How Much I Love by Marie Force
Chapter 7
DEE
Iend the call and let out a shout of excitement. I can’t believe what I said to Wyatt or the brazen way I told him to fall in love with me. I’ve lost my freaking mind, and I don’t even care if it means I get to have this crazy adventure with him. Ever since he left earlier, I’ve regretted letting him go. As I jump out of bed, take a quick shower and get dressed in leggings and a shirt that shows off all my curves, I have a moment of panic about what I’m getting into.
I’m setting myself up for even bigger heartache than I had with Marcus. I’ve seen Wyatt on two occasions, and I already know he could be more important to me than Marcus ever was. I almost feel guilty acknowledging that, but it’s true. I spent the night of Carmen’s wedding with Wyatt because I was so afraid of never again feeling the way I did with him. It happened that fast, during one magical day and night.
Since then, I’ve tried to convince myself it wasn’t as big of a deal as it seemed, mostly because he doesn’t live here, so what was the point in hoping to see him again? But now he’s back, the feeling is even more significant the second time, and he’s interviewing for a job in my town.
Finding out about his health challenges changes nothing for me, except for one big thing. It makes me more determined to show him one of the best things in life. I want him to experience what it’s like to love and be loved. The early years with Marcus were terrific. That feeling of being in love for the first time is the best feeling there is. Wyatt deserves to have that.
I hate that he could die young, but I’m not going to let fear run my life or his. Since my mom got sick earlier this year, I have a new appreciation for life and good health. Wyatt is robustly healthy, and I have to believe he’s going to stay that way. I refuse to accept any other alternative. And no, I’m not delusional or being unrealistic about the odds he spelled out so starkly.
I get it, and I don’t care. I love being with him and how he makes me feel sexy and desired, and happy. I want every minute I can get with him for as long as it lasts. I’m ready to move on from the nightmare with Marcus. Feeling like shit every minute of every day gets old after a while.
Before I leave the house, I pack a bag with a bathing suit, a cover-up, sunscreen, flip-flops and anything else I might need to go wherever this adventure may take us. On the way to Carmen’s, I drive faster than I should, singing along to the radio the whole way. Between the meltdown with Marcus, the miscarriage and the horrors of my mother’s illness, I honestly can’t recall the last time I felt this good. Maybe it was that last weekend I spent in New York with Marcus, back when I was under the illusion that I was destined to spend the rest of my life with him.
Funny how life kicks you in the teeth, and you never see it coming.
I had no idea Marcus was in any way unhappy with me or our arrangement, as challenging as it could sometimes be to live apart. Neither of us was ever needy or clingy in our relationship, so the long-distance situation this time around, when we were older and wiser, wasn’t insurmountable. We made it work and had so many good times when he visited me or when I came home to Miami. We always picked right up where we left off, and it felt effortless. My relationship with him reminded me of how my parents are with each other—easy, comfortable, content.
Little did I know there’s a whole lot of difference between content and true satisfaction. If I hadn’t indulged in that first night with Wyatt, I might never have known what was missing with Marcus. I might’ve let him convince me that his “marriage” was a big misunderstanding. He might’ve been able to talk his way back into my life as if nothing ever happened.
I shudder to think about how I might’ve settled for less than what I deserve.
The night with Wyatt was a revelation in more ways than one.
First and foremost, I realized how incredible it is to be the source of someone’s undivided attention, to know he wanted me so fiercely that I was willing to make a massive detour from my usual routine to take a walk on the wild side with him. And what a walk it was. I can’t think about that night with him unless I want to end up driving off the road.
All I know is I can’t wait for a repeat performance.
By the time I pull up outside Carmen’s building, I’m buzzing as if I’ve had a couple of glasses of champagne, high off knowing I’m going to see him again any minute. I send him a text. I’m here.
Coming down.
It’s all I can do not to bounce in my seat from excitement. Grabbing my purse, I find a mint to make sure my breath is nice and fresh because I’m going to kiss him the second he gets in this car. I hope he’s ready for all-in Dee because she’s ready for him.
