TimeBound (Time Tells #1) (COMPLETED)

Chapter Thirty Four

It takes my husband exactly four seconds to see my face and decide we needed to leave.

We're driving in the car in complete silence. The only thing that breaks the silence are my sniffles and the occasional rustle of my clothes when I wipe my tears away.

They don't stop. I have no hold over them. My heart hurts in both the best and the worst way possible. I keep my gaze strictly averted out the window, staring unseeingly through it.

The backs of my eyes throb and I press them closed, trying to breathe through my mouth and bring some semblance of control back into me.

My husband remains quiet the whole drive home. Other than to take my hand and help me out of his tower of a car, he doesn't touch me or ask me anything.

When we enter the house, I walk straight to his office, pulling it open and searching for his tablet. I know how he looked at that tablet. Like it was precious. That was the one thing he hadn't wanted me to look at when he brought me here. It was also the one thing that was untouched when his computer 'in-explainably' burst apart.

As if he had taken care to keep it out of damage's way.

I take it between my fingers, noticing the slight tremor in them. Ignoring it, I see my own surprised face as the tablet recognises me and unlocks itself in less than a second.

I feel him then. I see in my periphery that he was leaning against the threshold of the office with his arms crossed and eyes on me.

The tablet was filled with portraits and sketches of me.

Of Alanna. How I looked now. I could recognise the different situations he had drawn me in.

At the wedding. Before the pool. Making him coffee. Reading. Writing. Laughing. Talking on the phone. Staring the wall while talking to Houston.

I shut the tablet and place it back on the table carefully. I run a hand down my face and let out a breath.

I turn around after a minute. I raise a hand and gesture.

"Come here." I tell him.

He raises a brow, but uncrosses his arms and crosses the threshold to come stand before me.

I look at him, my gaze locked on the icy blues of his. I raise to my toes and catch his beloved face between my palms. I brush a kiss to his lips, my eyes closing.

"I love you." I whisper, against his mouth, "With all my heart, I do."

When he doesn't react, I drop my hands away and let my heels meet the ground once more. I look up at him, my heart hurting again.

A beautiful kind of pain.

I place my palms on his chest and slide them up, allowing myself to feel the turns and lines of his body as I lean into him and, wrapping the fingers of one hand around his nape, draw him in for a kiss.

He lets me kiss him, before he's pulling away, looking down at me. My gaze drop to his lips again.

I needed to feel him.

I start toward him—

He leans back a little, not enough to break my hold, but enough to let me know: not yet.

For the first time since I had met him, his pulling away didn't hurt me. It was almost as if, knowing he were on the same page as me and not just beginning the book and that I didn't have to mince words or watch myself or read into his behaviour and guess and fret, relaxed me into my relationship with him.