I can’t help but wonder what the hell just happened here. Was that some weird marriage proposal? No, surely not. We might have agreed to see where this goes, but marriage?

I am silently freaking out when he returns to the bed and tenderly cleans me off. He throws the towel off in the direction of the bathroom before pulling me into his arms and holding me tightly. My head is resting against his chest and I can feel his heart beating slowly under my ear. I wrap my arm around him and hook my leg over his hip, brushing his still hard dick in the process.

“Easy there Princess, you might want that in working function later.”

I laugh before I allow his warm body and steady breathing to pull me under into the most peaceful, dreamless sleep I have had in twelve years.

Chapter 17

I woke up feeling the most delicious soreness between my legs and an ache in muscles that haven’t been used in years. Stretching out, I reach over expecting to find Axel’s warm body next to mine but only meet cold sheets.

I open my eyes and look around the room. Empty. Climbing out, I pick up the shirt from last night, pull on a pair of yoga pants from my bag and continue my search for Axel. The bathroom is empty and so is every room I check after. Not in the kitchen, not in the garage but his truck is still out front.

I am standing on the back porch looking off across the lake at the sun just barely peaking over the tips of the trees. The lake is calm in the early morning hours and the world seems to be asleep. I am about to give up my search when I see a slight movement down at the end of the dock. The path to his dock is covered slightly by a line of trees, and in the early morning hours, I am worried my eyes might be playing tricks on me. When I see the movement again, I realize I have just found him.

Tiny pinpricks shoot through my feet when I hit the cold pebbled walkway on the way down to the docks. I keep my eyes on his naked back. He is sitting at the very end of the dock, his legs are folded up and his arms are resting against his knees. It wasn’t until I got a little closer that I realize his head is resting against his arms and his back is heaving with deep breaths. He had to have felt my footsteps against the wood of the dock, but if he did, he didn’t change his posture.

“Ax?” I ask softly.

No response.

“Baby?” I try again.

Nothing.

Sighing deeply I sit down and bring my body close to his. My legs fall open and the cold skin of his back hits my front. He must be frozen.

“Jesus, Axel how long have you been out here?”

Nothing.

“Ax, baby please you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

He’s silent for a while. His body jerking slightly, giving away his silence for anything but it is. My big strong man is breaking. I knew he was holding his pain tight last night, trying to be strong for me. Trying to keep his torment from showing.

I bring my arms around and lace my fingers together against his chest; his heart beating rapidly against my arm. His body stills when I place my lips against his back and whisper the only thing I can think of, “It’s okay, Ax. You can’t hold this in. For years I have and it doesn’t help.” Then I fall silent and hold him tight; hoping he opens up to me.

“It’s my fault.” He finally says; his voice thick with emotion.

“What? What is?” I question.

“Everything.”

We fall silent again while I puzzle over his response. We were both victims here in fate’s cruel game of keep away. I don’t understand how he can even begin to blame himself.

“Baby, you have to give me more than that. There is no way any of this is your fault.” I plead.

He straightens his body but doesn’t make the move to turn. Letting his legs fall to dangle from the end of the wooden path; he turns his head and looks over at the sun rising slowly above the tree line. He brings his arms up from their relaxed position at his sides and closes them over mine before pulling my arms away from his chest and clasping our hands together on his lap.

“The first thing I did when I left June and Donnie’s was report them to child services. Between the conditions they forced us to live in, the food they refused us, and Donnie’s creepy behavior with the little girls, there was plenty to shut them down. They lost every child that the state was paying for. It’s no fucking wonder she slammed the door in my face when I went on my search for you.” He lets out a humorless laugh before continuing. “I wouldn’t have even bothered, Izzy…but I was fucking desperate to find you.”

“She opened the door and when she saw it was me, the bitch spit in my fucking face. I didn’t even get a word out. She did manage to tell me about your parents, I will spare you the details on that, but I got nothing else. She must have loved knowing she had the key to me finding you; the key to keeping me from you.”

When I feel wetness fall on the arm resting on his lap, I lift my cheek from his back and look up at the cloudless sky before realizing it was coming from him. My heart is breaking just a little more knowing just how deep his agony is rooted.

“I never got your letters, Izzy. You know, you fucking know I would have come running. Not a single one. I wasn’t at base long. I can’t give you much but they scooped me up quick and I had to leave. Top secret shit and I went dark, baby. I wrote you a letter that explained it all but the timing of your parents it makes sense you never got it. I had no fucking clue you were writing, trying to find me.” He shakes his head as if that simple move can purge the bitterness of his memories.

“Baby…” I don’t know what to say. He squeezes my hands and lets me know he needs this. He needs to get this out.