When he comes through the door, I open my window and toss the rest of the mint outside. I’m so excited that I forget to unlock the door for him and then fumble with the button while he stands outside, waiting for me to let him in.
Then he’s in the car and turning to reach for me in the exact second I reach for him. This kiss puts every other kiss with him to shame. We cling to each other, tongues dueling in a fierce battle that I’m happy to lose. Losing to him feels like the best kind of win. When he pulls back, I whimper.
“Easy, sweetheart.” With his hand on my face, he caresses my cheek. “We should talk about this some more.
“No more talking. You told me what to expect. I understand and accept what I’m getting into. We need to get busy living and not worrying about what might or might not happen. My Abuela says the future is right now. This is it, the only guarantee we have. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to waste any more time.”
“You’re amazing,” he whispers before he kisses me again, softer this time.
I have no idea how long we’re there, kissing like teenagers who have no fear of getting caught before his stomach growls loudly.
I pull back from him, laughing.
“Sorry,” he says with a sheepish grin.
“Are you hungry?”
“Always. There’s never a time when I can’t eat, even after I just ate.”
“It’s extremely unfair that you can eat like that and look like you do.”
“I spend a lot of time at the gym.”
“That’s time very well spent. Want to find an all-night diner or something?”
His growling stomach answers for him, making us laugh.
“All righty, then.” I put my seat belt back on and pull away from the curb, trying to think of where we can go. “We might be stuck with Denny’s. I can’t think of anywhere else that’s open all night.”
“That works for me.”
“There’s one on Biscayne Boulevard, I think.”
“Want me to check my phone?”
“Nah, I know where I’m going.”
He reaches for my hand and holds on during the short ride to the restaurant.
Just that small gesture has my heart racing. I can’t believe the way he affects me, and it’s been that way from the first second Jason introduced him to me at their rehearsal dinner. My first thought was, whoa. And then he smiled. Holy shit, that smile… Since we were matched up in the wedding party, I got to sit with him at dinner.
“What’re you thinking about over there?” he asks.
“The night we met.”
“That was an amazing night. I was a little worried about spending an entire weekend with people I don’t know since I figured Jay would be with Carmen and doing wedding stuff. But you put me immediately at ease and made it so fun.”
“I was in a horrible place that weekend. I’d just heard that Marcus was telling people he wanted me back.” I barely remember anything from the night of Carmen’s bachelorette party after hearing that news.
“That must’ve been hard to hear.”
“It was surreal. For more than a year, I didn’t hear a word from him. Not one word after he married her.”
“Did you know her? Before?”
“I knew of her. She’s the sister of one of his friends. She and a group of her friends tagged along on their trip to Vegas for one of the guys’ bachelor parties, and Marcus woke up married to her.”
“Seriously? That’s how it happened?”
“Yep.”
“And how did you hear about it?” He quickly adds, “We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”
“It’s okay. It was a long time ago.” That’s true, but the pain of it still feels fresh in many ways. “My cousin Domenic told me he heard from a friend at home that Marcus had gotten married.”
“That had to be so shocking.”
“It was, especially since, as far as I knew, he was still my boyfriend. He’d just been to New York for a weekend a month before, and we’d had a great time.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you, Dee.”
I shrug as if it wasn’t one of the most painful experiences of my life to hear—through the grapevine—that my boyfriend married someone else and let me hear about it from others. Not to mention what happened after that.
“Did you ever talk to him again?”
“Nope. What’s there to say? ‘I hope you and your wife will be very happy together’?”
Wyatt blows out a deep breath. “What an awful thing to do to someone you love.”
“Of course, now I’m left to wonder if he ever actually loved me. He’s been texting me lately, apologizing, telling me there’re things I need to know about what happened, it wasn’t me, it was him, et cetera.”
“Why haven’t you blocked him, sweetheart?” he asks gently.
“I know I should have, but I just never did. I never expected to hear from him again. In some ways, it’s vindicating to hear he has regrets. And the evil, nasty side of me was happy to hear the marriage didn’t work out.”
“You don’t have an evil, nasty side.”
