I pulled his lips to mine. “Better,” I said. “You are everything he’s not, and you’re already a better father. I don’t doubt you’ll continue to be better.”
His kisses heated my core, the emotion in them reaching far into my being and reminding me of his claim on me. They didn’t stop until he had me screaming his name and drowning in rapture.
Chapter 39
Gabe
Reid grabbed his coat and came running to where I stood at the door.
“We won’t be long,” I told Tori as he buttoned up his coat.
“Have fun,” she said, blowing us a kiss.
Three weeks had passed since DC, and we were falling into a comfortable routine, spending every night with each other either at her place or mine. Sleep overs as Reid called them, were our new norm, but I was ready to finalize us. To make it permanent.
Snow was falling in gentle flakes as Reid and I exited the car.
“Put your gloves on,” I told him, pulling his hat from my pocket and securing it on his head. “We’ll get hot chocolate when we’re done.”
“I love hot chocolate.”
“I know,” I said with a laugh. If it was one thing I’d discovered about my son, it was his affection for all things chocolate.
He ran ahead of me, leaving little boot tracks in the snow. When he found a patch of snow he deemed suitable, he dropped to his back and began making a snow angel. “Come on, Gabe.”
I dropped next to him and made my own, his laughter infectious. We moved from angels to snowmen until I could seehe was getting too cold. Gathering him up, I held his hand while we walked to the closest coffee shop.
With two cups of hot chocolate in my hands, we found a seat.
“I need to ask you something,” I told him as we peeled our coats off. I reached over and took his hat off. His cheeks were red, so I rubbed my hands on them to warm them up.
“What?” he asked, wrapping his hands around his hot chocolate.
“Let that cool off before you try it.” I’d had them add whipped cream, but the cups had still been hot. “I want your permission.”
My insides tumbled as I remembered the last time I’d had this conversation, but with his grandfather.
“My permission?” he asked, the word coming out more like prission than permission.
“Yup.” He waited intently as I gathered my words. “I want to ask your mom to marry me.”
His eyes were like saucers, and he jumped up and down in his seat. Reaching over to calm him before he spilled his hot chocolate, I continued, “But I want your permission. It’s been just the two of you all this time, and I don’t want to do this without you. Can I ask your mother to be my wife?”
His smile was everything. “Yes.” He bounced more. “Does that mean you’ll really be my daddy?”
I gave him a questioning look. “I’m already your father, Reid. That hasn’t stopped since the moment I found out you were mine.”
I hadn’t bothered to talk to him about it again, even though Tori had seemed guilty about telling him before discussing it with me. It had been her right to have that conversation, not mine. But maybe I should have, because Reid seemed confused still.
“Do you know why I wasn’t part of your life until now?” I asked, the pain of the past returning.
He shook his head.
“Then it’s time you hear the truth, and we can have this conversation again when you get older, but you deserve to know the truth.” I gave him an abridged version of the events, keeping it at a level he could understand. When I finished, I sat back and waited.
His eyebrows puckered. “Your daddy’s not very nice,” he grumbled.
“No, he’s not.”
