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“Mommy, you’re going too fast,” my sweet boy said from beside me as we hurried toward my car.
Feeling like I’d just failed my son yet again, I slowed down right before we reached the passenger side door and I squatted down so I was eye level with him. But as I did, suddenly a large man loomed over us causing my pulse to pick up and race frantically through my entire body.
“Brin,” Rowan said in a deep voice.
That’s it, just Brin? Hearing him call me by the nickname he always had in the past in that alluring voice of his caused a shiver to race down my spine. I was pissed and confused at the way my body was responding to him after all the years that had passed.
I kept hold of my son's hand and stood, Rowan, towering over me by many inches. He was way too close for my liking and I needed to get out of there.
“Mommy,” my son started as he tugged on my hand. “Who is that?” He pointed in Rowan’s direction with his free hand and I saw the big man wince. But if the question bothered him, that was on him.
For me the inquiry was like dumping a bucket of cold water over my head and had reality hitting me hard. Rowan didn’t know my son and sweet Zander didn't know him.
“Nobody, baby,” I said looking down at my little guy. But as soon as the words left my mouth, guilt plagued me, and the lie that had rolled off my lips hurt me to the core.
“That has never been true and you know it,” he said, causing my head to snap back up and my eyes to meet his. Eyes that looked guilty, sad, and determined. It was the determination that scared me most because Rowan was good at getting what he wanted. But he was also good at running away.
I lifted my chin in defiance. “It has been now for many years,” I told him. “Our friendship or anything else walked right out the door with you the last time you did.”
The air around us intensified and was charged with so many emotions, some of them unwanted. Anger and sadness took center stage, but I couldn’t deny the third that was still ever-present even after all those years.
Desire.
That was the one I didn’t want to exist and sadness right behind it. It seemed to me that with our history and the time that had passed, that anger was the only thing I should be feeling as he stood in front of me.
But as I stared into his intense, dark, almost black eyes, which reminded me of a smooth Onyx rock, I knew he wasn’t the only one to blame for how things turned out and the way I felt. I didn’t have time to deal with that right then, I had to take care of my son.
“We have to go.” I picked Zander up and opened the back door to put him in the car.
“Where are we going, Mommy? We don’t have a house no more.” The almost worried and sad tone in his voice made me want to cry. It was my job now to take care of him.
Alone.
“Brin, what is he talking about?”
I frantically tried to get my son buckled up while avoiding the question that Rowan had fired off at me, his tone demanding an answer. But I didn’t owe him anything. Not when he’d ghosted us and hadn’t bothered to care before. I’d come to see Gyth, not him.
Now I had nobody or nowhere to go.
Then before I could stop him, my son blurted out more classified information. Meaning, it wasn’t meant for the man that was standing at my back, an intensity that was hard to ignore, rolling off him in waves.
“Our house burned to the ground and my Mommy’s work too. Poof, it is all gone,” Zander said dramatically, both his hands making a motion like something had exploded and was instantly gone. Which it was, but I hated that he could describe it so well.
We hadn’t been there at the time of the fire which was a blessing because as sad as my son was to lose all his toys and stuff, he hadn’t had to experience the actual event.
The one that tookeverythingfrom us.
I finished securing Zander, then shut the door and turned around intent on getting to the car to the driver’s side so we could leave, but I froze when Rowan spoke.
“Brin, please. Let me help you.”
My stomach tightened at his request and I wondered how it was possible to dislike someone so immensely and be attracted to them at the same time. Because why would he want to help now? And why did he have to be so damn good looking?
Everything about Rowan was mysterious and sexy, from his midnight-black hair on his head and face, and dark skin, to his rippling muscles that bulged from his short-sleeved white t-shirt. Looking at him made my belly flutter.
It had always been that way. My husband was my best friend and my world for so many years, but the man standing mere inches from me had always been the one I had been in love with since the day my eyes took him in.
He’d never been available though.
