one would get the chance to do that to me again. Then, and only then, did he appear. My promise, a spell that conjured him. My determination, a challenge.

My heart, the only prize he hoped to win.