“If the thoughts I was having about her and them together are any indication, yes, I do.”
“Anyone would feel that way after what he put you through.”
And he didn’t know the half of what I went through. “One of his friends called me a couple of weeks later. He told me it happened during a drunken night out in Vegas, that it didn’t mean anything and that he was sure Marcus would tell me that himself before too much longer.”
“But he never did.”
“Nope. It was like he and I had never happened. It was just… over.”
All at once, I snap out of it and realize I’m doing a terrible job of convincing Wyatt he needs to experience love. That thought makes me laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“It just occurred to me that I’m not exactly selling you on how great it is to be in love.”
Since we’re stopped at a light, I get to see the smile that stretches across his sinfully handsome face. “Marcus is an idiot for letting you go.” He brings my hand to his lips and kisses the back of it. “And I, for one, am extremely thankful he got drunk and married the skank.”
I start laughing and worry I might never stop. Hearing Wyatt call her that… I was already on my way to loving this guy, but that just about seals the deal for me. “She’s probably a perfectly nice person,” I say when I finally quit laughing. “We don’t know her at all. She may not deserve that nickname.”
“She married someone else’s boyfriend and then stayed married to him after he sobered up and probably told her he’d made a mistake. That’s the definition of skank, in my opinion.”
“No kidding, right? I mean, she had to know about me. We’d been together on and off for years. It was hardly a secret. And what did he say the next day when he came to and found himself married? Was he freaking out? Was he worried about me finding out? Did he even think of me?”
I stop myself because there’s no better way to ruin a new thing than by dwelling on an old thing that’s better off left in the past. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to go on about it. I was well on my way to being totally over it when I came home for Car and Jason’s wedding and heard about his regrets. I was doing much better, so I don’t want you to think I’m still messed up over him. I’m not.”
“I don’t think that. I think you loved the guy, he disappointed you profoundly, and then just when you were getting back on your feet, he ends up in the hospital, possibly because you wouldn’t take his calls. I understand how that brings it all back up again.”
“It did.” His understanding touches me, and I appreciate that he isn’t acting like a threatened fool, the way some guys would while hearing about a painful breakup with another man. “Anyway, thanks for listening.”
“Of course.” He glances at me, which I can see out of the corner of my eye. I’m so tuned in to him that I feel like every breath he takes registers with me. “Could I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“That night after the wedding, was that like a rebound?”
“No!”
“Not even kinda?”
“The one-night stand part of it maybe, but not the rest. That was about you and how much I liked you after hanging out at the rehearsal dinner and wedding. We had fun, and you were so…”
“What?”
“Attentive.”
“I was hot for you from the second I met you.”
My laughter sounds like a girly giggle. “That was extremely flattering, especially after feeling so discarded.”
“Anyone who had you and let you go is the biggest kind of idiot, and you know, it’s kind of satisfying that he’s eating his heart out over it. He should be.”
“It’s very sexy when you take my side like that.”
“Is it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, I’m very much on your side.”
We pull into Denny’s parking lot. Before he lets go of my hand, Wyatt kisses me again. When we get out of the car, he puts his arm around me to walk inside. I love the way he doles out affection so naturally.
I lean into him like a needy puppy. Did I just compare myself to a puppy? If the analogy fits…
The hostess shows us to a booth.
Wyatt sits across from me, and the loss of his body heat leaves me chilled. Or it’s just that the air-conditioning on deep freeze mode.
“It’s like a meat locker in here,” he says as he scans the menu.
“I’m freezing.”
“Come over here. I’ll keep you warm.”
He doesn’t have to ask twice. I bring my menu with me when I move to his side and snuggle up to him.
“I have to be honest with you,” he says.
“I thought you’d already told me your deepest, darkest secret.”
“This one is about couples who sit on the same side of a booth.”
“What about them?”
“I’ve always thought that was so stupid like can’t they get through one meal without being all over each other?”
“And now?”
“I get it.” He kisses the top of my head. “The time it would take to eat is too long not to touch you.”
“So far, you’re doing an excellent job of being in a relationship.”
