Best Kept Secret (Rochester Trilogy 3)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Beau Rochester

All I want is to be with Jane.

There’s movement behind her door when I arrive. It’s cracked open, light spilling out into the hall. Jane steps in front of the door as I come in, a top in her hands. She’s shaking it out, but she freezes when she sees me. Then she’s back in motion again. I take it in. The suitcase. The clothes. A hurt red in her cheeks.

“What the hell is this?”

“I’m leaving,” she announces.

“Like hell you are. Causey’s done.” I feel as light as I ever have. Joe was a piece of shit in school. He and my brother made life hell for everyone. It’s done now. What’s he going to do from a jail cell in the county building? Nothing.

Jane smooths the shirt into the suitcase. She shakes her head. “You don’t need me anymore.”

I thought I might find her already asleep. I thought I might find her staring at the ceiling, trying to process everything that happened. Or reading a book. I didn’t think I’d find her in a hurry to get out of here. My chest aches, emotion threatening to overwhelm me. “Yes I do.”

Jane doesn’t answer. I’ll be damned if she’s not going to answer. I move behind her and turn her to face me. I can tell she’s been crying. No tears now, just determination in her shining brown eyes.

“I need you,” I insist. It comes out more intense than I meant it to. I don’t know how to tell a woman I need her. I don’t know how to tell her so she’ll believe me. Adding anything else won’t make a difference.

Her chest hitches. “I can’t stand to watch you be with her.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Confusion stabs into my chest like a knife. The wounds it leaves are angry. She came back. She said she’d stay. All of it is unraveling in my hands, and for what?

“Paige has her mother back.” Jane’s lip quivers. “She doesn’t need a nanny.”

“Damn it, Jane, she doesn’t need me either.” I’m rougher than I want to be, but I can’t stop myself. It’s too damn late. Late in the day, and late in this thing we’ve done together. I’m not giving it up now. “She has her parent back, and I—” It descends on me all at once. The grief. It’s heavy as a wave crashing into rock. It stops my heart. “I’m going to miss the hell out of her. I’m going to miss being—” I’m going to say being her dad, but I never was her dad, not really. “I’m going to miss being there for her. I’m going to miss it so damn much.” The words don’t stop coming. “I love her. I felt like her father. I didn’t think it would end like this.”

Jane’s hands come up to my face. She’s the sweetest woman on the planet. Here she is, in her own pain, and she’s thinking about mine. Soothing mine away with a soft touch. “Maybe you are her dad,” she offers.

“Actually.” My throat tightens around a knot of truth. “I had a DNA test done. I’m not.”

“Oh,” Jane says, the sound full of compassion, and she pulls me down into her. “I know how much you wanted that,” she whispers into my ear.

And damn it, I lose it.

I don’t know whether it’s tears or just pure salt and disappointment that run down my cheeks. Jane kisses me through them, her mouth soft and pliant on mine. It hurts so goddamn much. All of this has hurt since the very beginning. I never imagined that the best possible outcome would feel like drowning.

Jane’s skin lets me breathe. We shed our clothes and go to the bed, which is soft and clean, like she is. I Inhale her skin and taste each of her nipples, and it keeps my lungs from collapsing. She keeps brushing at my cheeks with her fingertips. I find the soft curve of her stomach and lose myself in it. When Rhys died, when I got Paige, I didn’t think the pain and the regret would ever end. They’re still here. But I can see the other side.

“I’m going to miss her too,” she says into the air. Jane keeps her voice low so she doesn’t wake anybody up. There’s one person she’s bringing back to life. Me. I raise my head to look into her eyes. They’re glistening with tears. “I had a dream—I thought the three of us could be a family together.”

The admission tears my heart in two. I want to give this woman everything, but I can’t give her this. We just have to be in this loss together. “It would have been good,” I agree. “I wanted that too.” I press a kiss below her belly button. “It doesn’t make up for it, sweetheart, but I could give you something else.”