Keeping Her

KEEPING HER

A
Losing It
Novella

CORA CARMACK

DEDICATION

For Ana

You are going to do so many great things. And I can’t wait to witness them.

And to the #TeamGarrick street team

I pretty much adore you all. And I hope the universe gifts you each with a gorgeous guy with a lovely accent.

CONTENTS

1

Garrick

T
HE ALARM SOUNDED
too early.

I smacked it into silence, and then reached for Bliss. I found only rumpled sheets and empty space. My eyelids felt like they’d been weighted down by sandbags, but I sat up and pried them open.

My voice was graveled with sleep when I called out, “Love? Where are you?” Something clanged in the kitchen in response. I sat up, fatigue wiped away by the realization that Bliss was up. And she was cooking.

That couldn’t be a good sign.

I threw back the covers, and cool morning air assaulted my bare skin. I pulled on a pair of pajama bottoms and a T-­shirt before padding down the hallway to the kitchen.

“Bliss?”

Another clang.

A muttered curse word.

Then I rounded the corner into a war zone.

Her wide eyes met mine. Her face, her hair, our tiny nook of a kitchen was covered in flour. Some kind of batter was smudged across her cheek and the countertops.

“Love?”

“I’m making pancakes.” She said it the way one might say, “I didn’t do it” when held at gunpoint by policemen. I cast my eyes down to keep from laughing, only to be devastated by the bare legs stretching out from the oversize T-­shirt she wore. My T-­shirt. Damn.

I’d loved her legs from the moment I’d first seen them while helping her with a burn she’d received on my motorcycle. They drove me to distraction just as much now as they did then.

I could have studied for hours the shape of her thighs and the way they flared out toward her hips. I could have been swept away by the feeling of possession that swelled in me at seeing her wear my clothing. There were dozens of things that I wanted to do in that moment, but an acrid smell tickled my nostrils, and a few tendrils of smoke began to creep around Bliss from the stove at her back. I lurched for the pan, where I found a blackening, misshapen lump of
something
. I pulled the pan off the stove, and heard a slight hitch in Bliss’s breath behind me.

Another bad sign.

As quickly as I could, I tossed the “pancake” into the trash, and deposited the pan in the sink. I said, “Why don’t we go out for breakfast?”

Bliss smiled, but it was one of those watery, wavering kinds of smiles that made every man want to run for the hills. I’d become well accustomed to Bliss’s panic freak-­outs. But crying . . . that was still a terrifyingly unfamiliar territory.

She collapsed into a nearby chair, and her head thumped down onto the table. I stood there, clenching and unclenching my fists, trying to decide on the best course of action. She turned her head to the side, pressing her cheek against the table, and looked at me. Her hair stuck up in every direction, her bottom lip suffered under her teeth, and the look in her eyes pulled at something in my chest. Like an itch at my heart. All I knew was that something was wrong, and I wanted to fix it. The
how
was the question.

I moved forward and knelt beside her chair. Red lined her eyes, and her skin was a shade paler than normal. I asked, “How long have you been awake?”

She shrugged. “Since around four. Maybe closer to three.”

I sighed and ran a hand over her unruly hair.

“Bliss . . .”

“I read and did some laundry and cleaned the kitchen.” She looked around. “It was clean. I swear.”

I laughed and leaned up to press a kiss to her forehead. I pulled another chair around, and took a seat beside her. I laid my head down beside hers, but she closed her eyes and flipped her head around to face the other direction.

She said, “Don’t look at me. I’m a mess.”

I wasn’t about to let her get away with that. I slipped an arm underneath her knees and tugged her into my lap. She whined my name, and then buried her head into my neck. I took hold of her jaw, and made her meet my gaze. It couldn’t be a coincidence that this was happening on the day we were set to leave for London to meet my parents. She’d been remarkably calm about it until now. “Everything is going to be fine, love. I swear it.”

“What if she hates me?”

That’s what this was about. My mother. Bliss could barely handle her own overbearing mother; it seemed cruel that the universe had seen fit to give us two. But I was far more worried about what Bliss would think than what my mother would think. Bliss was honest and sweet and genuine, and my family . . . well, not so much.

