And fuck me.
At some point, Jonah looked over so sharply, I almost lost my train of thought. “How could you think I didn’t care about you enough? I wrote you… so many times. I couldn’t bear to look at my own face in the mirror, but I wrote you because I wanted you to know I didn’t forget about you.”
My stomach soured a little bit as I frowned. “You mean four times?”
He frowned. “I sent you thirty-two postcards, Len,” he claimed. “One every other week just about. I missed a few right after… and before I came, but I sent them. My nan bought them and put them in the mail for me while I was with her. I bought the rest. I sent half to the box on your website.” His gaze was bright. “I didn’t know what to say in them at first, but I meant what I wrote about missing you.”
Missing me? Something thick and sneaky went down the center of my chest and into my stomach. “I only got two to my address in France, and my friend who was staying with me forwarded another two. There wasn’t anything on those.” I squeezed my hand into a fist, thinking about what he’d said. “And the… the PO Box? On my website? I let it close a long time ago. More than a year. Maybe even closer to two years ago.”
Jonah’s face went soft, his forehead scrunching.
He’d kept sending me postcards? I did the math in my head even as my heart pumped and pumped like I was doing something strenuous. Thirty-two, one every two weeks, would be… the whole time we’d been apart. He’d kept on sending them to me?
And he’d still come?
If he would have just tried a little harder to give me a smoke signal or something….
Thirty-two?
“Jonah….”
His hand gave mine another squeeze.
“What are you doing?” Grandpa Gus whisper-hissed out of fucking nowhere, honestly scaring the living shit out of me so bad that I jumped.
The hand on mine didn’t go anywhere—mine didn’t either—but I felt Jonah’s fingers tighten in surprise for a second just as we both looked over our shoulders to find the man I had seen a million times in my life standing at the doorway with his hands on his hips.
“What are you doing?” I fought the urge to take my hand from under Jonah’s.
I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I had been the first one to slip my hand into his about two weeks after we’d met. After that he’d been the one to initiate it. He’d been the first man to ever hold my hand like that. In public. Other than my gramps and Peter. But I’d think about all that later.
Even with only the side lamp on, I could see Grandpa Gus frowning from where he stood, his beady little eyes narrowing as he glanced from Jonah to me and back again, like he’d caught us having sex right on the floor.
“I came to check on my pal,” Grandpa whispered, still looking like he was trying to figure out what the hell was happening, not knowing and still disapproving.
“We were putting her to sleep,” I replied, glancing back inside the crib to see that the little body under my hand had stopped squirming. Maybe as soon as she’d felt the evil presence coming up the stairs.
Grandpa’s mouth went flat as he hummed under his breath.
“I’m not giving him a hand job or anything,” I whispered, feeling Jonah’s fingers jerk on top of mine at the same time he hissed out, “Len!”
But what did the man at the doorway do?
He snorted. “If you get pregnant one more time—”
That had Jonah choking.
“—I get to name the baby,” Grandpa Gus finished. “And the fight is starting if you’re still planning on watching it and not standing there making kissy faces at each other.”
All I managed to do was shake my head as he turned around and disappeared down the hall, having fired his shots and done his damage, aka ruining one of the most intimate moments of my entire life.
God.
Was I that easy? I’d never been deprived of attention or affection. I didn’t regret for a second not having a steady romantic relationship at any point. I wasn’t used to relying on people who weren’t Grandpa Gus or Peter or even Luna.
But now all of a sudden, I wondered…
I wondered what it would be like to have someone hold my hand and smile at me and for me to be there to do the same for them in return. To have an… extra special friend that was only mine. To have a… partner.
Not just anybody, but this one right here, with his biceps touching mine. His bare skin over my own. A person who claimed he’d sent me thirty-two postcards over the last seventeen months.
This one whose smiles made me feel better, whose playfulness seemed so attuned to me, who I could look at all day every day.
“I wonder how long it will take me to get used to the way you two are with each other,” the softly voiced man noted a few seconds after my grandpa disappeared down the hall.
“A few years at least, I bet,” I told him, still holding on a little to that piece of me that was suddenly way too curious.
I didn’t move my hand and neither did he.
“Lenny,” he said quietly.
I looked away as I pulled a blanket over Mo with my free hand and swallowed up every inch of that sweet, sweet face. “What?”
“I meant to tell you before my mum arrived….”
My stomach churned. Why did I always have to expect the worst?
“I want to start sharing Mo’s existence.”
Oh. I had a feeling I knew what he meant, but…. “What does that mean?”
“I know my mum. She would have already called my dad and told him. Word will get out sooner than later. There will be questions, there’s no stopping that, but I don’t want to make it seem like I’m hiding her. She’s no secret, and I’m thinking we should front foot, that way we can control it so the journos don’t.”
I wanted to wonder why the hell people would care if he had a child or not, but I knew better than that. I had been on his social media accounts. His Picturegram account alone had four hundred thousand followers. I’d read some of the comments, his followers even got into arguments over his hair when he got it cut.
Of course some people would care about him having a daughter. He still sold papers. Magazines. Ads on websites.
“I’d like to keep the details as vague as possible, and I’m sure there will be criticism—on me—but this is between us. The whole story, at least. People will ask questions and look you up. I’ve got nothing to hide, but I don’t want to put you into a situation you wouldn’t want to be in either. I’ll try to protect you from the media as much as I can.”
Drawing my hands back toward me, I turned to Jonah and took in his face, tossing and turning his words over in my head. He didn’t want to hide Mo’s existence, and that made me happy. I understood why he hadn’t told anyone else about her until now. But how did we handle the rest of it?
I hadn’t taken into consideration what it would be like for him to suddenly show the world this adorable baby and say, “She is mine,” out of the blue and there not be any questions. Of course there were going to be questions. He was one of the most high-profile and highest paid players in a sport that was played in dozens of countries. He couldn’t just say “Surprise!” and have people roll with it.