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“Stopped trying to find love?”
A smile pulls at his lips. “You don’t want to hear about the women I’ve loved, Daisy. I know you don’t.”
I sit up a little. “Yes, I do. I know you had a life before me.”
“Really?” His face twists in confusion as he stares at me from across the bench, and I realize that he has no idea my motives are twofold. On one hand, I want to know everything about Ronan Kade that I can possibly know for my own lovestruck curiosity.
But also, because I know somewhere in those stories is a memory of my mother that I have never seen, and Ronan is a vault I’m dying to open.
“Yes, really,” I reply with confidence.
“To be honest, Daisy,” he says carefully. His hand reaches up to tug softly on one of my unruly blonde waves that’s fallen out of the clip holding it all back. “Nearly a decade ago, I stopped trying to find love to replace what I had lost, and that’s exactly when I did find it. But it didn’t work out anyway, so then I really gave up.”
“What happened?” I reply, eagerly, hoping it’s my mother he’s talking about.
“She already had a life that didn’t include me. And as much as I wanted her, I had to accept that ruining what she had was no way to love her.”
“Was she married?”
“No, she had a daughter.”
I have to hold in the gasp that wants to escape. I suspected this. I knew it was possible, but to hear him talk about her, knowing how much he loved her…it stings.
“It’s all right. That ship has sailed, and I’ve made peace with it. Can you imagine me now, though? If we had gotten married. Raised a child. You probably wouldn’t have seen me at Salacious.”
It’s taking everything in me to keep still, without crying as he talks, even while I know that the child he’s referring to is mostly likely me.
“Do you regret it?” I ask, my voice not more than a whisper.
“No,” he replies without hesitation. Then he leans forward and brushes his thumb across my cheek. “Just because I wanted her, doesn’t mean I deserved her. And it doesn’t mean we were meant to be. I loved her…a lot. But I refuse to live in the past. I’m here now, and this is exactly where I want to be.”
There is no holding back the tears that fill my eyes now. When he notices them, he pulls me closer until I’m sitting in his lap. Then he kisses my cheeks, one at a time, before kissing my lips. Without pushing or prying, he just holds me and strokes my hair as I cry.
In moments like these, my mother’s death still feels like an open wound. An open wound I’m trying to hide.
“Don’t be sad, baby girl. Not for me.”
“I’m not,” I reply. “I just…don’t want to go home tomorrow. I want to stay like this forever.”
“Me too, Daisy.”
“What’s going to happen to us back home?” My voice sounds weak and hesitant.
“Whatever you want to happen,” he replies.
I drag a breath into my lungs as I feel the relief of that response. Turning my head, I find his eyes with my own. “I want this. Us. Like this.”
His eyes shine with satisfaction as he brushes a wisp of hair off my forehead. “Me too.”
“What are you thinking about?” I ask, and the corner of his mouth tics upward.
Letting out a soft laugh, he kisses the side of my head and whispers, “Just all the rooms I want to take you in at Salacious when we get home.”
The blood in my veins grows hot with the thought.
After a few moments, we get up from the bench and walk hand in hand through the park, on our way back to the apartment. The people are staring again. But I’m not paying them any mind. All I’m thinking about is how good it feels to be his.
I don’t know when it started, but I feel like we’re about to embark on something that is guaranteed to be amazing. As long as it doesn’t all fall apart first.