I forced a smile and said, “Impossible.”

“Garrick, I’ve overheard enough phone calls with your mother to know she’s very . . . opinionated. I’d be stupid not to worry about what she’ll think of me.”

“You’d be stupid to think that anything my mother could say would matter.” And it wouldn’t matter to
me
. But it would matter to Bliss. Late at night when our apartment got quiet, the image of my mum as predator and Bliss as prey kept popping into my head. One week. We just had to survive one week. I stroked my thumb across her jaw and added, “I love you.”

So much that it terrified me. And I didn’t scare easy.

“I know . . . I just—­”

“Want her to like you. I know. And she will.”
Please God, let my mother like her.
“She’ll like you because I love you. She might be a bit abrasive, but like any mother she wants me to be happy.”

Or at least I hoped that was how she would see things.

Bliss’s chin tipped up slightly, bringing her lips closer to mine. I felt her breath across my mouth, and my body reacted almost instantly. My spine straightened, and I became acutely aware of the bare legs draped across my lap. She said, “And you are?
Happy?
”

God, sometimes I just wanted to shake her. In many ways, she’d overcome the worst of her insecurities, but in moments of stress they seemed to all come rushing back. Rather than wasting my breath answering, I stood with her cradled in my arms, and headed for the hallway.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

I stopped for a moment to press a hard kiss to her mouth. Her fingers laced around my neck, but I pulled back before she could distract me from making my point. “I’m
showing
you how happy I am.”

I nudged the bathroom door open, and leaned past the shower curtain. Bliss squealed and held tighter to my neck, as I turned the shower knobs with her still in my arms. She raised an eyebrow, a sly grin sneaking across her lips. “Our shower makes you happy?”

“You make me happy. The shower is just multitasking.”

“How very
responsible
of you.”

I kissed a smudge of pancake batter off her cheek, and smiled.

“Yes, that’s the word.”

I set her down on her feet, but her arms stayed tucked around my neck. When she smiled at me like that, I forgot all about the flour on her face or her wild bed head. That smile went straight through me and settled somewhere in my bones.

I kissed her on the forehead and said, “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

I found the hem of her oversize T-­shirt, and began pulling it over her head. I’m not sure where the T-­shirt ended up because when I realized she was wearing nothing underneath it, my vision narrowed to encompass only her.

God, she was gorgeous.

If you would have told me two years ago that I’d be getting married to a girl that I’d met just over a year ago, I would have called you mental. My romantic history was so horrendous, I’d never really thought of myself as the marrying type. Until her.

Bliss cleared her throat, and my eyes went back to her. To her mouth. Her chest. The small of her waist that seemed perfectly sculpted to fit in my hands.

She was the ultimate game changer. I hadn’t known what it was like to meet a person so full of joy that just by being near her, I was elevated to a happier place. I’d never been with someone who was able to captivate every part of me—­mind, body, and soul.

Body, of course, being my primary focus at the moment.

Her bottom lip stuck out, calling to me, and she said, “How long are you going to make me stand here naked while you’re fully clothed?”

I took a seat on the toilet, and smiled cheekily up at her. I leaned back, laying one leg across my other knee, and said, “I could do this all day.”

And I wasn’t lying. I wanted to study her, to memorize her, to be able to close my eyes and see her perfectly as she was.

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, well, it might be a
little
awkward if I were to stay naked
all
day. Though it would make going through airport security much simpler.”

I barked a laugh, and she added, “Wasn’t your goal to distract me and make me
less
self-­conscious? You’re falling down on the job, Mr. Taylor.”

Well, I couldn’t have that, now could I?

I gripped her waist and pulled her forward until my chin brushed the skin just below her belly button. She shivered in my arms, and the reaction sent my blood screaming through my veins. I let my lips graze her just slightly and said, “You have nothing to be self-­conscious about.”

Her hands laced into my hair, and she looked down at me with glazed eyes. Firmer this time, I dragged my lips over her belly button and up to the valley made by her ribs. I tasted flour on her skin even here, and smothered a laugh.

Above me, she sighed and said, “You’re back on track with that distracting thing.”

