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“Fuck. I don’t know but something other than fuck me.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Yeah you are. I get it, this is messy. Not what you expect but we can…”
“We can what? Date, get married, have a happy life? That’s not possible. You have a career, a life. In Crescent Falls. I have Gracie. She has to be my priority.”
Something flashed in his eyes. “You told me her father didn’t want her. That you would never want her to not feel love by him or anyone else.”
This was what I was avoiding. I didn’t want to have this conversation but he kept going.
“You disappeared after that night.”
“A few weeks after, yes.”
“And you said you barely remember what happened? Is that why you won’t tell me who Gracie’s father is?”
Because I don’t know with one hundred percent certainty.
“I never had unprotected sex with Dresden. He was always careful. But I also don’t have all the answers about that night. He admitted to taking me home. I know things happened. I ended up pregnant.”
“So you don’t know?”
“No and I don’t care about any of them. She’s mine. She’s perfect and she’s everything good that life has to offer. She has me. She’ll always have me. She’smine.”
“I would never argue who she belongs to. You’re the only person who deserves Gracie, they don’t. Fuck them.”
I settled into a shuddering breath. The way he looked at me now was the same way he’d looked at me before he knew any of this. No shame or sympathy for the poor unknowing woman who’d got taken advantage of and needed to be coddled.
So I believed him when he said he didn’t care about how she’d gotten here. But that didn’t change anything.
“I have to protect her from all this. I can’t do that if I’m with you. Not that I feel like you want to be with me or that you’re offering because I get it.”
“You get what?” He scowled at me.
“That there’s no room in your life for me with the past I have or Gracie.”
“Did I say there wasn’t?”
I exhaled heavily, attempting to untie the lump in my throat restricting my ability to speak. “You don’t have to. Saying it doesn’t change the truth. We don’t work.”
The pain settled in once again and I bit my bottom lip trying with everything in me to keep the dark dense fog of what I was feeling from seeping through.
“Cadee…” Val’s voice had me glancing over my shoulder and Jaasir lifting his eyes to the back door. “Gracie’s up.”
“Okay, I’m coming.”
She glanced at him then me, her expression dark and riddled with accusations. She kept her thoughts at bay instead and stepped back inside, softly closing the door.
“I have to go.”
I stood, brushing my palms over my thighs and turned my back to him but that voice. God that voice crawled over me.
“Can I come by later? After Gracie goes to bed?”
“I have to work tonight. Val will be with Gracie.”
“I’ll come by…”
