Valentine Blog Fest: First Breakup or Makeup

In fiction as in life, breakups are inevitable. Unfortunately, it is a rare thing for loves to last a lifetime, so many of us suffer through a number of breakups over our lifetimes. On the flip side, we also experience a variety of makeups. And since I am an incurable romantic, I would rather focus on the makeups rather than the breakups. Besides, it's nearly Valentine's Day, so who wants to read about breakups now?

Here is how the characters in my WIP If You Can See Me handled their makeup:


What was he doing? The question ricocheted through Phaedra’s mind as she found herself laid out on the old bed, a suddenly very amorous Nate on top of her. He wasn’t going to – oh, God! She had to stop him. They couldn’t – not if he didn’t use protection, and he showed no signs of producing it. Desperately, she wriggled her hands between them and pushed, but her efforts to dislodge him were fruitless. It was like trying to move a felled oak tree with her bare hands.

“No!” she whispered, frantic. She turned her head away and his lips found the vulnerable spot behind her ear – which was not her intent. “We can’t.”

“Come on,” he coaxed in her ear, allowing his head to rest on the pillow next to hers. “It’s what you want. Admit it.”

Phaedra stroked his firm jaw with the tips of her fingers, her lips curved in a wistful smile. “Not like this,” she said.

“Then how do you want it?”

Was he deliberately toying with her?

“A way you can never give me,” she answered in a sad tone. She continued to caress his face as he closed the space between them to give her a lingering kiss. Oh, God, I could do this for the rest of my life.

“Mm, I don’t know about that,” Nate said after a few moments. “I’m pretty well-versed in this.” He was teasing her! “I might surprise you.”

“That’s not what I mean, Nate.” She pressed a hand to his chest in an attempt to keep him at bay. “I want forever.”

“This is forever.”

A tear dropped from her eye and slid over her nose at Nate’s reference to his purported fate. “My forever includes children –” she choked on the last word as more tears began to fall, swallowed her emotion, and pressed on “ – and gray hair and a lifetime of memories…and you can’t give me that.”

“I can give you now,” Nate said, gently brushing away her tears with the edge of a thumb. “Isn’t that enough?”

“No, it’s not enough!” she cried, allowing her passion free reign for once. “I want more. I don’t just want ‘now’ knowing there’s no ‘later.’”

He responded to her tirade with a tender kiss. “Please take the ‘now,’” he whispered urgently. “It’s all I have to give and I want it to be yours. There’s no one else I want to spend ‘now’ with.”

“No one?” she challenged, defiant, as a vision of the gorgeous blonde from lunch flashed through her mind.

“No one,” he assured her as he continued to make love to her lips. “And before you worry unnecessarily and draw conclusions that are undoubtedly wrong –” he pressed a finger to her lips to block the protest that leapt to them “ – the other woman is just my realtor. I was trying to convince her to come back to the place when you saw us.”

She narrowed her gaze at him, suspicious. On the one hand, it sounded plausible, but on the other – jealousy made it hard to accept. “You expect me to believe that?”

“I do,” he said without hesitation. “Because it’s true.” She must have still looked unconvinced, Phaedra surmised, because he added, “I can give you her card, if you want to check her out.”

Phaedra thought about it for several moments before she finally said, “Good – because I never want to be the other woman.”

Nate gently cupped her face, tilted it an angle that made it impossible for her to escape his sincere gaze. “Phaedra, you’re the only woman and I’m going to explode if I don’t have you – right now.”