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What?
Maggie leans over and pats my knee. “Becky loves you like her own, Jarett. Remember that. Ah, I’ll go make myself some tea and watch my favorite show. Off you go, kids. Sleep well.”
I blink at her as the buzzing in my ears subsides and the pressure in my chest starts to ease. Wait a sec. I’m staying the night?
Not sure when that was decided. Did Gigi ask me to stay?
Not that I’d object, but her mom doesn’t, either?
“Come on, let’s go.” Gigi untangles herself from me, and I shiver. She gets up and holds out her hand to me, smiling. “Unless you don’t want to stay?”
There’s nothing I want more in the world right now. Stay in this house.
Stay with her.
So I take her hand and heave myself to my feet, then stagger after her upstairs.
“You have a guest room?” I ask, buying time between climbing steps for my creaking knee to bend and unbend.
“No.”
I’m so stunned by this new turn that I climb the rest of the stairs not feeling my knee at all. “Gigi…”
“Don’t worry,” she says as she pulls me into a room—her room, I realize, with posters on the walls and a hot pink comforter. “Mom is relaxed. She trusts me. And she likes you.”
“Yeah.” I look around as she tugs me determinedly toward her bed. “That’s cuz she doesn’t really know me.”
“It doesn’t take much to realize you like someone,” she says, turning to face me, her eyes very bright. “Just a few clues. And I have mine.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gigi
I can’t believe Jarett’s in my room, sitting on my bed. Can’t believe I brought him here, that he agreed to stay, that I went out to take those cakes in the first place with barely any hopes at all, and now here we are.
Side by side.
His words replay in my ears, and I keep seeing the way he looked at me, and at my mom while he explained why nobody could ever want him. How determined he was to protect his foster mom, not adopted after all, from even the possibility of an idea she might have done something wrong, or that he isn’t grateful.
Or that he doesn’t love her. He does love Becky Lowe, I could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice. He thinks of her as his mom, but won’t allow himself to believe it. Correction—to believe he deserves it.
He’s totally breaking my heart, and whoa, slow down, Gigi. You were only out hunting for information on him, not forgiving him and throwing yourself into his arms.
Okay, okay. Deep breaths.
And that’s another mistake, because underneath the scent of my rose candles and that of clean soap coming from his borrowed clothes, I can smell him.
I can always smell him, that indefinable spice of his sweat that is so… Jarett, and it makes my heart pound with anticipation and my belly clench with desire.
Time to put some distance between us, but before I do, his hand darts out and grabs mine.
His thick lashes lift, and his eyes meet mine. “Thank you. For bringing me here. For the chocolate and cake. For…” He looks down at my hand, turning it over on his big palm, as if thinking to find the words there. “For everything.”
“You’re always welcome in my home, Rett.”
And crap, that’s not what I’d meant to say. It’d should have been rather something along the lines of “You’re welcome.” Something neutral.
Tonight I keep saying things I’m not supposed to. But who am I kidding? That’s what always happens when he’s around.
