Page 74 of Playing With Temptation

He started to pull away but I had something else to say so I stopped him.

“Thank you for forgiving me.”

“Rae—”

“I know you said we both made mistakes. But we didn’t. I did. So, please let me have this.”

“Okay, baby, I’ll let you have this as long as you understand, I did make a mistake. A big one. I let you get away. I let you push me away. I perpetrated my own brand of stupidity and let my pride stand in the way of going down to Florida and explaining to you what you saw in the bar that night was not what you thought you saw. That was ego. Pride. Immaturity. We’re no longer kids fumbling through life. We know what we lost. And baby, neither of us will make that mistake a second time.”

He had that right.

“Are we eating or are you planning on starving the children?” Colson yelled from the kitchen.

Jase rolled his eyes.

“We good?” he asked.

“So good.”

He still didn’t let me go.

He only did so after he dipped back in for another kiss. This one full on my mouth, lasting longer than the other lip touches, and he ended his with a smooth glide of his tongue over my bottom lip.

“I love my kids more than my own life, and there’s not a day during Shay’s week I don’t miss them,” he weirdly mumbled against my mouth. “But right now I wish like fuck they were with her, so I could drag your ass upstairs and celebrate properly.”

I did, too.

“Saturday,” I promised.

“That’s six days away,” he grumbled as he stepped away from me.

“Five days,” I corrected. “Monday’s almost over.”

Jase grabbed my hand and held it as he walked through his living room, me trailing beside him.

“Fucking torture,” he groused.

I couldn’t argue his assessment, so I didn’t.

With Jase sitting to my left, Juni to my right, the boys across the table, I experienced something profound.

Something I never dreamed would happen, but like Jase said, it was a dream come true.

Family dinner.

Our first.

It had happened by accident.

Or maybe it was divine intervention.

Or maybe this was just the way it was supposed to work out for me and Jase.

Maybe if we’d stayed together, I never would’ve learned how to be me, Rainy Cross, instead of who I had been, Jase’s girlfriend, Rainy Cross.

Maybe I never would’ve learned how to be strong on my own.

There would be no Lucas and that was something I couldn’t fathom.