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“Because.”
He frowns. “Well, stop.” He helps me stand and moves me out of the way to rinse the tub for me. “Why are you upset? Over us?”
“Sort of. There’s also the fact that Jackson agreed to spend the night at Henry’s this weekend.”
Elias turns to face me with surprised eyes. “Can we table that until we’ve talked about us?” He holds out his hand and I take it with a nod. He leads me to the living room where we sit on the couch. He takes both my hands in his. “I’m sorry. I never should’ve done what I did. I’ll do everything I need to do to make this work, for you to trust me, for me to work on my trust issues. And I won’t ask about your writing because I shouldn’t know about it to begin with; you can tell me whenever you’re ready or not.”
“Elias,” I interrupt. “I’m eighty-five percent sure I’m still committed to making this work. For right now, can you just hold me? That’s all I really want.”
He doesn’t say another word. He smiles a little and pulls me against him. Within seconds, I begin to relax. Today—hell, this past week—has been really stressful. Elias oozes comfort and that’s exactly what I want and who I need it from. I need to return to my state of mind where I trust a little more and easier and I had more faith in Elias. That’s how I’ll make it through this.
And I want to make it through this with him.
Things have improved slightly since that night with Raelynn. I’ve been making sure to grovel in all the right ways, hopefully. I’ve bought her chocolate. Made her get a massage before I left on this road trip. Cooked for her. Waited on her at the house. Got her car detailed. I even made her promise to take my credit card and go on a shopping spree for herself while I’m gone. She can buy new clothes, jewelry, shoes, purses, whatever she wants.
But I think I’ll need to do something big to completely win her back over. Maybe Raelynn needs some grand gesture to show her exactly how completely invested I am to making this work. What worries me is that it may be too much for Raelynn, that it may overwhelm her. An overwhelmed Raelynn won’t work in my favor.
What to do? That’s the question. My end goal is for us to move on and a nice bonus would be hearing her tell me she loves me, too. She might not be there yet, though, so I probably shouldn’t get my hopes up on that.
After our game, which we win, we’re put on a plane to fly to our next stop. Some guys are smartly using this time to sleep. But then, there are guys like me, Brayden, Collin, Marc, and Noah that aren’t. I shuffle a deck of cards, glancing at each of them with a raised eyebrow, silently asking if they want to play.
“We should be sleeping,” Brayden says.
“But we aren’t,” I point out.
“Might as well entertain the poor sap,” Marco says with a shrug of his shoulders. “And it’s Uno. We’ll be asleep in no time.”
I ignore that and get the game set up as everyone agrees to play. I let us get into the rhythm of things before I drop my plea for help. “If I wanted to make a grand gesture, what should I do?”
Four pairs of eyes snap to attention and focus on me. There’s a short stint of silence before Noah offers his advice first.
“Propose.”
I shake my head. “Can’t do that yet.”
“Profess your love on the jumbotron?” Collin suggests.
Brayden rolls his eyes at that. “Tell her you no longer want her to be your nanny.”
“Since when are you the relationship expert?” Marco teases him.
“What do you mean?” I ask Brayden, ignoring Marc. “You want me to fire her? How will that help?”
“My girlfriend is your girlfriend’s closest friend, which means whether I want to know what’s going on or not, I know. If she’s so important to you, eliminate that barrier. Make her family in whatever way you can right now, not part-family, part-employee. You’re that serious about her, right? She’s raising your daughter for fuck’s sake, EJ. You want Bree to call her mom one day? For Jackson to be her stepbrother? Do you plan to keep them around for the rest of your life? Start there.”
Well, damn. I knew I wanted her, but I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I hadn’t thought about it in that way, where we’d have a family together and could possibly even add on to our family later on down the road. No, I was too busy wondering if she wanted that with Henry when she hasn’t shown me any inclination of that.
My mind whirls with all the different possibilities and ideas. A list forms in my mind of all the things I should do. Raelynn needs to see that I trust her. I need to do everything short of asking her to be my wife and Bree’s mom. I feel like I’m on the right track, though I’m still not exactly sure what my grand gesture will be. And something tells me I need to call my mom and talk to her.
We play one game of Uno before putting the cards away. By that time, we’ve landed and it’s time to switch from the airplane to the hotel for the night. I sleep restlessly and dream of various scenarios where I pour my heart out to Raelynn and she walks away every time. Before I bother to shower in the morning, I call my mom.
“Good morning, Elias James,” she answers. “How’s my granddaughter?”
I laugh. “I’m assuming she’s fine. I haven’t called Raelynn yet.” Mom tsks in disappointment, but I say, “I might’ve fucked up with Raelynn.”
Mom sighs. “I knew this would happen.”
“I don’t need an I told you so, Ma. She didn’t run and she doesn’t plan to, so you weren’t right anyway.” I explain a little bit of what happened, that I invaded her privacy and didn’t trus
