His hands are at my hips once more, grinding me down hard against him, and his back arches as he starts to come inside of me. That’s my undoing… watching the sheer pleasure wash over his face, and I fall right along with him into bliss.

Many moments later, as I lay on top of him, my face sweaty and my heartbeat finally returning to normal, Tim’s hands stroking my lower back, I hear him softly say, “You’re my love too.”

Where I find the strength after that bout of sex, I have no clue, but I rise back up, leveraging myself on his chest with my forearms.

When my eyes lock onto his, he gives me a bit of a sad smile. “I’d like to say that I kept all my same feelings for you over the years, but you’re smart enough to know that I was hurt by what you did. I had anger and resentment mixing with my memories of you, but I did hold something back. I held back the purity of what we had before it was ruined.”

My heart seizes and clenches over his words, because I know it’s dredging up old hurts and peeling away scabbed-over wounds.

Tim brings a hand up, cups my cheek, and pushes his fingers back through my hair until he’s holding me by the back of my head. His fingers spread wide and he grips onto me, giving me a little shake to ensure my attention. “I held something back all these years, Holly. Despite everything, when I saw you in that emergency room, I still felt deep care for you. When you told me what really happened… with your father… that just stripped all the bitterness away, and I was truly able to see that I had held back more than I had thought. I know it may sound trite, and maybe we’re both still immature fools, but I do know one thing… you are my love too.”

I can’t help it… tears immediately start pooling in my eyes. I think that may have been the singularly most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard in my life. “We’ve been given a second chance,” I say hoarsely, my voice practically lost to emotion.

“We have,” he says simply. “I don’t want to waste it.”

“I don’t either,” I tell him.

“I can’t do long distance, Holly,” he says matter of factly. “Not where you’re concerned. And I can’t leave New York because of Sam.”

I push up off his chest, rearranging my body so I’m straddling his lower abdomen. Smiling down at him, I say, “Well… it just so happens that I’ve been a little homesick for New York. I could move back.”

“You’d do that?” Tim asks with wonder, but then his gaze immediately turns somber. “But what about your parents?”

I wave my hand in dismissal. “New York’s a pretty damn big place. I think there’s room enough for all of us.”

“What about your career here?” he asks, concern etched on his face.

Shrugging my shoulders, I tell him the truth of my life. “New Orleans was an escape for me. A way to go to college without the control of my father. A way to start over… become the person I was meant to be. I stayed here because I got a good job. I love it. Always will. But it’s not my home.”

“Because New York is,” he supplies helpfully.

I shake my head and give him a tiny smile. “I’m thinking my home is wherever you are, and since you’re in New York, then yeah… that’s where it is.”

“We’re really going to do this?” His palms smooth over my thighs in a reassuring manner.

“I’m not letting you go again,” I tell him softly. “It’s time to take our lives back.”

Tim slips a hand behind my neck, pulls me down, and kisses my forehead gently. I collapse back onto his chest, feeling his heart thump against mine, and close my eyes.

In this moment… right now… I’ve never been happier in my entire life.

Chapter 9

Tim

I sit at Denise’s kitchen table as the midmorning sun shines through the window over the sink, leaving a streak of light right across my plate of half-eaten eggs and bacon. I take a sip of coffee and watch as Sam awkwardly scoops eggs up with the fork in his left hand.

“You’re getting better at using your left hand,” I tell him. He looks up at me with a grin, and I wink back.

“You’ll be so good with that left hand,” Denise says as she leans in and tweaks his nose, “that you’ll be switch hitting this baseball season.”

“What’s switch hitting?” Sam asks as he takes a bite of bacon.

“It’s where you can hit both left and right handed,” I tell him.

“That would be cool,” he says, looking far more serious as he takes his fork up again in his left hand and navigates it through the eggs. “Will Holly come watch some of my games?

I blink in surprise at the innocent and completely unprovoked question. When I glance over at Denise, she gives me a knowing smile. We talked the other day about Holly while Sam was taking a nap. I told her everything about Holly’s father—who she called a slime-bag prick—and what Holly did to get away from him and his evil ways. Denise remembered well my relationship with Holly in high school. She was only two years older than me, living at home while she attended a local community college. Holly was a frequent visitor at our house when we were together, and she and Denise had become close. When Holly broke up with me, Denise never had bitter feelings toward her the way I did. In fact, she had told me she was convinced there was something nefarious going on we didn’t know about because that would be the only reason Holly would break up with me.

Me, being the dumbass that I was at eighteen, couldn’t see it and wasn’t as open minded about the situation as Denise had been.

Now, she is sort of enjoying rubbing my nose in the pile of hindsight. But that’s okay by me… I’m happy to know that Denise has been right about Holly all these years.

Denise’s lips curve into a smirk and she nods her head toward Sam, indicating that I need to address the “Holly situation” with him.

“Holly might visit us in New York during your baseball season,” I tell him carefully. “I’m sure she’d love to come to one of your games.”

“Will we come back to visit her?” he asks, even as his brow is furrowed in concentration on his eggs.

“Maybe,” I tell him. “You want to visit Holly again?”

“She’s nice,” he says absently, now finding his eggs a bit more interesting than talking about yucky girls.

“Hey Sam,” I say gently but with enough firmness to get his attention. His eyes come up to mine, his fork stilled on the plate. “You know Holly and I use to be really good friends a long time ago, right?”

He nods at me, but not clearly understanding why this is an important subject.

“Well… I like Holly a lot. And she likes me, and she really likes you. So, she’s thinking about moving to New York… so we can see a lot more of her.”

“Cool. She can come to all of my games then,” Sam says, and then the subject is immediately forgotten as he turns back to his plate.

I glance over at Denise, and she’s clearly enjoying my awkwardness in trying to explain that I have a serious girlfriend to my child. She gestures with her hand toward me to keep the conversation rolling, but before I can even think about what to say next, Sam turns back to me.

“Will she move in with us?” he asks suddenly. “The way David lives with Mommy at our house?”

David is the man that Bonnie has been seeing for almost two years now. He moved in about six months ago, and he’s a pretty decent dude. And I have to give him and Bonnie credit… they sat down with me and asked if it was all right first. But I had been around him enough at Sam’s various functions to know that first, he was a good guy, and second, that he loved Sam and Sam loved him in return. They haven’t discussed marriage, but I’m sure it’s on the horizon.

“I don’t know,” I tell Sam truthfully, because Holly and I didn’t talk about that. If I had my heart’s desire, fuck yeah… she’d move in with me. But I don’t know what she wants. “It depends on where she gets a job.”