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“Do you want me to stop?” she asked, the words emerging on a pant.
“Want isn’t the right word.” He had to force the words from his mouth through gritted teeth as he removed her hands from his pants.
“I’m sorry.” She looked horrified. “Oh god… I’m so sorry. I thought…”
“You thought right,” he said. “I just…”
I need to think about whether I’ll survive you again. About whether I’ll be able to pick up the pieces when you walk away again.
He shook his head. “I think we should think about this, that’s all. Take some time.”
She was under a lot of pressure, probably suffering from PTSD after what had happened in the parking garage, fearful for her safety and Leo’s.
He didn’t want her to want him out of some kind of savior complex. Didn’t want her to want him because she was scared and lonely.
She drew in a long breath and nodded. “You’re right.”
A strand of hair had come loose from her ponytail and he reached out and tucked it behind her ear. Even that didn’t feel safe, but he had to touch her.
“If you want me to go, I’ll understand,” he said.
She shook her head and reached for his hand. She looked up into his eyes, and it took every ounce of willpower he had not to take her to bed then and there. “Stay. Seriously. The guest room is yours.”
He lifted her hand to his mouth and opened her fingers, then kissed the center of her palm.
She sucked in a breath, like the contact was painful.
He had to get out of there before he changed his mind. Before he threw caution to the wind with the same woman twice in one lifetime. If he was going to do that, he wanted to do it with some forethought, not because his heart was making demands, to say nothing of a less romantic part of his body.
“Goodnight, Gabriella.”
He was almost to the hall when he heard her voice behind him.
“Goodnight.
18
Gabriella sat in front of a half-eaten plate of French toast and took a drink of her coffee, watching through the back window where Logan and Leo kicked a soccer ball on the back lawn.
Well, Leo was trying to kick it. He still missed sometimes, his hand-eye coordination still developing.
She’d been shocked to wake up and discover that it was after nine a.m. Leo usually got her up no later than seven on the weekends, and since Bea was off, that put Gabriella on breakfast duty.
She usually didn’t mind. Bea would happily have come in on Saturdays, but Gabriella loved her time with Leo, loved taking the morning slow before he left for his day and night with Nathan.
But sometimes, well, sometimes, she was tired. Her schedule was grueling. The demands of her job together with single parenthood were all-consuming, even with Bea’s help and Nathan being so close. She didn’t know how single parents with less help did it. They were unsung heroes in her opinion.
At first she’d been alarmed by the fact that Leo hadn’t woken her, by the fact that his bed was empty, but then voices had drifted up the stairs — Leo’s small one and Logan’s deeper one. She’d found them in the kitchen, Logan helping Leo put on his shoes. Breakfast was over and Logan had promised to take Leo outside to practice with the soccer ball so he could play at recess.
She’d mouthed a thank you to Logan, who’d only smiled and told her there was leftover French toast in the fridge before opening the door and ushering Leo outside.
Now she sat at the island and looked around the kitchen, which was spotlessly clean.
It would have been tempting to assume Logan was on his best behavior and trying to impress her, but somehow she didn’t think so. This had always been Logan: kind, thoughtful, quietly independent.
Their moment in the kitchen the night before flooded her memory. She’d thought about little else, if she wanted to be honest with herself, and it seemed like now was the time for honesty.
Part of her had wondered if she’d still feel the physical spark with him. It had been two decades since he’d touched her, and it had been easy to convince herself that the memory of his kiss, his touch, had been overblown, a figment of her imagination, a remnant of the hormonal teenagers they’d both been.
