“You don’t believe me.” Not a question, but a statement. Kevin wasn’t certain what she was feeling, but he knew for a fact she wasn’t taking him seriously.
How could he blame her when he’d never given her any indication of his feelings? Never even tried.
Tears streamed openly down her dirt-streaked face, yet she’d never looked more beautiful to him. He felt as if he were seeing her for the first time. Through his new perspective, perhaps he was.
He felt his future slipping away. He reached out and placed his hand over her rounded stomach. “Have you felt the baby kick yet?” he asked.
She shook her head then obviously changed her mind and nodded. “Sort of. Little butterfly flutters.”
“Can I feel?”
“It’s too soon to feel it from the outside. Why are you doing this?”
“Because it’s past time. And I don’t want to lose you. Have I?” He needed the answer as much as he feared it. Probably more.
“You do know how to drop a bombshell,” she muttered. “You love me?”
“Enough to take a look at myself through your eyes. Enough to walk into one of those Al-Anon meetings. Twice. Enough to lay down the law with Max. I told him he has family waiting but only if he sobers up. Otherwise he’s completely on his own.” His gut clenched with guilt again. “I can get through it, but it would be so much easier if I wasn’t alone. Did I jump the gun telling Max he had us waiting?”
“Is this another ‘I’ll give it my best shot at being a family’?” she asked.
He spread his hands out in front of him. “Think about everything I just said. Does it sound like an I’ll try or I’ve already done it?” he asked. “I didn’t even think of coming to you before I’d taken all the first steps on my own.” And he’d risked losing her in the process.
He heaved a groan. “There’s nothing else I can say. The rest is up to you.”
He wondered if his heart had ever beat so fast or so loud. As he sat waiting, he got an inkling as to what he’d put Nikki through these past months. If, as Janine believed, she loved him.
“The first time I met you I thought I fell in love. At first sight, if you can believe that.” She glanced down as she spoke. “Later, I chalked it up to a crush. I had to, since you never spared me a second glance. Until that night.”
“When everything changed.”
She nodded. “I didn’t come to your apartment for that, but I didn’t wake up with regrets, either. If anything I woke up with a sense of hope despite the fact that I’d just lost my brother. I thought, really believed I had a chance. That we had a chance.”
“And then I took off.”
“And reality set in. It’s taken months, but you finally convinced me—you couldn’t come around, couldn’t be part of a family. And now...” She pounded the grass in frustration. “I can’t read you, I don’t understand you, and I’m afraid if I let myself believe, I’m setting myself up for more pain.”
And that pain was more than evident, in her eyes and in her drawn expression. In the recent past, as recent as yesterday, he’d have agreed with her and walked away. But no more.
He reached for her, grasping her shoulders and turning her to face him. “I can’t do any more than promise, and remind you that the things I’ve said to you today, I’ve never been able to say to you bef—” He didn’t get to finish.
Nikki threw herself into his arms, pushing him backward onto the grass.
“So this means... what exactly?” he asked once he’d caught his breath.
“I love you too. I always have. Those dreams never died; they just got a little tarnished, you know?”
He brushed long strands of hair out of her face. “I thought I drove you away for good.”
“I never went far. Not really. And as for Max, I’m the one who told you we were a family.”
At the mention of his father’s name, he exhaled a long groan. “I nearly went back to his apartment about ten times today.”
“I can’t even begin to imagine how hard it was, but you did the right thing. And I’ll be there for you every step of the way.”
“I always knew that, in here.” He pointed to his heart. “But in my head, I knew I’d tested you too many times to deserve forgiveness.”
She rested her body on top of his. For the first time in awhile, he felt her heat and her curves flush against him. The swell of her fuller breasts and the curve of her stomach pressed into him. He wrapped his arms around her waist. “You feel good,” he whispered in her ear.