“Who came to get me in the hospital. Who’s here in my bed. Who’s been patient through all of this.”
I lower my head until our foreheads touch. “And I’m glad it was you in geometry class. You who got me a job downstairs.” I press my nose against his. “And you who’s here with me now. I’m glad for all of you, Trev, oldandnew.” I swipe my lips across his. “Now, would you take me to bed and doallthe things?”
He chuckles. “It’d be my fucking pleasure.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Trevor
Sitting at Donovan’s for a late lunch, I glance around. Nobody is looking at us strangely anymore. Have they already moved on to the next thing to gossip about? But then something occurs to me.
“Who knows about the baby?” I ask. “I kind of let it slip to Jason yesterday. I had no idea you hadn’t told anyone. I knew you hadn’t before, but I figured after I left…”
I shake my head, still feeling all kinds of guilt over the way I’ve behaved.
“Water under the bridge, remember?” She laces her fingers with mine. “Some of my friends know. A few more than before. But that’s it.”
“I told Carter the other day when he brought me the letters. Word is going to get out. I think we should tell my parents. I think we should tell everyone.”
She looks at me oddly, eyes wide with a slow smile spreading across her face.
“What?”
“That’s the first time I’ve heard you reference them as your parents and not Chuck and Dawn.” She squeezes my hand. “You’re different.”
“It’s because of you. Your willingness to accept me for who I am now, not just who I was. It’s freeing somehow. And it makes me not want to resist the past so much.”
Her eyes glaze over with tears. “I’m different too.”
“Yeah? How?”
“I no longer feel guilty about wanting this new, sexy, roguish man you’ve become.”
I touch a hand to my chest, feigning abhorrence. “Are you saying I wasn’t sexy before, Mrs. Criss? Because based on some of those diary entries you read to me, you couldn’t get enough of me.”
She giggles, and that sultry dimple that I pray our daughter inherits comes out to play. “Oh, you’ve always been sexy, just not in such a dangerous kind of way.”
“You think I’m dangerous?”
“Dangerous good, not dangerous bad.”
I laugh. “I didn’t know being dangerous could be a good thing.”
“Neither did I.” She scoots so close our thighs touch. “But I really like it.”
“Babe, you’re going to get me hard right here in this booth if you don’t stop it.”
She bites her lip, grinning like a schoolgirl. “You’ve never called mebabebefore.”
“Really? What did I call you? Oh, right, Sweet Ava, was it?”
Her head shakes. “That was only in the letters. You called mehoney. I always thought it was a bit old-fashioned, but it’s what your dad has always called your mom. You called me sweetheart once or twice since you’ve been back, but I assumed it was a slip of the tongue, so I didn’t say anything.”
I look her square in the eyes. “Well, what’s it going to be? You choose.”
She shrugs and does that sexy little lip-biting thing again.
I laugh. “Babe it is.”
