AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I shift again, old emotions stirring at the memory of holding a bottle to the mouth of a tiny, red-faced human while my friend lost his ever-loving mind in the next room. The ropes of past and present overlap, and I feel what I felt then: the crushing guilt of not having shown up for Celeste the same way when she was experiencing something similar.
When I look at her face now, there’s barely concealed pain in her eyes, and I know she’s thinking about it, too. Her struggle. My failure.
I focus on the ceiling fan above us. “After that happened, I decided I couldn’t risk… I didn’t want… You know—” I swallow the rocks in my throat. “I was terrified.”
“That your wife would die in childbirth?” she asks in a small voice.
“Yeah,” I say hoarsely. “Or that I would die and my kid wouldn’t have—” I choke off, unable to finish the sentence.
After a moment, she asks, “And your girlfriend left you when she found out?”
“Yeah.”
“I would have, too.” When she turns toward me, her eyes are fiery, her lips pinched. “That was incredibly selfish of you, to make that decision without her, especially if you loved her and wanted a life with her.”
I nod slowly. “I know. I guess that was the problem. I didn’t want to spend my life with her. I wasn’t thinking about her at all.”
I was thinking about you. About Jeremy. About your child.
Her laugh is short and stilted. I’m losing her, so I do the only thing I can and haul her back onto my chest, wrapping an arm tightly around her waist. She’s stiff as a board for close to a minute before a miracle happens: she melts against me.
I send a silent thank you into the universe for the power of a pinkie promise.
“I should shower,” she mumbles into my neck.
“Okay,” I whisper back, trailing my fingers down her spine and across the delicious curve of her ass.
Her breath goes choppy against my throat, her skin warming against mine. My dick stirs, oblivious to the emotional undercurrents of the last minutes.
“Lucas?”
“Mmm?” I barely keep a growl out of my voice.
“Can we have sex again? In the shower?”
Shock freezes me for a second. Then previously dormant superpowers awaken inside me and I’m off the bed and striding across the bedroom with a laughing Celeste draped over my shoulder.
I make her come twice in the shower, and by the time we kiss goodbye at my front door—our hair wet and our legs wobbly—I can’t think of any reason why we shouldn’t be doing this all day, every day.
I also can’t think of a reason why I’m not following her. Not picking up Damien with her, going home with her. But I retain enough sanity to keep those questions to myself.
I spend the afternoon catching up on work emails, touching base with my assistant, and finally calling Amanda, the saint housesitting for me in Seattle. When I tell her I’m not coming back, it feels final in a way it didn’t before.
“You can take the plants if you want.”
“Wow. You’re serious.”
“Yep. I’ll probably put the condo on the market at the end of next month.”
“You’re coming back to pack, right?”
I wince. “Don’t think so. I found one of those moving companies that does everything for you. I’ll pay you through next month to give you time to find a place. Sorry if this throws a wrench in your summer.”
“It’s fine.”
She clears her throat, a habit of hers that means she’s about to speak her mind whether or not I’ll like what she has to say. I rub my temples while I wait, knowing I probably deserve whatever’s coming.
“We both know you’re not giving up your whole life to open a summer camp and spend afternoons fly-fishing. Does this mean the terminally unavailable Lucas Adler has finally fallen in love?” Her voice is a smidge too tense, and guilt pinches in the vicinity of my solar plexus.
