What You've Given Me: Short and Sweet Series, #28

By Luna Moon

After a while he said,

"Laura?"

"Yeah?" I said without turning around, my eyes still closed.

"Thank you for coming back."

I opened my eyes.

Did he really just say that?

That one sentence.

So much more than any emotion he'd ever showed me in these couple of years we'd been together.

"You're welcome," I said softly.

Then closed my eyes again. And the fitful sleep I got in that night was filled with dreams of Rosalie and Jim and me.

A makeshift family only meant for my dreams.

 

LAURA and JIM had been together for so long and grown so comfortable with each other that there wasn't really any love in the relationship anymore.

It was as if they just beared each other's company at this point. Just living together yet passed each other. And ultimately this leads to their break up. Suddenly alone both have no clue how to be without the other.

 

But when Jim finds a baby abandoned in his trashcan outside his house he immediately calls for Laura's help. They both decide to foster the little baby until the custody battle with the mother is finalized and a suitable family is found.

 

But Laura and Jim aren't in a relationship anymore and to both of them this seems like a disaster filled with bickering and annoyance for each other. But along the way feelings that were lost and forgotten start brewing again. But it couldn't last, could it?

 

What will happen when the child they'd grown so attached to, the reason for them being a together, is suddenly taken away from them again?

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Short and Sweet Publishing
• Release date: Apr 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201654276

Luna Moon

LUNA MOON is a writer (or professional chatter - because she cannot SHUT UP! - whichever one works for you) who writes Contemporary Romance Novellas and short stories. She loves coffee, her beautiful shiny cat and her two possibly insane dogs and reading all day long.

Book preview

Laura

It was a quiet and uncomfortable dinner. Having things to say but saying nothing at all really. I was talking about the upcoming vacation we’d been planning. Details that we still needed to figure out. Sights I really wanted to see. Getting excited but not really feeling it inside. Putting up a charade that we were so used to playing by now.

And then he interrupted. And I resented him for breaking our little bubble. We’d worked so hard to create it, maintain it, make sure it didn’t break and leave us empty. Even though to be honest we were empty inside already.

I want to call of the engagement, he’d said.

And it felt like someone had taken a broken piece of glass and carved out my heart and threw it on the ground.

So calm, so cool, as if talking about the weather.

I nodded.

If that’s what you want then that’s fine.

And just like every single thing in our lives (our house, our cars, our perfect careers) we discussed it in an orderly fashion. Like perfectly ironed plates in skirts. Like napkins folded perfectly. Like all the lies we’d told ourselves over and over. The things people usually did. The things we saw around ourselves in other relationships.

We were happy, we told ourselves.

We were in love.

We were once, I believe. But I wasn’t really sure. Perhaps it was just all synthetic. Made up in our mind. An illusion of a time that we never owned.

And now it was over. And I wanted to scream inside.

But of course, I didn’t.

Instead we continued eating dinner and got ready for bed.

Lying there in the dark watching his chest expand as he breathed I wondered if he ever dreamed of me. If he ever had a nightmare that he’d lose me. If he ever felt such incredible passion for me that he’d surely die without me.

But I knew, he didn’t.

Because I never did either.

Our perfect relationship was like as show house. It looked lived in but to be honest it was never home.

It was a pity.

I’d gotten so used to being someone he loved. It was the role I had prepared myself for over the years.

It felt like losing an arm. Something I needed desperately. But yet at the same time it was as if that arm wasn’t really ever mine after all.

I closed my eyes and sighed.

Jim

She moved out the next day. I said an awkward good bye to her before she left in her car.