“Maybe I’m the lucky one.” His quiet, serious response surprised her.
“How can you say that? I’ve upended your life. Forever. Any plans you had to have a traditional family life are just gone...”
“I’m here by choice.”
“I know.” She hesitated and then decided to finally say something that had been on her mind. “But the type of man you are... You really had no choice. You’re you, Wood. There’s no way you could in good conscience walk away from any child created through your actions, let alone your genes, if you were given the choice. Sometimes I think I was wrong to give you that choice. I put you in an untenable situation.”
The look of dismay that crossed his face was gone almost immediately. And engraved on her heart, too. “There is no way, ever, anywhere, that me having access to my son would be a bad thing. You’ve given me what’s probably going to be the greatest gift of my life, Cassie. As tough as this is, I’m happier now than I can ever remember being. I wake up in the morning eager for the day. Even when things go wrong, they don’t bother me as much...”
She smiled. And teared up a little. “I feel the same way,” she said. And not just because of Alan, though the baby was a huge part of it, too.
They’d ordered, a chicken salad for her and spaghetti for him, but still had no food. She didn’t have much of an appetite at the moment, either.
“Besides,” Wood said after a silence. “My life hasn’t been traditional since the day my father died. And my marriage most certainly wasn’t.”
It was the first time he’d sounded at all...dissatisfied...with his situation with Elaina and she was too tired to politely let it go.
“Why did you marry her?” she asked, jealousy prompting her need to know. To understand why, even after their divorce, Wood and his ex-wife lived together.
Was she in love with Wood? She couldn’t be, could she?
They’d never even kissed.
But when she’d hugged him, he’d hugged her back, and she’d never wanted him to let her go. Not just for the immediate comfort he’d offered, but because he was Wood. And when she was with him, she felt things no man had ever made her feel before.
Made her feel like he was the one she’d been waiting for.
He’d been playing with his straw wrapper. And then pulling his straw in and out of his nearly empty glass of tea. She’d made him uncomfortable.
Crossed one of those invisible lines.
Hopefully he’d come up with a way to save them from the current precipice. One or the other of them always di
d.
Together they were stronger than their individual selves.
“Elaina was Peter’s wife first.”
Cassie’s jerk of surprise knocked over her glass of water.
The cold liquid spreading between them was nothing compared to the spear he’d just put through her heart.
The man had actually married his brother’s wife. She’d heard about a Bible story growing up and read a few historical romance novels as a college student where men did that. But in real life? Wood was that guy.
And she got what he’d been trying to tell her all along. The way he tended to her, was right there doing all the right things, making her feel understood and cared for...that wasn’t about her in particular. It was just Wood.
He’d married his brother’s wife. And even when the relationship had ended, he’d still provided a home. Support.
Because that was Wood.
And if she slept with him out of an overflowing of emotion, acute attraction, yes, but...she couldn’t be sure some of her feelings weren’t an overabundance of hormones, or deep caring because the man was her child’s other biological component...and if she slept with him and then later discovered that what she’d felt hadn’t been more than the sum of all that, that she wasn’t in love with him on a partner level—he wouldn’t walk away.
He’d be right there. For Alan. And for her.
In a way, he’d be like her father—alone, kind of sad, incomplete, a part-time dad.
No matter how much he might be hurting, he’d never walk away. Find a new life for himself. He’d stay the course. Be her friend. And a great father to Alan.