He wrapped his arms around my middle and squeezed me the way he did, completely and tightly, and unleashed those dreams about the future that weren’t so far-fetched anymore.
For a long time, I sat there on his lap with my arms around his shoulders and my face buried against his neck. Hell, I could probably fall asleep. I wanted our vacation to go on forever. Here, we existed in a bubble that had no room for others.
Back in the real world, I had to face Finn. I had to face my own demons—that’d gotten louder lately, because suddenly I had a lot more to lose. But there was guilt too. Guilt because I was stuck between two versions of myself, one who missed Grace every day and one who beat the shit out of the other version for that very reason. So I kept silencing the part of me that missed Grace.
Imagine if she came back from the dead?
I felt an ugly bitterness festering within me.
Shan talked about not deserving me, and here I was thinking that I would say no thanks if God knocked on my door and offered to return Grace to the land of the living.
“I don’t wanna share you,” I heard myself mumble. “You’re supposed to be all mine.”
Shan inched back and cupped my cheek. “What brought that on?”
I knew I had to tell him. He would understand. But that didn’t mean I could look him in the eye while I confessed. “Sometimes I feel like I can’t miss Grace because missing someone means you want them to come back, and…if that happened, you’d go back to her. But I loved her so fucking much that it’s turning me into a head case to think of her as the competition.”
“Oh.” He exhaled an unsteady laugh and hugged me hard. “My sweet boy. Do you want to hear something ironic?”
I half nodded, half shrugged.
“Last week when you said you saw a change in me after dinner, I’d been thinking about her,” he said quietly. “You and I had just spent an entire meal talking about local food cultures where oysters are popular—a dish neither of us likes, to boot—and it reminded me of her. She and I used to be similar. We could chitchat about a topic with mild interest, and then something set off a deeper discussion that we simply had to get to the bottom of before we moved on.” He leaned back and gripped my chin gently, making me look him in the eye. “I sat there and watched you, feeling ridiculously happy, and I kept thinking that I wanted to talk to Grace about you.”
“That’s…kinda bizarre.” I didn’t know how to feel yet, though my stomach knew. It was unsettled and packed with rocks.
“No, the bizarre part is that she would be the first one to understand and approve.” He smiled carefully and stroked my cheek. “There is no competition to speak of, I assure you. She knew where she had me—in the same place I had her. And if she’d suspected even for a second that there was or could be something between you and me, she wouldn’t have stayed silent.”
That was way too good to be true. “You’re bullshitting, right?”
He lifted a brow. “It’s happened four times in the past, Kellan. Four times she thought I had a ‘special connection’ with somebody, three times with men I’ve worked with—two Sons, actually—and one woman.”
I choked out a chuckle, ready to bawl like a baby. I needed this to be true. I needed to be able to mourn that woman the way she deserved.
“There wasn’t a jealous bone in Grace’s body, and even if I’d gone on to find someone I wanted to be in a relationship with while she’d been alive, the bond she and I shared would’ve been unthreatened.”
I swallowed hard and blinked past the stinging in my eyes. “You promise?”
“I promise.” He leaned in and kissed me briefly. “I understand your line of thinking, though. I’ve been down a similar path. If it weren’t for…everything, maybe you and I wouldn’t have been thrown into a situation together where this could happen.”
I nodded and looked down between us.
“But we’re here now.” He lifted my chin again. “We should be grateful for that, right?”
“I am.” I locked my arms around his neck once more and felt the tension drain away as he hugged me back. “Do I wanna know which Sons Grace thought you had a special connection with?”
He chuckled. “Considering she was dead wrong to the point where I couldn’t stop laughing, I’ll leave that one private. You know what they say, loose lips sink ships.”
I groaned and smacked his arm. “Stop quoting me, old man!”
He rumbled a warm, infectious laugh.
“I forgot we had this detour,” Shan said, displeased.
“It’s not a detour if it’s right along the route to our destination,” I pointed out. I killed the engine and jumped out of the SUV, peering up at the ten-story building in front of us. “You wanna stay here or come with?”