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I tilted my head. “Didn’t they have Skittles in Connecticut?”
“They did but . . . Eliza doesn’t like refined sugar, or really anything that tastes good.” He grinned. “She had my best interests at heart,” he added in.
“I believe that. She seems nice.”
“Did she scare you tonight?” Jonah asked lightheartedly.
“She caught me off guard. I thought she might want to rumble or something.”
Jonah’s laughter filled the car. “You don’t know her. Eliza doesn’t believe in physical violence at all, which is why she never watched Rocky with me. Come to think of it, I don’t think she ever raised her voice the entire time we were together.”
“You sound disappointed.”
He ripped open his bag of Skittles with gusto. “A man wants his woman to have some passion in her, especially for their relationship. I don’t think she ever really cared enough to fight.”
“I’m sorry, but she does love you.”
Jonah grabbed a handful of rainbow candy. “In her way she does.” He tossed several candies in his mouth. “Mmm,” he let out a blissful sigh.
“Do you need a moment there?”
“You have no idea how much I missed this.” He closed his eyes to savor the moment.
“I think I do. I don’t even think you need me around.”
His eyes popped opened. “I’ll lean these seats back right now and show you how much I missed you.”
The temperature in the car shot up about a hundred degrees, and somehow it became a vacuum seal too. There was no air to breathe. “Uh . . .” I stuttered, “maybe later.” He had no idea how tempting he was.
“I’m going to hold you to that.” He grabbed another handful of candy and popped it in his mouth. The pleasure I expected to see never came, instead his brows knit together. “Wait, something tastes different. Where’s the lime flavor?”
I laughed. “Didn’t you know they replaced the lime with green apple?” I remembered when that happened a few years ago. I’d thought of Jonah and how disappointed he would probably be about it. The green ones were his favorite.
“What?” He grabbed the bag and scanned it with a look of horror on his face. “Why would they do that? I’m calling to complain, or start a petition.”
I smiled at him, holding back my urge to run my hands through his hair and take him up on his offer to lean the seats back. Instead, I took his hand. “Maybe that can wait. Why don’t you tell me about the last nine years?”
He set the Skittles on the console between us. “You want to know about Eliza.”
“Yes, but mostly about you. You’ve changed.”
“I suppose I have. Fatherhood does that to you. And,” he hesitated, “not being true to yourself.”
“I might know a little something about that.”
He tapped my nose. “Regardless, you’re still irresistible.”
I bit my lip. “We’re focusing on you.”
“All right, but I expect you to do the same for me. Deal?”
“Okay,” I whispered.
He turned down the volume to the movie we weren’t paying attention to. “What do you want to know?”
I thought for a minute. “If it didn’t work out with someone as put together as Eliza, why in the world do you think it would ever work out between us?”
He pulled my hand up to his heart and held it firmly against his defined chest. I could feel the steady rhythm of his heart. “First of all, Eliza may be more put together in some respects, but not in all the ways that count. She’s careful to the extreme, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. And she struggles to see outside of herself—to love those she’s closest to.”
“Just like me.”
Jonah’s face scrunched. “Not at all. You easily love others more than yourself. Your problem is you don’t believe you deserve to be loved, which is absurd. But I get it, considering who your mother was and that your father abandoned you.”
“So why did you choose Eliza?” I wanted to deflect any comments away from my own issues. At least for now. I was waiting to get a professional opinion.
He stared out into the distance at Rocky, who was now in bed with his wife, handing her an anniversary gift. A nine-year anniversary gift to be exact. Weird to think it could have been our nine-year anniversary. “Because in some ways she was like you. She’s beautiful and she sees the world differently than most; she has a zest for life, but in a different way than you. But mostly, I chose her because she was different than you. She’s a planner, as in a hyper planner, and at the time I needed someone to help me not focus on you. Looking back, she took me on a ride, and I got caught up in it, in her. She can be persuasive.”
I believed that. Her voice alone would convince me to follow her.
