Here, happiness didn’t seem so far away. It wasn’t some distant point she couldn’t see ever reaching. It was present. It was everywhere. Hope was alive inside her. She didn’t want today to ever end.
“It doesn’t have to,” Ethan murmured.
She realized she’d said the last aloud.
“We can do this over and over. You’ll see, Rachel. We can have our life back. It just takes time.”
She twined her arms around his neck, momentarily forgetting his brothers as they argued and joked loudly in the distance.
“Do you really think so, Ethan? Sometimes I worry we can never get back the past. Other times like today I’m more hopeful. I hate not remembering. I hate it.”
He looked at her so seriously that she went silent. “The past . . . is the past, Rachel. All we can do is go forward. The past doesn’t matter. Just here and now and today and tomorrow. You’ll remember the past. You get back more with each passing day, but what’s important to us is tomorrow.”
She smiled and hugged him to her, pushing them both down toward the surface. He laughed and grappled for a moment as he fought to keep them afloat.
“Trying to drown me, woman?”
“You can’t drown a SEAL,” she taunted. “How embarrassing would that be?”
“God yes,” he muttered. “Shoot me, hang me, let me die of infection from a hangnail, but don’t let me die in the water. They’d send me to hell on principle.”
“You two want something to eat?” Garrett hollered from the dock.
Ethan waved him away. “Go away. I’m about to kiss my wife.”
And then he lowered his head and did just that.
CHAPTER 22
“ARE you sure you feel up to this? We can always skip it and stay home tonight.”
Rachel glanced up to look at Ethan’s reflection in the mirror then laid her brush down.
“No, I want to go,” she said in an even voice. She understood Ethan’s concern. She even found it endearing, but her frustration grew with each passing day.
He looked doubtfully at her, but to his credit he didn’t argue.
“Okay, but I want you to promise me that if it gets to be too much you’ll tell me immediately.”
She nodded and smiled. “I will. But Ethan, I can’t keep hiding in this house.”
The walls were closing in on her, and what she didn’t tell him was that if she didn’t get out, she was going to go as crazy as everyone probably already thought she was.
Marlene had planned a welcome home party, though from Ethan’s muttered remarks, Rachel guessed the event had escalated beyond a simple family gathering. In her more morbid musings, Rachel thought it should be a welcome back from the dead party.
It still baffled her that everyone had thought she was dead for the entire year she was gone. In a lot of ways, she supposed it was the kindest thing they could have thought. They mourned. They moved on. Knowing she was alive and in captivity would have made them suffer. Like she’d suffered.
Her fingers trembled as she tried to grasp the brush again, and she fumbled clumsily at it to keep from dropping it.
The cravings hit her at the oddest times. Sometimes she could go days and forget about the poison that had surged through her veins with clockwork regularity. Other times she wanted it more than she wanted her next breath. But she’d never tell Ethan that. How could she?
He worried enough without her adding more to it.
Strong hands slid over her bare shoulders and squeezed. She glanced up to see him standing behind her at the mirror.
There was such warmth in his touch. A comfort that she needed as much as she’d once needed the drugs.
She sighed and leaned back into him, looking up as she did. His fingers glided up her neck to the slender column of her throat and to her jaw. Then he leaned down and kissed her forehead. Just one, brief, gentle kiss.
She made a sound of frustration when he pulled away, and he frowned.
“Something wrong?”
She stood and turned, tilting her neck so she could look up at him.
“I want you to kiss me, Ethan. A real kiss. I want it so much that it overwhelms me. I want to feel like a real wife, not some fraud you aren’t sure of. You haven’t kissed me again since that morning when I kissed you.”
As she spoke, she put her hands on his chest and emphasized her words with a firm push. He caught her hands and held them still over his heart.
“God, Rachel, I want it too. I want it so much I hurt. But I’m afraid, damn it. I’m afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. I’m afraid of frightening you just because I want to touch you more than I want my next breath.”
She trembled, but not in fear. An odd sensation raced up her spine, spreading in a warm glow that made her muscles tighten and her ni**les pucker. It was then she realized that what she felt was desire, and she almost laughed.
She’d forgotten what it felt like to feel such pleasure, to experience the anticipation of her husband’s touch. It had been a long time since her pulse quickened with a simple glance. She missed it. God, she missed it.
The stirrings of desire had begun the morning she’d kissed him awake. She’d felt the unmistakable ache of awareness, but this, this was so intense that she thought she might go mad if the ache wasn’t assuaged.
“Kiss me,” she begged in a soft voice that was nearly inaudible.
With a groan, he pulled her close until her chest was crushed again his. His hands—he had such wonderful, strong hands—slid up her arms and then up her neck until he cupped her face.