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I WAS STILLat Jonny’s house hours later. They’d invited me to stay for dinner after Cadence and I had given our report to the officer who’d come to the house. Even if they hadn’t, I might have invited myself. The last thing I wanted to do was walk away from Cadence right now. The way I saw it, the more people she had around her, the better.
Yeah, the officer said they were going to immediately send someone to talk to Guy again. That said, the emergency order hadn’t stopped him from showing up at the rink, so I doubted another visit from the cops would do anything to deter him. Not unless they were putting him in cuffs and taking him to jail. Didn’t sound like that was going to happen, though. Apparently, waving and blowing a kiss from a distance wasn’t quite enough.
It was entirely possible I didn’t want to leave more for me than for Cadence. To calm my own nerves. Seeing how pale Cadence had gone the instant she’d realized the bastard was standing there had left me shaken and unnerved. I needed to be near her. To assure myself that she was safe.
But now, the kids had been put in bed and it was late enough I ought to go home. Especially after the debacle of last night. We had morning skate early tomorrow, followed by a game, and I needed to be rested and in top form.
Jonny’s line of thought must’ve been headed in the same direction, because he stretched and yawned, glancing over at Sara. “Ready to call it a night?”
“You have no idea.” She glanced over at me and Cadence with bloodshot eyes. “Get all your late nights in while you don’t have kids. Everything changes once you do. It’s like someone flips a switch and you go from twenty-five to eighty, just like that.” She snapped her fingers to emphasize her point.
“I don’t think we’re planning on having kids any time soon,” I said without thinking.
The glare Jonny shot in my direction was enough to melt my bones.
Cadence stifled a snicker.
“You’d fucking better not be planning on making babies with my sister any time soon,” Jonny growled. “Not if you plan on ever being able to make more of them. We’re heading to Florida next week, you know. Lots of gators down there.” But then he took Sara’s hand and led her toward the stairs. “Be sure you lock up when he’s gone,” he said to Cadence.
Then Sara winked at me as they disappeared.
“You’re probably exhausted, too,” I said once we were alone.
“Yeah. It’s been one heck of a day.”
“So I should go?” I wasn’t sure why it came out as a question, but I said it again with much more certainty. “I should. Go, I mean. I should go home.” Okay, maybe there still wasn’t a lot of certainty in it. In fact, I was still hoping she would want me to stick around for a bit longer.
“You don’t have to. Not yet, at least.”
“No?”
“No.” She met my eyes. Hers had been all sorts of colors all afternoon and evening, mainly in the dark and intense brown realm since the incident with Guy. But now they were lightening. Shifting into something softer and almost green.
I remembered that night at the diner after the concert. They’d been green a lot that night. When she’d been relaxed with me. Not on her guard. They’d been golden during most of Sophie’s skating lessons, with hints of green peeking out every now and then.
But now? They were as green as I’d ever seen them, kind of like moss.
We were both sitting on the couch, but there was still a big gap between us where Connor had been. For the longest time following his bath, he’d stretched out between us, his head on Cadence’s lap and his feet bopping me in the nuts in time to the song he was singing about agilators. Wearing nothing but his Spider-Man Underoos, of course, because what else should a four-year-old wear at any point in the day? I hadn’t been sure if Jonny had orchestrated it or if it had been Connor’s idea, but it had very effectively kept me from trying to snake my arm around Cadence’s shoulders or her waist, to draw her closer to me.
Now that we were alone, it was all I could think of, though. Touching her. Being close to her. Holding her and breathing in her scent.
“I wanted to thank you,” she said.
I shook my head, baffled. “For what?”
“For thinking clearly this afternoon. For putting me in your car and driving me home, since my head had gone blank and I didn’t know what to do.”
“All I wanted was to take you away from that son of a bitch as soon as possible,” I said. The thought of what might have happened if she’d been alone had been racing through my head ever since. Would he have tried to talk to her? To grab her? What if he’d had a weapon of some sort? The way I saw it—the way Cadence had reacted to his presence—the asshole didn’t need a weapon. Simply showing up and surprising her was all it took. It left her shaken, terrified, unable to act.
She gave me a shy smile and ducked her head. “I’m just glad you were there.” Then, before I was prepared for it, she reached across the empty space between us and took my hand. Hers was tiny, barely bigger than her nephew’s, it seemed. Almost fragile. She twined her delicate fingers through mine, and my pulse jackhammered out of control.
This was the first time she’d been the one to make a move. Every other time, it had been me.
“I’m glad I was there, too,” I said, trying to keep the words steady, despite the fact that all my nerve endings were going haywire. I rubbed my thumb over the back of her hand, and she tugged. Not away, though. She drew me closer to her by an inch or so, which seriously set me into overdrive. “I always want to be with you.”
“I know you do.”
There was something odd in the way she said it. Something that left me wondering what was coming next.
