“You made that clear,” he said, scooping Touchdown up. “Hey, boy. How’s Mommy treating you so far? Did you get paw prints on the kitchen floor?”
Her insides pinged when she heard him call her “Mommy.” Hadn’t she just been thinking about that? “We have to call each other by our real names now, Blake. You’re not his daddy, and I’m not his mommy.”
“Come on, Nat,” Blake said, nudging her playfully in the ribs. “It will only confuse him. Plus, you are his mommy. He was barely a week old when you met him, and he can’t get to sleep without your yellow shirt. Doesn’t that prove something?”
He gestured to Touchdown’s gear, and sure enough, there was her old shirt—the one Blake had admitted to taking on the road with him so he could always have her smell nearby. Gestures like that had always turned her to mush. Her knees quivered. All her emotions were rising to the surface again, and she wasn’t sure she had the power to hold them back anymore.
“They’re only names, Blake. Please do this one thing for me since I know you won’t take the bridge down.”
He lifted his left shoulder in a slight shrug. “I can’t take the bridge down. It’s my road back to you.”
“Blake!”
“Okay! I’ll stop. I’ve pressed you enough for one day.” He glanced around the room. “You haven’t hung anything on the walls yet.”
The knowing look in his eyes had her fiddling with the hem of her shirt. “No.”
All the art they’d chosen on fun shopping outings had remained on the walls of their Denver home. Correction, his home.
“If you want some of the paintings from the house, let me know.”
He’d made that offer—and so many more—after she left him.
“I’m fine. Thanks.”
His jaw locked, and he gave Touchdown a sweet hug before setting him down. “In the interest of full disclosure, you have the right to know your brothers visited me earlier.”
Part of her wasn’t surprised. Matt had been fighting mad when she’d called him about the bridge. “I don’t see a black eye,” she said even though she knew neither one of them would be that cruel.
His mouth tipped up at the corner. “Matty Ice started off pretty cool, but he mellowed. I told your brothers why I’m here…that you haven’t grieved over Kim yet and we haven’t…dealt with whatever this is between us.”
She fisted her hands in the hem of her shirt, feeling exposed and more than ganged up on. “You had no right to talk about me—about us—behind my back. But then again, you already did. Moira and Caroline told me earlier you’d been in touch with everyone but Andy.”
His jaw turned hard. “I had every right to talk to them! You lied to your family about me and tried to make me into someone I’m not. A guy who doesn’t want kids with his wife. You didn’t play fair.”
It was true, and the shame of that knowledge stung her cheeks, but she hadn’t wanted to risk losing their support. Her family was everything to her, the one thing she could fall back on when the world went crazy. “I know I didn’t play fair.” It was as much as she could admit to him right then.
He huffed out a sigh. “I cared about them, Nat. I still do. They had a right to know my side. I didn’t want them thinking I was some insensitive prick who would say something that awful right after his wife’s best friend and sister-in-law had died.”
He was like a harsh light, and since she was someone who wanted to stay in the dark, she strode away from him on impulse. Then she stopped in her tracks, realizing she was bringing him further into the house—not a wise plan. “So we’re choosing sides then? You're trying to get my family to gang up on me.”
His face fell. “No one wants to gang on you, babe. We love you. You’re not you, and you haven’t been for a while now. I’m only drawing attention to what everyone else in your family has already noticed.”
Yeah, and how had she reacted when Moira and Caroline finally mentioned it? She’d pushed them away.
Just like you did with Blake, she heard a voice say gently in her head.
She ignored it. “Why does everyone keep harping on this? I just want to be left alone.”
He had his arms wrapped around her before she could blink.
“No, you don’t. Babe, you’re not a loner. As someone who just lost his brother, I know there’s a balance between dealing with your grief in private and surrounding yourself with people who love you. You pushed the rest of us away completely.”
He was getting way too close to the truth, and it made her quake inside. Her face was scrunched against his chest, and though she wanted so badly to let herself be comforted by him, she locked her muscles against the feel of his hard body pressed against hers. Finally she did push him away. Hard. He loosened his grip, giving her more room, but he didn’t totally drop those sinewy arms of his.
“Let me go, Blake.”