I covered his hand at my face. “But, Heath, honey, Tessa loves you because, from the first day she met you, you were always kind and gentle with both of us. When she was terrified on that driveway, watching her daddy beating me while Roman yelled at her from the gate, chaos swirling all around her, she ran to you because she knew you’d make it okay. And you did.” I sucked in a shaky breath as my vision got blurry. “For both of us.”
“Come here, babe,” he murmured, hooking his arms around my waist and pulling me down to lie beside him, my head resting on his bicep.
“She’s young, but if you think for a single second she doesn’t know what you’ve done for us, you’re crazy.” I smiled, and a tear slid down my cheek.
Using his thumb, he wiped it away.
“So, yeah,” I said, “she’s a kid who’s been through hell in her short life, and she might be confused about a lot of it, but waking up between her mom and a man she trusts and loves is probably exactly what she needs.”
“Fuck,” he breathed, his mouth pressing against mine for a deep closed-mouth kiss.
I broke it all too soon. “But, if you don’t feel comfortable with her sharing a bed with you… That, I’ll understand. It’ll suck because you two are my life. But you’re right. She’s not yours—”
“Yet,” he quickly corrected.
My head jerked back. “What?”
“She’s not mine yet. She will be eventually.”
Oh.
My.
God.
My nose started stinging as my face contorted into that dreaded chin-quivering, scrunched-up, on-the-verge-of-an-ugly-cry expression.
“When this is all over, it’s still going to be me, you, and Tessa,” he said. “We’re making a life together. And, in that life, she’s gonna grow up. It’s gonna be me teaching her how to ride a bike. Me bandaging her skinned knees. Me interrogating her first boyfriend. Me teaching her how to drive a car. Me grounding her for sneaking out. Me building bookshelves in her college dorm. And me walking her down the aisle one day when she’s at least forty years old.”
I hiccoughed a laugh through my tears, and he shot me a smirk.
“Right now, she’s your girl because I haven’t earned the right to call her mine yet. But I will. And, when I do, she’s gonna be our girl. So, if you’re good with her waking up with me now before I’ve earned that role, then I’m good with it, too.”
God, he was going to make such an amazing dad, even if he was just Heath to her for the rest of her life.
And, with that realization, something dawned on me.
“Do you want kids of your own?” I sniffled, nerves fluttering in my stomach. “Because I…I don’t know that I can give them to you.”
“I do,” he replied curtly. “And I want them with you.” He gripped the back of my neck and gave it a reassuring squeeze as he rested his forehead against mine. “You’re twenty-eight, Clare. We’ve got a lot of years ahead of us. If a baby comes in that time, great. But, if it doesn’t, that’ll be okay too. I’ve got you. And we’ve got Tessa. The rest is just bonus.”
A fresh set of tears streamed down my cheeks as Heath’s warmth blanketed me in a way I knew I would never lose. How had I gotten so lucky? How, after spending years of kissing the clock just to survive, had I found a man better than anyone I ever could have wished for? Maybe God hadn’t abandoned me after all. Because whoever had paved our pasts that ultimately put him in that gym with me had known exactly what they had been doing.
I sucked in a deep breath and held it until my lungs began to burn.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Yes. Utterly. Completely. Thoroughly. Entirely. And an entire thesaurus’s worth of synonyms more.
And it was only that feeling of contentment that allowed a smile to spread across my face.
“Yeah, but I have a question. You’re, like, eighty. Isn’t your biological clock ticking?”
One side of his mouth tipped up as he wrapped his arms around me, muttering, “She’s cryin’, but she’s still got jokes.”
“It’s a valid question,” I squealed as he began tickling me.
“It’s not a valid question, Clare. It’s you being a smartass.”
“And me being a smartass,” I confirmed, laughing wildly and flailing in his arms.
I stilled when his hand slid under my T-shirt.
I moaned when his finger slipped inside my panties.
I cried out when his mouth found my nipple.
Minutes later, I came with his name on my lips.
Minutes after that, he came with mine on his.
And then, just before my eyelids got too heavy to stay awake, he got our girl and put her in bed with us.
She promptly curled into his chest.
And I fell asleep without a single worry on my mind.
Two weeks later…
“But it’s January,” Clare objected, settling on the barstool on the other side of the counter.
She’d been visibly nervous all morning and spent a full hour earlier chewing on her thumbnail and staring into space. I couldn’t figure out exactly what was going on, but I figured she’d come to me when she was ready.
Using a fork, I removed one of the steaks from the marinade and set it on a plate. “It’s almost February in Atlanta. We’re basically a week away from summer. It’s perfect grilling weather.”
“It’s still cold,” she argued.