She sighs, sitting back, smoothing a hand through her wavy brown hair. She doesn’t know how wild it drives me when she does that when she fidgets and shifts and can’t sit still. She doesn’t know how badly it makes me want to flip the table and drag her onto my lap.
I focus on her emotion instead, focus on the glimmer in her eyes.
“My mom died in childbirth and my dad just gave up. I don’t remember either of them.”
Now it’s my turn to reach across the table. I lay my hand on her shoulder and hold tightly, letting her know with my touch that she’ll never have to face anything alone.
“But the crazy part is, the really crazy part… Oh, God.”
She coughs, as though trying to fight away a sob, and then she can’t be strong anymore and she erupts into tears.
I’m on my feet in seconds, walking around the table and kneeling down, trying to ignore the fact that I’m going to be kneeling like this one day for a very different reason.
Wrapping my arms around her, I hold her tight.
She melts into my embrace, pressing her face against my chest, coughing and choking on her sobs. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… Oh, Triston.”
I stroke my hands over her back, through her hair, whispering in her ear. “It’s okay. You have nothing to apologize for.”
I’m not sure how long she cries. It doesn’t matter. I don’t even care if everyone in the restaurant is looking at us.
It’s a private moment, as though we’re in our own self-contained bubble.
And if anybody said anything, they’d learn pretty damn fast to keep their opinions to themselves.
She pulls, looking up at me with a soft smile, her eyes red. “Thank you.”
“For hugging you?” I smirk. “You don’t have to thank me for that. I’ll take any chance to touch you I can get.”
She giggles, swiping at her face.
“What were you going to say?” I ask. “Or is it too painful?”
She shakes her head and nods at the same time, an endearing and adorable movement, as though she’s stuck by what to do.
“I was going to say that sometimes I was happy… Well, not happy, but glad that things turned out that way. If I’d had a mom and dad, I never would’ve met Lisa. I never would’ve met my sister. I know she wasn’t technically but—”
“She was to you. And you were to her.”
She nods. “She really was.”
I raise my hand, smoothing my thumb across her cheek.
“We were talking about Alexis’s mother. As cruel as it sounds, I felt more for you just now than I did during our entire relationship.”
My woman gasps, staring. “Are you serious?”
“Yes,” I say fiercely, knowing I’m getting way too close to the truth, to the absolute insanity of my feelings. “I want to protect you, I want to keep you safe. As crazy as it sounds, I think…”
I swallow, knowing this could lead us to dangerous territory.
“I think something special is happening here.”
Tamia rubs at her face again, her voice low and filled with emotion. “I feel the same. I’m even having…”
“What?” I urge.
She looks around the restaurant, at the other tables.
“Do you think maybe we can talk about this after? When we’re alone? I feel like I’ve already made too much of a scene.”
“You haven’t,” I say.
“Triston.”
It’s the way she says my name, telling me something without saying it. She wants to delay, the same way I did – the same way I still should – but I can’t read too much into it.
It doesn’t mean she feels the same.
But what if she does?
Can I really be that lucky?
I reluctantly return to my seat, cutting into my steak at hyper-speed.
Tamia giggles sweetly. “Okay, speedy.”
“You said you want to talk after.” I fork a massive piece of meat. “Well then, you better get munching.”
She laughs, the best sound in the world, and then picks up her burger.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Tamia
I was so close to telling him just then. I was going to say it all, about the tickles in my womb, about my visions of the future. I was going to tell him how badly I want – need – to be with him.
But I can’t let our moment of emotional closeness blind me to everything else.
Just because he was kind to me, just because he says he cares, just because he shared some personal stories – heck, just because we were both raised in the system – it doesn’t mean he feels the same deep sense of destiny-driven belonging.
It doesn’t mean he fell for me the first time he saw me, the way I fell for him.
There’s still so much uncertainty there.
We eat quietly for a little while, Triston making me laugh when he forks another big piece. There has to be some kind of magic between us, the way he can drive me to giggles when just a moment ago all I wanted to do was cry.