Cocking an eyebrow, he says, “I hope your expectation there is closer to 0% of the time, because if not, it’s wrong.”
I want to crack a smile, but I can’t. I’m still too sad from his story, and the fact that he’s been suffering over it for so long. “I mean, it’s not a nice story, but… it’s yours. I would never make the decisions she made, so it isn’t relevant to me. I would never put either one of us in that situation to begin with.”
“Some people considered it an overreaction,” he tells me.
I shrug. “I’m not your judge and jury. I’m not here to tell you what’s right or wrong. You responded emotionally to someone ripping your heart out. I would too. I mean, I’d probably just slash tires instead of actually killing someone, but we’re different people. It’s weird, but that’s your life. I get that. I sort of joked about wanting to kill Marlena when I thought you were hooking up with her, and you weren’t even mine, as you pointed out. I can only imagine how crazy I would feel in your circumstances. But I would never put you in that position. Not ever.”
His arms are wrapped around me, his hands caressing my lower back as I talk. Now that I’m done, he warns me, “This part won’t last forever. The fascination. The excitement. You won’t always feel addicted to me.”
“I’m not sure about that,” I tell him, resting my arms on his shoulders. “You’re pretty addictive. I trust Paula’s choice in shoes, but not men—not if she had you and she went looking elsewhere. Maybe it was her. Maybe she needed a lot of male attention. I don’t. I’m happy to just have yours.”
“Or maybe you just want to blame her and let me off the hook,” he suggests.
“It’s possible,” I admit, leaning forward and catching his lower lip between mine, sucking on it then releasing it and kissing the corner of his mouth. “Either way, this hasn’t changed anything for me, so if this is what you were waiting for... We’re good.”
“You’re sure?” he asks.
I nod my head. “Super sure. I was worried for a minute that story was heading in a different direction that would have made me more nervous, but as you told it, nothing I can’t live with.”
“Where were you afraid it was going?” he inquires.
Grimacing, I tell him, “I can’t tell you that now. I don’t want to offend you.”
Drawing me close until my breasts are crushed against his chest, he demands, “Tell me.”
I sigh, but as his hand moves up my back and his eyes bore into mine, insistent, demanding, I relent. It’s too hard to deny him. “Don’t be mad. When you were talking about how she had cheated and you went into a rage fog, I thought maybe… you might have killed her.”
That’s not exactly a nice thing to say to someone, but he doesn’t get mad. “Makes sense. Definitely didn’t do that, but I can see how you’d get there.”
Reaching back and grabbing his wedding ring, I move it to the end table so it doesn’t get lost. I’m not entirely sure where we’re supposed to go from here, what should follow a story like that one. When I look around this empty house now, it looks a little bit different. I wonder what it looked like when he had a wife, a family, a whole life. I wonder if the sparseness now is intentional, if in some quiet corner of his mind he feels he deserves the emptiness.
He doesn’t deserve emptiness. This may be the man who kidnapped me, but this is also a man capable of loving women who fuck everything up, fathering babies that aren’t his. He’s incredible, and I don’t care how fucked up his moral compass is. I’m not here to play morality police. I got knocked up by a mob boss during a one night stand, for fuck’s sake. So Sin murdered the dickhead who had sex with his wife—that’s not so crazy, given what he does for work. That dumbass should have known better than to fuck with Sin.
There is nothing in his past I’m interested in holding against him. I want his present, I want his future. I want to fill the empty rooms in this house once more; I want to creep down the hall and stand in the doorway, spying on him while he puts my baby to bed in its crib.
My heart aches with how much I want all that.
I can’t believe he thought I would greet any of this with anything less than tenderness and sympathy.
I catch his ruggedly handsome face between my hands again and just look at him. I admire the perfect amount of stubble dusting his strong jaw, his soft lips, his gorgeous eyes. I rub my cheek against his to feel the scratch, then—because I can now—I brush my lips against his.
When I pull back I catch his big hand in my smaller one and drag it down, placing his palm over my abdomen. “I know it’s messy, and I know it would be nicer if you were the baby’s actual father, but… this one needs a daddy.”
He smiles, catching the back of my neck and tugging me in for a kiss. After a few soft kisses he murmurs, “Oh yeah?”
“Mm hmm,” I murmur, resting my forehead against his. “And if your help the night I had Skylar was your tryout for the position, I have to tell you, you’re a shoo-in.”
“A shoo-in?” he repeats. “That implies I have competition. Didn’t you hear that story I just told? I’m not a big fan of competition.”
“Nah, just Rafe, and I wouldn’t consider him competition. I think he’ll be more of a fun uncle than dad material. Babies just aren’t his jam.”
“His loss,” Sin tells me, rubbing my still-flat belly.
“I’m not sad about it,” I assure him. “Can I stay here now, or do I have to go back there?”
Sighing, Sin says, “You’ll have to go back to his house tonight. As long as everything goes according to plan, this is the last time though. Tomorrow you’ll be coming home with me to stay.”
“I like that a lot. I would like it better if I didn’t have to go back, though. I don’t want to sleep next to him another night, I’d rather be here with you.”