She didn’t, and he looked on proudly as she stood at the top and fluidly moved to the slide. He moved to meet her at the bottom. The boys jumped from the top, stopping to stare at both of them as Casey stood beside him.
“Whoa. Check it. Her dad doesn’t have two legs either. Weird.”
At the look on Casey’s face, he was tempted to beat the crap out of a ten-year-old. He went to Casey instead. “Want to do the rock wall again?”
“No.”
“How about the monkey bars?”
Casey sniffed. “No.” Her nose was red and she was never this quiet. Damn it. He’d never had to deal with things like that. He’d run and climbed and raced through his childhood without a care in the world. He’d gladly give Casey those years if he could.
He picked her up, swinging her as he went in an attempt to get a smile. “Want some ice cream?” Probably not the best move, but it was all he had.
“Okay.”
As he carried her toward the ice cream truck parked at the curb, he felt her little shoulders shaking against his chest. “Don’t listen to them, Case. Boys are stupid.”
“You’re a boy,” she said brokenly.
“Yep.” And a prime example.
She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. “I don’t want to go to kindergarten.”
“Hey, hey, don’t cry, Case. Look at me. Don’t cry.” She didn’t look at him and he held her while she cried like her heart was breaking. His heart broke with it.
“He said I was weird.”
“If you’re weird, then I’m weird too, right?”
She sniffed again and finally lifted her head. “Because we’re the same.”
“That’s right, Pop-Tart. Because we’re the same.”
“But it’s true. I am missing stuff.”
He stopped walking and waited until her eyes met his. “Listen to me. You’re perfect. Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not. Everyone’s missing stuff, even if you can’t always see it. And that kid, he’s the one missing the important stuff.”
“Really?”
He held her tighter. “Would I lie to you?”
She studied him so long he thought she might say yes. “No.”
They got their ice cream and sat side by side, Casey intent on the job at hand. “Better lick it around the bottom. Lick and turn. See?” He demonstrated.
She worked it like a science, seeming to have recovered from her sadness. The knot in his stomach loosened.
When she was down to the last bit of cone, she scooted closer until she was leaning against him. “You always call me things to eat. Cotton candy. Pop-Tart.”
“All good things,” he said, finishing his cone. “All things I like.”
“And you like me?”
“Yes.” He wrapped his arm around her and held her closer. “I like you.” I love you.
“Jake?”
“Hmm?”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.” He smiled, thinking she’d never asked permission before. “It must be a big one.”
“It is.”
He prepared himself for some kind of birds-and-bees question or something otherwise out of his zone.
She lifted her head from his arm and peered up at him with those summer-sky baby blues. “Do you think…” She paused, glancing at the ground in front of her. “Do you think you could ever want a little girl with one leg?”
The bottom dropped out of his stomach and the world from under his feet. His chest squeezed so tightly he couldn’t get a breath. The answer was he could, he did.
He lifted her onto his lap. “I most definitely could,” he said, cradling her against his chest. “But mostly, more than anything, I’d want a little girl that was you.”
She tilted her head back farther. “But there’s only one of those.”
“That’s right. Only one.”
She leaned against him, seeming to think about that, and so did he.
Only one Casey. Only one Paige. Only one woman who’d ever made him want to change the person he’d always thought he was. The only one who could make him want what he hadn’t wanted and then make him feel good enough about himself to have it.
“You’re smart and you’re beautiful, just like your mother, with your mother’s eyes.”
“Not exactly like Mommy’s.”
He rubbed his hand lightly over her back. “No, not exactly. Your eyes are the color of the sky. Hers are the color of the sea.”
Casey straightened, her bright smile back in place like the sun after a storm. “And yours are the color of dirt! So we make the sky and the water and the land.”
He shook his head and smiled at her, figuring that was the weirdest, sweetest compliment he’d ever received. And perhaps the best way to explain it.
They sat there a long time, her head on his shoulder, the breeze blowing her hair and baby-shampoo smell over his cheek. His arms tightened around her and he felt her sleepy breaths.