“I know that scares you right now,” Kace continued, reading my mind. “Know that you’re not ready to hear a lot of this, know that we’ve got a fuck of a long way to go. But I also know that you need to hear this. That I’m in this for the long haul. That this isn’t some fucking phase or fling for me.”
He moved to pull me into his chest, and I let him. He was warm, smelling of his body wash and the scent that was purely him. Safe. I felt safe in his arms. Mind and body.
“I know words don’t mean shit. And we still don’t know much about each other. Know there’s a fuck of a lot more to you to know, and trust me, I’m looking forward to learning every new part of you. As for me, I’m an open book. When you’re ready. For now, sleep.”
I smiled. “Are you commanding me to sleep?”
“I sure am.”
And fuck if I didn’t obey him.Chapter 19One Month Later“I’ve got something for you,” Amy sang out, waltzing into my house.
She wasn’t one to knock.
I wasn’t alarmed at someone coming through my front door because of the prospect outside and because of the fact that I’d installed my fancy alarm, and only my family and friends knew the codes.
“Please tell me it’s the answers to my son’s math homework, because I’m meant to be helping him with this shit, yet I’m too dumb to even figure out how to Google it.”
Amy frowned down at the various sheets I had laid over my dining room table. “He doesn’t need math. He’s going to be in the Sons. He’s already been very vocal with both Cade and Brock that he thinks he should be able to patch in before eighteen.”
I gave her a pointed look. “Well, I’m thinking on the off chance my now thirteen-year-old doesn’t change his mind about his future in the next six years, he should have the option of going to college.”
“Okay, well get your boyfriend to do it then. He’s like Rain Man or whatever from what I can gather.”
I blinked at her. “Kace?”
She nodded. “Apparently, he’s been making the club a fortune on the stock market. Which Wire is totally jealous about because he had the title of hot resident nerd but now has to share the crown. I predict some kind of bitch fight coming.”
“Kace knows about the stock market?” I clarified, remembering him mentioning something about that when I’d been too stressed and distant to take notice. “How can I not know that?”
She grinned. “Well, I’m thinking it’s a good thing you don’t know that because it means you two aren’t spending your time talking about Wall Street.”
No, we really weren’t.
But it felt wrong, nonetheless. Because sure, we spent a lot of our time naked.
A lot.
But he also spent time with my kids. More and more now that I was running out of willpower to limit his time with us.
He listened to me complain about the fact that I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. He knew how I liked my coffee. My history with my mother.
I’d made our whole relationship—if that’s what this was—about me and had been too fucking selfish to want to know much about him. Maybe because I was scared of knowing more about him. Because it might make my feelings even stronger.
“Since that’s sorted,” Amy persisted, “now we can celebrate.” She placed a bottle of what I now knew to be very expensive champagne—you become accustomed to the finer things in life with women like Gwen and Amy around—on top of Jack’s math homework.
“Celebrate what exactly?” I asked, already getting up to get champagne flutes. Even though I wasn’t about to spend two hundred dollars on a bottle of wine—especially now that I still hadn’t found a job, and finances were starting to get a little scary—I was not going to turn it down.
Amy placed a large stack of papers on the table beside the champagne as I came back with the glasses.
“We’re celebrating a very, very, lucrative offer from one of the top publishing houses in New York City!” she practically cheered, grinning wildly.
I stared at the paper. Back at her. “You got a publishing deal?” I replied, feeling extremely confused. Amy was someone who shared everything. So I found it hard to believe that she had been doing something like writing or getting herself a publishing deal without telling us all over cocktails.
“No, fuck no. Not me. Could you imagine?” She shook her head, opening the bottle.
A soft pop resounded through the dining room, then she started pouring.
“You, my talented friend. You’ve got yourself a deal.”
I froze as my hand fastened around the stem of the glass. “Amy, there is no way that I could’ve gotten any kind of deal, since I haven’t contacted any publishers or even told a soul about writing anything worth publishing.”