Endless Love by Bianca Borell

Chapter Thirty-Eight

DAMIEN

I wander alone through a city that shrouds me in anonymity. I’m glad I can hurt in peace. When I was at the lowest point in my life, no one saw the wrecked me except for Chloe and my family. In everyone else’s eyes, I was living my best life. I had to keep up the perfect image and not allow the outside to find out what was really happening inside.

She will be the death of me. I can’t even be mad at her for long, I am just utterly frustrated. I try to calm myself, only my woman could forget to take her birth control pill, call it a fucking déjà vu.

I’m angry at myself for not being with her the first time she heard the babies’ heartbeats and saw their tiny frames. I would have killed Alex if he’d entered the room with her, although I’d never admit it.

Darkness greets me as I step inside our home. I tiptoe to the bedroom and find her curled up on her side and drag a hand through my hair.

Does she really think she’s fooling me? I know when she’s asleep or faking it in the way her little breaths deepen, and her face relaxes into an angelic beauty. But this is her way of saying fuck you to me.

We have some unfinished business to address first. But afterward, I hope to feel her writhe in pleasure under me and watch her fall asleep for real, beside me where I can keep her safe and loved.

“You aren’t asleep, wife. Please stop pretending.” She rolls over and sits upright, her face tilted to the side, her finger tapping on her lower lip.

“It should have been a clear sign that I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Hear me out,” I plead and approach the bed.

She fumes, bends forward and says, “Was it the ‘fuck you’ intake of air or was it the ‘screw you’ of my body language that gave me away?”

I sit on the end of the bed and prop my elbow on my knee, my gaze fixed on her.

“It was the ‘Oh, baby, although you’re a douchebag, I can’t go to sleep with something between us.’ Your rule, wife.”

“Technically, I can go to another room, and then there won’t be any rules broken.”

“Technically, but we both know you married an ass, so no, we’re staying here and talking it out.”

She dips her head at me, unshed tears swimming in her hazel eyes, and I lose any desire to fight when the woman I love suffers. I have to change my tactic and make her understand that I’m hurting too.

“I’m sorry, but try to understand where I’m coming from. The way I love you, I can’t even put into words. There are two certainties in my life, one, my undying love for you, and two, the overwhelming urge I have to protect you.”

“Damien, baby.”

I grip her hands in mine. She smiles at me, bright, full of love and patience, while I say through the lump lodged in my throat.

“What do you expect from me when all I can think is that this pregnancy has the power to harm you? I’m a selfish bastard. I just got you back and now this. Am I not enough for you, Bria? Isn’t our life together enough for you? Is my love for you not sufficient? Don’t you get it? I’d walk a thousand miles to hell and back for you. I would carry you for a lifetime, and I would fight destiny repeatedly for the chance to grow old with you. Tell me what I can do more to show you that my heart beats only for you?”

I twirl a strand of her soft hair, her hazel eyes glassy. “You put me in an impossible situation. How will I be a decent man or the father our babies deserve without you by my side? It’s like you love to torment me. Why? Just why? Here I am, let’s talk, wife, let’s find a solution together to keep you alive. Sometimes it seems I’m fighting on my own here,” my voice breaks, and she sniffles.

“I’m not ready for this heart-wrenching and physically and mentally draining talk.”

Her pain and her tears rip my heart open, but she has no right to be this selfish. Why is she the victim and I’m the villain in this situation? It’s not fucking fair.

“Why not, when is the right moment, then? Here I am, at your feet, while you decide our future on your own.”

“It wasn’t planned, Damien.”

It never is,I want to snap, but I breathe in and gentle my voice to say, “What do you want from me, wife?”

“To stop being a self-centered asshole,” she snaps, but her features soften. Perhaps she detects the hurt I can’t hide. She cups my face in her hands and presses her forehead to mine.

“You won’t lose me. Our babies are our little miracle. They’ll protect me. You two won’t hurt Mommy, will you, little ones?”

When Bria strokes her belly, this one gesture annihilates the fight inside me. Inside her grow our children, and tears well up in my eyes again. A new kind of love spreads inside me for what my wife keeps secure inside of her, and my protectiveness kicks in. I put my hand on her belly and caress it as Bria glances at me with so much affection it undoes me while I speak for the first time to my babies.

“Hi, in there. It’s your daddy. Don’t be mad about my previous reaction. It’s just I love your mommy like a madman. She’s my life, my anchor, and I’m a lost man without her. I promise you’ll be loved and cherished, little ones. But just do me a favor and keep Mommy safe because I’m not capable of doing it all by myself.”

Bria weaves her hands through my hair as I rest on her belly, and all the tension vanishes.

“Everything will be fine. Trust me and please stop feeling guilty. You’ll be a great father, Damien. I’ll be there right beside you, together for a lifetime. I promise I will do whatever the doctor recommends. I’ll behave.” She pauses, and I arch an eyebrow at her, having difficulty believing her, but she will. I’ll be damned if she won’t. Her hazel eyes turn angry, her jaw ticking. “I love you, but if you ever do something like what you did today, I will cut your balls out and feed them to the crows.”

My lips arch into a small smile.

“They will choke on them. I thought you were an animal lover.” She swats me on my head and points a finger in my face,

“Shut up and make love to me.” I shoot upright and bow at her, making myself a complete moron just to hear her laugh.

“It gets better and better by the minute. I think I’m in heaven.”

“No, baby, just between my legs.” I yank my shirt and jeans off and tug at her nightie.

“The same for me, you little pervert.”

“I learned from the best.”

“Bria, watch your mouth. You’ll be a mother soon enough.”

She covers her mouth, her expression turning to appalled, and shakes her head.

“I can’t believe you. You’re obnoxious, you truly are.”

“But you still love me.” I grin.

“No, Damien, you’re wrong.”

For a moment, my heart halts, but she continues and brings me back to life. It stopped surprising me a long time ago, the power she has over me, how my world ends and starts with her, literally.

“What I feel for you is so much stronger and so much more powerful than love, but I’m only human, so I’ll try to express myself with limited resources. I love you like I don’t know what limits are. I love you like I don’t know we are only drops of rain on a sea. Like I don’t know that time is finite and that we have forever just in our hearts.” She pecks me on my lips and places her forehead on mine.

I seize her mouth in a scorching kiss. I slide right home, my eyes locked on hers, my love, my future, my all. I don’t allow myself to get lost in her like usual, not wanting to hurt our babies, but her hand catches my hand. With lust glistening in her eyes, she urges me, “I won’t break!”

“But . . .”

“You won’t hurt the babies, trust me.”

My control slips away as I push inside her, claiming and marking her until my legs weaken under me. I come, losing myself in her eyes that say she loves me in a hundred distinct ways and we both fall into a peaceful sleep.