Page 113 of Perfect Enough
Without giving him a chance to say anything else, I reached up, wrapped my arms around his neck, and kissed him. He pulled my body closer and deepened the kiss. He tasted like sauce, wine, and, oddly enough, pineapple. It felt wonderful to be back in his arms.
I slid my hands into his soft hair and groaned when his hands cupped my ass, drawing me even closer.
Josh broke the kiss first, and I laughed when I glanced over his shoulder at the island. “Josh, this place is a mess!”
Dropping his head, he groaned. “I know! I’m never making homemade pasta,orsauce, again.” He looked back over his shoulder and sighed. “We could just go out to eat.”
“No, absolutely not. Everything smells wonderful. Well, except for something burning.”
“No! The sauce for the cake!” Josh cried as he spun around and ran back to the stove.
Sauce for the cake? What in the world had he made? “Sauce?” I asked.
“Yeah, I googled to see what you put on an upside-down pineapple cake and found a glaze recipe. Shit! It’s burnt now, though,” he said, as he made his way to the trash can and dumped the contents of the saucepan inside.
“That’s okay. I’d rather have it the way it is.”
He smiled. “I have cherries for it, though.”
I bit my lower lip to keep from laughing. He was trying so hard, and the last thing I wanted to do was make him feel bad. “I love cherries.”
He nodded. “I know! I remember you telling me.”
After rinsing the pot and setting it with the other dishes, he returned to the stove. “Okay, lasagna has about forty minutes or so.”
“You go make yourself a drink, and I’ll go ahead and start cleaning.”
“No way am I leaving you with this mess. How about if we both clean while we wait for my Italian masterpiece to be done.”
The fight to not laugh was lost, and Josh sighed before he joined in on the laughter.
He took my hand, brought it to his mouth, and gently kissed the back. “I’m so sorry, Soph. I don’t even know how to explain the headspace I was in…that I’mstillin, if I’m being honest. I feel this war going on inside me.”
I raised my brows in question. “What do you mean?”
“It’s like I’m fighting between feeling utterly heartbroken and guilty.”
“Guilty? Why in the world would you feel that way?”
Josh shrugged. “I wasn’t here. I know it sounds crazy, but I keep thinking if I’d been working on the ranch that day, maybe I could have gotten to him. I know Lincoln started CPR, and Uncle Brock took over until the paramedics got there, but I didn’t even notice the call come over.”
“Weren’t you fighting a fire at the time, Josh? How in the world would you have known?”
He scrubbed his hand down his face. “I know it doesn’t make sense. But I can’t help how I feel.”
“And that’s okay,” I said, taking both of his hands in mine. “You’re allowed to feel the feelings you have, Josh. There is no right or wrong way. But I need you to know that it wasn’t your fault. I understand it’s hard to think that way, trust me. I sat alone for a few weeks in my apartment and wondered what I’d done wrong after my dad left us. What had I missed? Why wasn’t his love for me enough to keep him here? But no matter how many times I went over and over it in my head…the outcome never changed. I had to get to the point where it was either move on with my life, or suffocate in my grief.”
He nodded. “I made an appointment with a grief counselor earlier today. Grams is going, too.”
“That’s good. I’m glad to hear that.”
Josh took a step closer to me. “What I need right now, though, is to know that I didn’t mess things up withus. And I need you to know I was miserable at the bar. I let Nate talk me into going because it was our friend’s birthday, and that Laney girl hounded me to dance. And the entire dance, she hounded me to seek therapy. There wasn’t anything more to it.”
Pressing my finger to his mouth, I said, “I know. Nate told me everything. And I’m sorry about the night of the memorial…that I turned you down.”
“You were right. I was trying to find a way to forget everything. It wasn’t fair for me to put that on you. But, with that said, I still want to make love to you, Soph. I’ve never felt this way about anyone. I want you to be my first…and my last.”
Tears welled up in my eyes, and I threw myself at him. Josh held onto me tightly. The feel of his body against mine was heaven. Pulling his head back, he kissed me before I could say anything else.