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“But I’ve been on my own since I was sixteen, and even though on paper I was still just a kid, in my head I was your age. I was having fun with the ladies. I was going out drinking with my boys. What I’m trying to say is that I was having a good ol’ time. I wasn’t looking for a woman, especially not a wife. I only knew how to take care of myself. I didn’t know how to take care of anyone else.” He scratched his forearm, the noise like Velcro as his fingers brushed over the hair. “At that time, I knew nothing about women—what they wanted, needed. What they were looking for. I just knew how to work and pay my bills and make just enough to score myself a twelve-pack on Friday nights.” He glanced out the window, the inside clean but the outside so dirty, I could barely see through it. “Did I want to bring a woman into that life? Shit, no. I wanted to keep doing my thing and having fun and not have to worry about anyone besides myself. And then I met my Caroline.”
His voice changed when he said her name.
His expression did too.
It softened him in a way that I hadn’t seen before.
“She changed everything?” I asked.
“Everything.” He twisted the gold band around his finger. “She wanted a family. She wanted to feel loved. She wanted a home. Things I didn’t know if I could provide.”
I pressed my thumbs together, stopping my hands from fidgeting. “Is that what you wanted?”
“It certainly wasn’t what I was looking for. No, sir, I was content with the way things were. But you know what I learned the second she paid for that bottle of Coke and walked out the door of that 7-Eleven? That once the glass door closed, I already missed her. And whether we’d be drinking cans of soda for the rest of our lives because there was going to have to be sacrifice—I couldn’t give her everything—it didn’t matter. I’d be better off with her than without her.”
My head dropped and I exhaled.
There was no question. Jovana Winters made me a better person.
She made me feel.
Want.
Need.
Desire.
Aspire.
“Let me tell you something, son. Something I learned within those three dates before I married Caroline was that we can give our heart and life to a woman and that doesn’t make us weak. It doesn’t make us feel weak either.” He lifted a photo off Jovana’s desk. It was of the three of them. He rubbed his hands over it. “We don’t lose ourselves in women. We find ourselves. And that’s what I did. I found myself in Caroline and she gave me my daughter—the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
I glanced up, and that was when I saw the emotion in his eyes.
“We’ve had our ups. We’ve had plenty of downs. We’ve had to fight like hell. But you know what never changes, what stays the same, always?”
I saw the answer and whispered, “How much you love her.”
“Exactly.” He crossed his legs, hugging his hands around his knee. “I know you care about Jovana. I saw it when you walked in, and I see it right now.”
I swallowed, a rough, knot-like rock settling right in my throat. “I’ll never let anything happen to her.”
He nodded. “I know that too.”
Why did it feel like this conversation was pressing against my chest, like it weighed a million goddamn pounds?
“You know what else I know?”
I waited for his response, adjusting myself on the bed, feeling hot even though the room wasn’t.
“I know that you’ve already found yourself in my daughter. You just don’t know it yet. You will, though. Trust me.” I went to look away and he added, “Gray.” I locked eyes with him. “You have my permission to marry my little girl.”
“But?”
He chuckled. “Now we’re going to shift modes a bit and I’m going to tell you what happens if you hurt my baby.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Grayson
