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Emily’s mouth tipped up at one corner. “Smooth.”
“That’s my middle name.”
We drew to a stop out front of Emily’s apartment building. “We can always rethink marketing strategy for The Stop,” she assured me. “There are a hundred different angles we can take, but I don’t think switching gears right now would be smart. There’s too much at stake with the tournament and the festival and announcing the new brewery, and we don’t want to confuse the messaging. Are you comfortable keeping things as they are for a while longer—at least until we get past Valentine’s Day—then we can put our heads together and devote the time required to be smart about this?”
My shoulders dropped as tension leached from my muscles. If Emily had insisted Will Kidd stay “open for business” to keep The Stop from going under, I’d have had to insist we find another way, even if it meant taking a hit to my income. My father had always put a quick buck before his family, was alwayschasing another dream or running another con and promising it would be the last time, but I didn’t want to be that kind of man. Seb needed me to be more than that, and so did I.
I gave Emily a hard hug. “Two more weeks? I can do that. Thanks for understanding.”
My step was lighter on my way to surprise Abbie at her class. Things had been good between us. Like really good. We hadn’t come right out and talked about us, but we’d settled into a routine that twelve months ago would have sent us both begging for our next hook-ups. We hadn’t said as much out loud, but I’d started to enjoy the domesticity of our life at the loft with Seb, and I believed Abbie did, too.
There might still be a line of pillows separating the two of us at night, but the real boundaries between us had shifted. And the way Abbie looked at me when I handed her a coffee before she had to ask, or I cuddled with Seb in the minutes before bedtime, wasn’t the same as the way she looked at me before. It was softer and more open, and it made me hope that the line she insisted we keep between us might not be there for much longer.
25
Will
I let myself intothe old hall behind the church at ten minutes to the hour, not knowing what to expect inside. The small foyer, with its rickety timber table piled with pamphlets and magazines, was empty, but a door stood ajar at the opposite end, and meditative music played on the other side of it. A baby squealed, then someone laughed, and I hesitated. I was curious enough to want to peek, but the proper thing to do would be to wait outside for the class to finish. I’d taken two steps back when Abbie’s voice reached my ears, and before I knew it, I was standing at the open door and looking in.
There were about eight women on rubber mats arranged around the room, each one with a baby, though they were all different ages. Most were at least as small as Seb, some younger. One or two were old enough to crawl away the moment their mothers moved into a different yoga position. One kid made a game of it, darting away at every chance, only for his mother tolatch onto an ankle and slide him back. The purity of his belly laughs made me smile.
And there, at the far end of the room, stretched out on her back with Seb draped lazily along her torso, was Abbie. Her eyes were closed, and she had her arms wrapped around the baby, one palm moving up and down his back in soothing sweeps. They looked so at ease together that I found it hard to swallow, but I couldn’t look away, so I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned against the door frame to watch.
“Okay, everyone.” Abbie’s voice was smooth and melodic as she opened her eyes to give Seb a grin, shifting him to a seated position on her hips and bending her knees. “Let’s move into bridge pose with the baby on your pelvis. Press into the soles of your feet and lift your hips, holding onto baby nice and tight to keep him safe.”
With her grip on my son, Abbie raised her hips and relaxed down again, smiling and murmuring to Seb the entire time. She completed a few more reps, directing the class to do the same in that pretty, calming voice she never used around me before moving into another position. This one set Seb stomach down along her raised shins, “working the core muscles”, as Abbie explained to her students. They held this position for a short spell, Abbie swaying her legs forwards and back a little after noticing that Seb seemed to enjoy it. Abbie’s eyes never left his, not for a second, and she never stopped smiling. In fact, sheglowed.
The lump in my throat wouldn’t go away, only now I had a weird catch behind my ribs, too, making it hard to take a full breath. I pushed away from the doorjamb and rubbed my open palm over my chest.
I didn’t get many opportunities to watch Abbie with Seb, and never without her being aware of my presence. We’d fallen into a routine where we tag-teamed the baby duties, which meantwhen Abbie was with Seb, I was working and vice-versa. Other times, the three of us were all together, or Seb was sleeping. I trusted Abbie with my life, and I’d seen enough to know Seb was always safe in her care, but I’d been too distracted and too exhausted to give any thought to whether the two of them had formed any kind of bond. I’d been too busy worrying about the kind of parentIneeded to be that it didn’t occur to me that with all the time they spent together, these two would develop a closeness, too. On some level, I probably didn’t think about it because Abbie had never been open to children in general, but watching them now, I realised my mistake.
Abbie loved Seb. Anyone watching them now would see that as clear as day, and Abbie loving my son only made me love her more.
Abbie instructed the class to stretch out on their mats and settle their babies on their chests, and as they moved into a deep breathing exercise, I backed away from the door and sank into one of the chairs lining the far wall. I needed deep breathing exercises, and by the time the class was over and the last student had filed past me, my head was clearer. But something had shifted on a cellular level, and there was no undoing it now.
Abbie walked through the door pushing the pram, her rolled-up yoga mat tucked under one arm, and when her eyes fell on me, her face lit up in a way that decimated me. “Hey, you. I thought we were meeting you at the loft.”
Her eyes traced my face, and whatever she saw there made her expression fall. “Oh, no. The meeting was awful, wasn’t it? Shit. I’m so sorry, Will, but I’m sure we can figure out a way to get those stubborn old bastards off your back.” She grimaced and shifted her yoga mat. “I don’t know how, but—”
“No.” I stood up and took a step closer, running my hand over the top of Seb’s soft curls as I passed him on my way to Abbie onthe other side of the pram. “The meeting was fine. Better than fine. They’re really happy with the way things are going.”
“Oh.” Her forehead furrowed with puzzlement. “Well, good. So, you came down here to check out the class?” The line between her brows deepened, and she nibbled her lip before asking, “What did you think?”
I took another step towards her. “I only caught the last few minutes, but you looked great up there.”
Her shoulders dropped, and she grinned. “Of course we did.” She reached down to pick up Seb’s hand and rubbed the back of it with her thumb. “Did you hear that, Seb? Daddy came all the way down here to see you in your first yoga class.”
Abbie glanced at me from underneath her lashes, her pink lips twitching because she knew what the wordDaddyin her mouth did to me, but I wasn’t playing games anymore.
In three long, measured steps, I closed the distance between us and plucked the yoga mat from her arm, setting it against the wall.
She looked once at the mat, then at me. “What’s going on?”
Slowly because I wanted to remember this, gently because I wanted her to know I meant it, I cradled Abbie’s head in my hands, took one more step to remove the final bit of distance between us, and kissed her.
I felt her intake of breath as her muscles tensed, but I wouldn’t let myself pull away. Nerves couldn’t get the better of me now. I moved my mouth over hers, capturing her top lip first, then the bottom. Beneath my fingers, her jaw began to move, and triumph flamed in my blood.
Hesitantly at first, she met my nips and sweeps with the gentle, nervous touch of her soft lips. I brushed my mouth back and forth, breathing her in as much as I tasted her, then went back to kissing her, greeting the warm, wet tip of her tongue with mine when she offered it to me. Her hands skated up overmy hips and sides, to my shoulders and down my arms, where she circled my wrists and didn’t let go. The warmth of her skin felt like coming home, and we melted into the first kiss we were always meant to have.
