How the heck I was going to get out of this bed without scarring the poor child for life.
“Are you hungry? We’re makin’ the best breakfast in the whole wide world! You smell it?” He tipped his nose up and inhaled deep. “It’s so yum, yum, yum in my tum, tum, tum. You better hurry it up, lazy head, or you’re gonna miss out. I thought you were gonna sleep the whole day. Sheesh.”
His arms flapped out to the side in emphasis.
Like this was normal.
No big deal.
A sinking dread slithered through my consciousness. Was this normal? Did Gage wake up with random women sleeping in his father’s bed? Where was Trent, anyway?
Nope, don’t go there, Eden.
I pressed a shaky hand to my forehead and tried to get it together.
Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
“Okay.” I managed a single word and a feeble smile to go along with it.
“That’s so good!” He clapped, and apparently, that was all the response he needed because he started to jump back to his feet, but then his attention snapped to my hand that had the sheet clutched to my chest like a lifeline.
He hopped forward, coming closer, that smile on his adorable face spreading in a streak of joy.
“You wearin’ your bracelet, Miss Murphy? It looks so pretty. Do you love it?”
He grinned up at me with so much pride, nothing but dimpled, chubby cheeks and adorable hair framing his face, his gaze darting between my face and the bracelet tied around my wrist.
My heart did that crazy thing. Pounding and expanding and trying to break free of the confines of my chest. The affection for this child overwhelming. More than I could fathom.
The fact his adoration tamped down the turmoil raging inside was proof enough. The way I couldn’t help but reach out and touch his cheek.
“I love it, Gage,” I whispered, though I might as well have been shouting it.
Proclaiming whatever this was, even though I wasn’t sure myself.
All I knew was I had crossed a line there was no returning from. I’d been marked in a way that could never be erased.
I had no regrets, even though it might destroy me in the end. There might be too much going against us. Too many old wounds, secrets, and fears that would tear us apart.
As much as I wanted to silence them, Trent’s promises that he would ruin us continued to play on repeat.
On top of it, my job was at stake.
But the truth was, in the end, that wasn’t even a question.
I knew I’d gladly accept every risk when Gage’s little shoulders hiked up to his ears in pure, unmitigated delight.
“That’s really good because I love you.” He didn’t even give me time to choke over his confession before he was back on his feet and jumping off the side of the bed and blazing out the door. “Gotta go, Miss Murphy! Hurry it up and get your booty downstairs right now, little lady.”
Um.
Okay.
Apparently, Gage could give me whiplash as quickly as his father could.
A crush of relief left me on a heavy breath when he disappeared down the hall, his tiny footsteps pounding on the stairs, getting quieter and quieter the farther away he got.
“Ugh,” I moaned, pressing my hand to my forehead and trying to get myself together.
To rein in these emotions.
But they were running so far out ahead of me that I couldn’t catch up to them. Each so different, so at odds, so big and consuming, I didn’t know how to process them.
How did I make sense of what I was actually feeling?
Awakened.
Feverish.
Afraid.
Everything I’d felt since the moment I’d met Trent Lawson, now amplified times a thousand.
My teeth raked my swollen bottom lip as my mind raced back to last night, as my hand smoothed over the rumpled sheets.
Trent and me in this bed. Over and over again. The man insatiable. Blissfully rough. Wickedly sweet.
Turned out I was insatiable, too.
Redness raced as those simmering embers leapt.
Now, I had no idea how to navigate. How Trent and I were really going to fit.
A muted ring echoed from the bathroom, and I realized it had to be coming from where I’d left my phone in my bag on the floor. “Crap,” I mumbled.
Pushing out a shaky sigh, I slipped from the bed, taking the sheet with me. I dug through my bag on the bathroom floor in search of my phone that’d stopped ringing, dinged with a message, only to start ringing all over again.
I finally found it and pulled it out. Tessa’s grinning face was on the screen.
Double crap.
I rushed to answer it, though I couldn’t help but whisper when I put it to my ear. “Hello?”
“Don’t you dare hello me, Eden Jasmine Murphy. I’ve called you at least fifteen times in the last two hours…you know…since I showed up to your house with Saturday morning coffees and doughnuts, and your car was nowhere to be found. I’ve been worried sick.”