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They drifted to bed where they lay awake, facing each other in the dark, as she listened to Gage’s plans for his impending fatherhood. There was no subject too inane, from the color of the walls in his son’s new room to what kind of car Gage would buy him when he turned sixteen.
Cass smiled and bit back a suggestion that he let his son pick out his own car. Far be it from her to interrupt his flow. This was his way of working through it and her job was to be there for him. It was nice to be needed by the one man who had never needed her. Heady even.
“Thank you,” he said abruptly. “For coming on short notice. For holding my hand. For not heaping condemnation and a sermon on top of me. I had to figure this out and I couldn’t have without you.”
What, like he was expecting her to shake her finger at him and give him a lecture about accepting responsibility? She shook her head. “You’re giving me too much credit. I just responded to a phone call. You did the hard part.”
“No. I don’t do hard.” His voice went scratchy but he blazed ahead. “I get out before anything difficult happens. Back at your house, that was supposed to be about burning off the tension so we could focus. It wasn’t supposed to be the start of something. I don’t do relationships. You know that, right?”
That was the first time she’d ever heard him admit he had a commitment problem. Admitting it was the first step toward curing it, right?
“Yeah. I knew it wasn’t anything more than sex.”
“What if I want it to be?” he asked, sincerity warming his voice and curling through her in the dark. It was as if he’d read the same question in her heart and voiced it out loud.
“What if you do?” she heard herself repeat when she should have been saying so what? Or this is goodbye right now. “Have things changed?”
Please, God. Let that be true and not a huge mistake.
His hand found hers, threading their fingers together, and the rightness of it drifted through her like a balm. She could listen to him talk all night long if this was the topic.
If she hadn’t gotten in the car when he asked her to come to Austin, she’d never have gotten to watch this monumental shift in Gage.
“So many things,” he repeated quietly. “I’m not even sure how yet. The formula... I wasn’t going to give up. I wanted it and I was going after it. But somewhere along the way, I started to want more.”
The earth shifted beneath the bed, sliding away faster and faster as her mind whirled, turning over his words, searching for the angle, the gotcha. “What are you saying, Gage? That you want to keep seeing each other?”
He spit out a nervous laugh. “Why not? I like spending time with you. I’m pretty sure the feeling is mutual or I’m much worse at this kind of thing than I think I am.”
“You have a lot going on right now,” she said cautiously. “Maybe this isn’t the best time to be talking about this.”
“I am worse at this than I thought if I’m not making myself clear. Let’s see how it goes. I’ll come up to Dallas. You drive to Austin. We talk on the phone during the week. Maybe a video chat late at night that involves some dirty talk. I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.”
She could envision it. Perfectly. Sexting during a conference call and naughty emails and rushing to throw her overnight bag into her Jaguar for a Friday night dash to the Hill Country in anticipation of a long weekend in Gage’s bed.
But for how long? And what would happen when he ditched her again, as he surely would? “I don’t know how to do that either.”
His sigh vibrated through her rib cage. “Yeah. Robbie changes everything.”
That was so not what she’d meant. “Why, because you think you being a father is a turn-off? Think again.”
“It should be. My life will never be the same. It’s ridiculous to even say something like ‘let’s see how things go.’ I already know where I’m going. Play dates, preschool, the principal’s office and Cub Scouts.”
He was committing to his child. Didn’t that give her some hope he might want to commit to her, too?
“Maybe it’s not so ridiculous.” Had that just come out of her mouth? It was madness. But honest.
“Stop humoring me,” he said flatly. “I get it. Everything is up in the air, which is unfair to you. Besides, you might want to think about whether you’d like to be in the same boat as Briana. I don’t know how she got pregnant. I used protection every single time.”
