The Single Dad (Red's Tavern 4)

No plan. No solution yet. It was all scary, new territory, the kind that I felt the least able to deal with.

“What if…?” Luke asked, gentle as always.

I swallowed over the dryness in my throat. “Just theoretically,” I said. “Totally in the future, a long way down the road. What if I did want you to be my… guy?”

Luke raised his eyebrow, looking at me. “Are you trying to avoid saying something specific?”

Nervous butterflies flitted around deep inside me. I squeezed my eyes shut. “Yes. I was avoiding saying the word boyfriend.”

There was silence in the air, and I was almost afraid to open my eyes again. When I did, Luke was just looking at me.

And for the first time ever, I saw a hint of fear in his eyes.

“What if one day you wanted me to be your boyfriend?” Luke said, somewhere between a question and a statement.

“In the future,” I clarified.

“Right,” he said, his expression still not clearing. He looked up at the sky, reaching over to grab my hand in his.

“I know I’m silly,” I said softly.

I felt like I’d introduced some sort of tension between us, like I’d pointed something out that suddenly had made Luke unsure.

“You’re a dream, Cam,” he said. “But we both know we need to go slow. I’m just happy to be in your life at all. And your kids come first, no matter what.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I really meant it when I said far, far in the future—”

“I know, I know,” he said quickly. “But we will cross that bridge when we get to it. Right?”

I swallowed over a sudden tightness in my throat. “Of course.”

I didn’t understand it. In theory, I should have loved everything Luke was saying.

Of course I wanted to go at a slow pace. I had to. There was no other option for me, when it came to my own feelings and especially for my kids.

But I had never seen that raw fear on Luke’s face before. When I thought about being his boyfriend one day in the future, it felt exciting, not scary.

I thought for sure he had felt the same way.

16

Luke

When I got home from the picnic date with Cam, it was the first time in a long time that I’d felt… this.

This sensation of being in free fall, with no parachute to bring me safely down to my destination.

I pushed open the gate to my backyard and quickly tossed off my shirt, throwing it to the side of my tent as I went inside. I kicked off my boots, collapsing back onto my mattress and staring up at the top of the tent in the dark.

I had thought this was over. I’d thought I was past it.

The same gripping fear, the deep, undeniable knowledge that if I finally had something real—something I could love—I might lose it forever.

After coming home from overseas, it was all I could think about for the first couple of years. I’d push it away, distracting myself with gardening and work and anything I could. But it was always under the surface, coloring my whole world. Grief was such a big part of my life that I hadn’t even realized it when it slowly started to fade. More slowly than I could detect.

But suddenly, one day, I looked around and realized I was living some semblance of a normal life again. I was going out, I was meeting people, even hooking up. I had Lizzy, I loved my job, and I actually had days where I felt happy more often than not.

And now really happy, even, ever since I’d met Cam.

It was like all of this time I’d been getting to know Cam, I’d been on a roller coaster, slowly ticking up and up and up, without even knowing I’d been on it.

This felt like the drop.

When Cam had asked if I’d want to be his boyfriend one day, it wasn’t that I was scared because I thought it was a bad idea.

I was scared because it sounded like the best idea.

Like it was exactly how I’d want my life to be. I was scared because my first thought wasn’t that I’d want to be his boyfriend, but that I’d love to be more. To be his husband one day. To have that sense of family that I’d never had, that had never even been available to me at all.

And the last time—the only time—someone had been that special to me, I’d lost it all in an instant.

I sucked in a deep breath of air through my nostrils.

I knew Cam had sensed how I felt earlier tonight, and I’d felt like a monster for clamming up so damn hard.

I felt paralyzed on the mattress, staring up through the gauze at the top of the tent. The tree leaves above gently moved in the night air, and I tossed and turned for at least a couple of hours. Back in the day, this was when I would have taken a sleeping pill, or wished I’d taken one earlier.