Suddenly impatient, I stood and pulled my shirt over my head. I was rewarded with a breathy sigh and a bitten lip that made it incredibly hard not to be cocky. And not to take her right then.

She swallowed, drawing my eyes to her neck. God, I didn’t know what it was about her neck, but it was constantly my undoing. I felt like a teenage boy, wanting to mark that pale, unblemished skin as mine again and again. I brushed a thumb over her pulse point, and she swallowed again, her eyes wide. I laced my fingers through her sleep-­addled curls, and tilted her head back.

“How about now?” I asked.

If she was even half as distracted as I was, I’d say I’d done my job. Her eyes pulled away from my bare chest and she said, “Uh . . . what?”

I laughed, but the sound stuck in my throat when her slim fingers smoothed from my chest down to the waist of my pajama bottoms. Her fingers curled around the band, and I swallowed. Looking down, I could see the way her curves reached out toward my body, and I wanted nothing more that to seal our bodies together.

Before I completely lost my train of thought, I said, “No more worrying about my mother, right?”

For either of us.

She gave me a half-­glazed glare.

I used one hand to pull her closer, and the other to cup her breast. Then I repeated, “No more worrying.”

“Do you promise to do this every time I
do
worry?”

I gave a quick pinch to the tip of the breast in my hand. She flinched, and then moaned. Her eyes fluttered closed and her body swayed toward mine.

She breathed, “No worrying.”

And I thought,
Thank God.

Because I couldn’t wait another second.

I crushed my lips against hers, wishing for the hundredth time that I could just permanently affix our mouths together. Every part of her tasted divine, but her mouth was my favorite. It was so easy to lose myself in kissing her, mostly because I could tell she was doing the same. Her body pressed against mine, and her fingernails dug into my shoulders like she was dangling off a cliff, and that was the only thing holding her up. The harder I kissed her, the harder her nails bit into my skin. I trailed a hand from her neck down the line of her spine, and her mouth broke away from mine. She shivered in my arms, her eyes closed.

I leaned my forehead against hers, and pulled her bare chest to mine. Between the shower steam and her skin, our tiny bathroom felt like a furnace. I never would have thought I could feel such peace while my heart hammered and my skin burned, but that’s what she brought me. I’d always thought love was this complicated, messy, frankly ugly thing. Possibly because, growing up, I’d not had much of an example for what a relationship should be. I didn’t know it could be any other way. But Bliss chased away the gray and made everything seem black and white. No matter the question, she was the answer.

She was my everything—­the lungs that allowed me to breathe, the heart that had to beat, the eyes that let me see. She’d become a part of me, and all that was left was a piece of paper to tell the world we were as inseparable as I already felt we were.

It was just a piece of paper. The feeling mattered so much more, but a part of me sang with nervous energy demanding we make it official. Soon. It was the same part of me that worried about how Bliss would react to my family . . . to the way I grew up.

She stepped out of my arms, biting down on her already red and swollen bottom lip. Then she pulled back the shower curtain and stepped into the tub.

I hated the fear that chased the heels of my love for her.

Despite the fact that our relationship had begun in the most troubling and impossible situation—­between teacher and student—­things had been almost perfect since then. A rose-­tinted world.

But it couldn’t stay that way. Logic, reality, and a lifetime knowledge of my mother made me certain of that. The feeling always came out of nowhere. I’d be watching her, touching her, kissing her, and then suddenly, for one infinitesimal moment I’d feel like it was all about to come crashing down. Like we were balanced on a precipice, it felt inevitable that eventually we would fall. I didn’t know how it would happen. Her insecurities. My stubbornness. The interfering hand of fate (or family). But for a few seconds, I could feel it coming.

Then always, she would pull me back. Those seconds of inevitability and uncertainty would dissolve in the sheer magnitude of my feelings for her. The doubt would be erased by the touch of a hand or the quirk of a smile, and I would feel like we could hold off that fall for forever and a day.

She did it again, peeking one last time around the shower curtain wearing nothing but a smile. I heard the water pattern change and knew she’d stepped under the stream of the shower. So I pushed my worries away in favor of a much more pleasant use of my time.