“Fucking killing me, Izzy…to know that I was so close to you but so fucking far. Knowing that you and our…baby,” he pauses on a sob that catches his words, “Our baby, God our baby…that baby would have been the most perfect child ever born.” His big body folds over and he starts crying in earnest. Tears of my own falling down my face and onto his back but I just hold him tighter.

I give him the time he needs to get it out, holding him tightly and whispering words of love against his back.

We sit there for a while. Him letting out his anguish and me holding him, offering what strength I can. The sun is finally up when he sits back up and turns his head. His eyes are red and the tears are still falling silently. Seeing him like this is destroying me.

“I would have loved that baby, loved that baby so much, Izzy. We would have been so happy.” He says, each word pushing an invisible dagger into my heart. I know it isn’t my fault that I miscarried and I had long ago coped with the loss, but right now in this moment I feel as if it happened yesterday.

“I know, Axel.” I offer. “I wish I knew what to say to help you, to ease this pain.”

He turns his body so that he is sitting completely on the dock before opening his arms; I climb in. “All these years I had been so mad at you and I held onto that anger so I wouldn’t feel the hurt. Fuck me, Izzy. I thought you were happy, that you had moved on without even a second thought. I don’t even know how to begin processing this. I don’t know how to grieve a child that I never knew I almost had.” His words are soft above my head and we sit there looking across the water that is lapping up against the shore. We sit there and silently mourn the past that was taken from us without our knowledge.

“When I lost the baby, I wasn’t in a good place, Axel. It took me a while, a long while before I started to feel human again. At that point, I thought you were gone, Ax…I thought you were lost to me forever and when I lost that baby, it was like I lost the last part of love we had.” I turned to look at him, “When I met Brandon I was vulnerable. I wasn’t looking for someone but he knew how to play the part and he made me need him. Looking back now, I know I never loved him. I needed the love that I thought he could bring me. I was so alone. I need you to know that I never once stopped loving you Axel, please don’t take that on your shoulders.”

He looks at me like he is looking into my soul before placing a soft kiss against my forehead. “I know, Izzy. I don’t know all of the details to your marriage but I know you and I believe that.”

We sit there, down by the lake with the cold November breeze blowing and I tell him about meeting Brandon and the early years before the abuse. Axel handles it well, only tensing up a few times. When I start to get to the bad stuff I can feel the rage building. I gloss over a lot of the bad stuff but by the end he knows everything. I think he is going to blow a gasket when I tell him about the letter from June.

“She fucking told you what?!” He yelled.

“Uh. She said that you were dead. I don’t know why I believed her, I really don’t. You have to know that I would never have given up on you and on us. But, Axel? She said you were dead and I had no other way of confirming if it was true or not. It was her way of making me think the worst, and I did.” He looks mad. No, not mad. He looks bloodthirsty.

“I will kill that bitch.” He grinds out. His eyes are flashing and his nostrils are flaring with each rapid breath.

“Seriously Ax, can we just look forward now? No one wants to see her get hers more than me but look where we are. We won. You and me, we are finally back to where we are meant to be. Don’t let her win. Please.” It takes a while but he calms down. We sit there in silence while he takes in everything I had just told him. I can see all the emotions, from anger to resolve, cross over his face.

“I wish I would have tried harder. I keep thinking if I would have approached you when I finally found you that things would be different now. We might have more kids; I would finally have my rings on your finger. It kills me, fucking kills me.” He says when I finish explaining everything the last twelve years has brought me.

“Stop it.” I get off his lap and knee in front of his relaxed form leaning against one of the posts supporting the dock. Taking his face between my hands and leaning in close before I finish, “You can’t sit here and play what if. It has taken me a long time to realize that what ifs will never change the past, Axel. Right here and right now, you have to promise me that we look forward. No more living with what we could have had. From this day on, we are the new Axel and Izzy.”

A small smile forms on his face and some of the sadness leaves his eyes. I lean in and kiss him quickly before releasing his face and sitting back down next to him.

“Axel and Izzy, huh? That mean you want to be my girlfriend or some shit?” He laughs and it sounds like music to my ears.

“No, I just want to be yours. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” I answer, reaching over and linking our hands.

“Princess you have always been mine. Always. I can promise you to try but this shit will sit heavy. You have no idea what I want to do to that motherfucker.”

“I know, but can we try? Just try to take each day as the gift it is? I finally have you back Axel, and for once in a long time I feel like myself again. Baby, I feel strong.”

His eyes flare as he pulls me close and plasters a kiss so full of love on my lips, that the cold around us has been forgotten.