“Am I?”
“Uh-huh. Step one, make the woman feel special, listen to her when she goes on and on about her ex, say all the right things while making her feel sexy and desired. Are you sure you haven’t done this before?”
He’s making me crazy with kisses to my neck that have me leaning in even closer. “I’m very sure. I’ve never met anyone who made me want to turn my life upside down so I could be with her all the time.”
“Is that how you feel about me?”
“Hell yes. I’m ready to give notice at my job in Phoenix, and I haven’t even had the interview here yet.”
I turn toward him. “Don’t do that.” I love his smile so much, the way it makes his dark blue eyes sparkle and leaves deep grooves in his cheeks. “You have the most beautiful face.” I run my thumb over one of the grooves.
“So do you.” He kisses my cheek, nose and lips. “The first time I saw you, I said to Jay, ‘Who is that?’ He said you were Carmen’s cousin, and I said, ‘Introduce me. Right now.’”
“Safe to say, I immediately noticed you, too. I’d been dreading the need to put on a happy face for three days, and then there you were to make me smile. You’ll never know what that meant to me at that moment.”
“You made me smile, too. It was the most fun I’ve had in a very long time, and as I was getting on the plane to go home on Monday, it felt wrong to leave without you.”
It’s all I can do to remember we’re in public.
The waitress appears by our table, forcing me to snap out of the thrall. “What can I get y’all?”
“I’ll have coffee and an English muffin, please,” I tell her.
“I’ll do an egg-white veggie omelet with wheat toast, please.”
“Coffee for you, love?” she asks with a flirtatious smile that makes me want to claw her eyes out.
Wyatt hands her his menu. “Just ice water with lemon. Thanks.”
“Coming right up.”
“Don’t tell me you don’t drink coffee.”
“I won’t tell you that caffeine isn’t good for my heart, so I avoid it.”
“I have a question.”
“You can ask me anything you want.” He links his fingers with mine. “It’s such a relief that you know the truth. I wanted to tell you that first night, and I don’t tell anyone. For some reason, though, I wanted you to know.”
“Why don’t you tell people?”
“I developed that habit the first time I left home and went to North Carolina for med school. It was like this fresh start, away from everyone who’d known me as the sick kid. I loved that no one knew, so it became my routine when I met new people. Plus, I don’t want to be defined by that, you know?”
“I can understand that. But that wasn’t the question I was going to ask.”
“You’re allowed to ask as many as you want.”
“When I read about life after a heart transplant, one of the things they talked about was avoiding sick people and germs.”
“That’s right.”
“But you work in a hospital.”
“That’s an excellent question. Most of the patients I see aren’t sick with the kinds of things that would endanger me. They have cardiac or pulmonary concerns that aren’t contagious. And I’m super careful. If I think there’s any chance of being exposed to something, I wear a mask and keep my distance.”
“It’s kind of scary that a random germ could put your life at risk.”
“That’s why I didn’t go into pediatrics,” he says, grinning. “I don’t overthink it. I just do everything I can to avoid germs and crowds.”
“It’s admirable how hard you work to stay healthy.”
“I know what it’s like to be sick—really, really sick—and I never want to be there again if I can avoid it. I hope that when my donor heart quits, it’s sudden. I don’t want ever again to spend months on end in the hospital.”
The thought of him dying suddenly makes me ache for him and myself.
He seems to pick up on that. “I’d understand if you’re second-guessing—”
“I’m not.”
“You should, Dee. The idea of you signing on for almost guaranteed heartbreak because of me is unbearable.”
“I don’t want you to worry about that. You told me what I was risking, and I understand it. I’m choosing to spend time with you and to feel things for you. It’s what I want. You are what I want.”
“That makes me feel so fucking lucky.” He stares at me for the longest time as if trying to memorize every detail of my face. “So, you feel things, huh?”
“Yeah. Lots of things.”
“Me, too. All the things.” He’s about to kiss me when the waitress returns with my coffee and his water. “To be continued later.”
I shiver from the promise in his words. I can’t wait until later.
