“I should go,” he said, sliding off the edge of the bed in a delicious shift of muscles and bone.
“You can stay,” she said with a glance at the clock.
“Thanks, but I meant it when I said I don’t sleep so good. I don’t want to keep you awake.”
“I sleep really well here,” she said, looking around. “I didn’t, for most of my marriage. I always slept best when Jason was on a business trip. I thought it was just the hassle of sharing a bed, but now, I wonder…”
“Wonder what?”
She wondered if she slept well in Nora’s house because she was meant to be living Nora’s life. “What would this be like, to have lived this life?” she said, not quite answering the question. Every inch of the house held some meaningful object, a memory, a connection to a life lived fully, vibrantly, completely.
He paused in the act of untangling his underwear and jeans. “What do you mean?”
“I could have rented an apartment,” she said. “I came out of the divorce with not much in the way of material possessions, but I make a decent income. I could be in my own apartment, or in a little renovated Craftsman on the East Side. But when Nora offered me the house, I jumped at the chance. Jason thinks it’s because I could save money, but I wanted … I thought maybe her things would rub off on me in some way.”
It sounded incredibly stupid when she said it out loud, like she was a little girl trying on her mother’s clothes or makeup. What thirty-four-year-old woman didn’t know who she was?
“‘You’re breaking your word,’” she said. “That’s what he’d say to me, over and over. Until death do us part. Over and over and over. He wanted me to keep my word even more than he wanted me to be true to myself. But now all I hear in my head is his voice. You said … you said … you said. That’s why I want the motorcycle. The motorcycle somehow became this sore spot in our relationship. Like a bruise that just wouldn’t heal.”
Jack dropped his jeans and boxer briefs and put his hands on his hips. “I normally make like Switzerland when it comes to divorces, but you do realize that your ex-husband was a stifling asshole.”
She gave him a rueful little smile. “And you do realize that when you subject your body and mind to extreme situations, you’ll change.”
A bitter laugh huffed out. “The training to become a SEAL is supposed to knock that out of you.”
“And love is supposed to conquer all,” she said lightly.
“Looks like we’re both trying to learn to trust again,” he said. “I am not this person, someone who quits out of weakness.”
“It’s not the same as what you’ve been through, but … I trusted my love. I thought it would last forever. Something just changed inside me, deep inside. After a while I could look at certain things he did or said, attitudes, and say That’s why I want a divorce, but the truth is that it happened in my body before my brain caught up with it. Like my body knew before I did that something was wrong.… I was a person who kept her word, until I didn’t. Couldn’t.” She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I’m going to be that person again.”
“Your ex-husband sounds like a real piece of work,” he said. “Look, there’s nothing…”
His voice faded in Erin’s hearing. For a long moment she stopped thinking and just stared at his frankly incredible body. He wasn’t muscle-bound, but his body conveyed a deadly competence she found beyond sexy.
“Erin.”
“What?” she said distractedly.
“My eyes are up here,” he said, amusement roughening his voice.
“Oh my God,” she said, mortified, and dragged her gaze up the length of his torso to his face. “Sorry.”
For the second time he plucked his jeans and boxers from the floor, shook them out, and this time stepped into them, a prudent decision given her inability to focus when he was naked. “I said, there’s nothing wrong with that. If you want your life to be different, you find someone who can show you the way. Someone like me,” he finished, flashing her a cocky smile as he buttoned his fly.
She backpedaled. “You really don’t have to do that. It’s not … I’m … I got used to wanting things. I want to have them. They’re not big things. I don’t want to win an Academy Award or be on a reality TV show. I want—”
“You don’t have to justify what you want. Not to me. Not to anyone.”