He searched her face. “Is it okay if I talk about Becca stuff with you?”
“Sure. I’m not her midwife anymore.”
“It’s not like therapy, where there will forever be a complicated relationship?”
“You weren’t my client, Owen. Tell me about you.”
“Okay.” He scrubbed a hand over his face.
“Was today hard?”
He considered the question long enough Kerry wondered if he wasn’t sure. “No,” he finally said. “It’s not hard to see her with Hayden. And the kid is trying, I give him full credit for that. If anything is hard, it’s trying to mind my own business. Which I know that’s what I need to do, now.” He took a deep breath. It filled his entire body, his shoulders lifting and spreading wide before he exhaled. “It’s hard to be rational as a parent, especially when your kid suddenly grows up.”
“You’re doing a great job.”
“You know I don’t always, though. I worry that I’ve fucked her up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did I teach her that men aren’t always open about their feelings? That it’s okay if they’re gruff…?” He shrugged. “Or, you know, a straight-up rude asshole.”
“You?”
“Me.” He caught her hand as she tried to poke him. “It’s okay. I know you thought I was a jerk.” She bit her lower lip and tried not to smile. It was hard, because he was so earnest, and he kept going. “You called me a Neanderthal.”
“If I recall correctly, you opened that door by declaring yourselfnota Neanderthal, and I found that funny. You aren’t a jerk. And I think with the people closest to you, you’re very open about your feelings. I bet Becca sees that more than you think, because you’re so gentle with her. You’re a hard nut to crack, Owen Kincaid, but once someone gets in, you’re pretty soft on the inside.”
“That sounds like a compliment.”
“It is. You have become such a special friend. More than a friend,” she hastened to add. She wriggled closer and lowered her voice. “A lover. I’m so happy, and you’ve been a big part of that. So take the compliment, please. This fall has been exactly what I needed. I was in such a weird place over the winter and spring.”
“Anything you want to talk about?”
She made a face. It was easier to listen than to open up.
He laughed. “It’s fine.”
No, he’d shared. She took a deep breath. “Are you sure?”
“God damn it, woman, yes. I just bared my heart to you. Bring it on.”
“I feel like I need to put some content warnings on what I’m about to say. Hear me out, okay?” She rolled away, just to have enough space between them. “Like a lot of people, I sort of tripped over my biological clock as I entered my thirties. It took me by surprise, but I’m rolling with it. I’m not in a rush to have kids or anything like that, but they’re on my mind now. That pre-dated moving here, to be clear. But dating stopped being fun. It was a wild ride that veered between looking for a partner to raise kids with and feeling like I needed therapy to debrief on why I was clearly choosing people I would neverhavekids with. So moving here was a bit of a break from all of that, but I spent probably the longest celibate period in my entire life wondering if I wanted to freeze my eggs and how I felt about raising a child by myself.”
He took her hand again. She liked the warmth of his skin against hers, the safety in his big fingers reaching for her when she was vulnerable. “And here I am talking about how I fucked up my kid.”
“You didn’t, though,” she reminded him. “Anyway, that’s my baggage. It’s been a lot of fun to ignore it this past month.”
“That’s what it is, isn’t it? We all have baggage. I have a whole mess of feelings around what shoulda, coulda, woulda happened if Becca hadn’t gotten pregnant with Charlie. I told you I had a little countdown clock in my head to when she’d move out and go away to school.”
She nodded. “Your plans to live a wild life.”
“The Great Bachelor Plan. Yeah. Because…and this isn’t my finest hour, so don’t judge me. I—it never really worked out well, me and dating, while Becca was little.”
Kerry thought back to their first date, when they’d talked a bit about that. “You’ve said that before.”
“I guess I wanted a re-do on that. Just in an older, wise kind of way.”
“What am I, chopped liver? You’re doing that now, and I have to say, as the recipient of your older, wise attempt at dating, I think it’s going very well.”
