Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
“Ah,” he murmured.
“I worry I was being really selfish,” I said, my voice soft with shame and guilt.
His brows drew together. “Because you loved me and wanted us to be a family?”
“Because I didn’t think much about you. Just about me.”
“And Liam,” he added.
“Yes, and Liam. But also me.”
“And me, because you loved me.”
“Well, yes, and you, because I loved you. But it was a lot about me.”
His lips quirked. “You’re pretty fuckin’ determined to make yourself the bad guy.”
“Darius,” I warned.
He touched his lips to mine, lifted his head, and said, “Baby, this is what we got. We got a boy who wants us to be together, so you can be happy, and I can be happy, and we can be a family, which will make him happy. We gotta get our shit together so we can give him that. And we got two houses. I like mine, I suspect you like yours, and I hate to break this to you, but Liam likes mine way better than yours. Though he digs his bedroom.”
He smiled.
I rolled my eyes to study my eyebrows.
I felt his body move with his laughter, and since I didn’t want to miss it, even if it wasn’t audible this time, I rolled them back.
Yes.
Totally worth getting over my mini-snit.
“But that’s all we got,” he declared. “Don’t invent more garbage and slights and worries and bullshit. It’s just not there. We got enough to figure out so we don’t fuck this up. Because I don’t ever want to hurt you again. And I want our boy to grow to know how solid we are. That it never ended, that we were always a family, even if we couldn’t be together. It’s just now, we can be together.”
“You’re right.”
His gaze moved over my face, and something moved over his when it did.
“Do you forgive me?” he asked.
“For what?” I asked back.
“Any of it. All of it. Lying to you. Keeping us apart.”
I put my hand over his mouth. “I thought all that just wasn’t there anymore.”
He pulled my hand away and said, “I need to hear the words.”
I shook my head on the pillow. “There’s nothing to forgive. You, me, our families, we were all just doing the best—”
I stopped talking when his body got tight.
Then I stilled when he pulled the covers up to my chest.
The door opened and I heard, “Dad? Mom’s car is—”
Darius looked over his bare shoulder toward the door.
I realized, belatedly, that I’d left my purse, with phone, in the car.
Seriously, I was terrible at this.
“My eyes!” Liam shouted then I heard a thud like a body hitting the wall. “My eyes! I’m blind!”
Darius started laughing.
I took hold of the covers and pulled them over my head as I slunk down the bed.
“Don’t go that way, baby,” Darius whispered.
I groaned in mortification but stopped moving.
“I’ll never see again! And I’m okay with that!” Liam yelled.
“Boy, get downstairs,” Darius called, his voice filled with humor. “Your mother and I’ll be down in a minute.”
More thuds and, “I can’t…find the stairs,” Liam lied.
Did we go upstairs?
Boy, Darius could kiss really, really well.
I knew that already, but…yeesh.
“Open a bottle of wine for your mother,” Darius called. Then to me, “Red or white?”
“I’m not here,” I told him. “I’ve been swallowed by the black hole of humiliation.”
“Then whose warm, silky skin is this?” Darius asked, his hand going up my belly to my…
I batted it away. “Stop it.”
“Red!” Darius shouted. “Open a red! From the reserve!”
I pulled the covers from my face and tucked them to my neck. “The reserve?”
He looked down at me. “The lower floor isn’t only Liam’s space. There’s a wine cellar down there.”
Darius had a wine cellar?
“I’m totally moving here.”
It was after I said that when I saw the most beautiful thing I’d seen since my son came out of me bawling.
The happy, carefree, sweet, tender loving smile of Darius Tucker.
Chapter Thirteen
Character
I dressed.
Darius dressed.
And it was Darius who carried my shoes down the stairs, holding my hand on his other side.
We made it to the living room to see our son slumped, going extra, a wet washcloth folded over his eyes, his head resting on the back of the couch.
There was a bottle of red open and breathing on the coffee table, and two handsome, shining wide-bowled wineglasses.
Damn.
Darius had it going on.
Feeling our arrival, Liam told the ceiling, “I’m scarred for life.”
I opened my mouth to say something when I was suddenly shoved behind Darius.
This was because we heard the front door slam open.
I peeked around him and caught Toni barreling in.
She skidded to a halt.
She was wheezing.
She put her hand to her chest, and it floated up and down as she tried to catch her breath.
Liam had taken the washcloth off, and he was studying her.
“Did you run here, Aunt Toni?” he asked.