“I know what it’s like to feel abandoned,” he says slowly. “I wasn’t physically abandoned as a kid, but emotionally ...”
I shift just enough to be able to look at him.
His eyes are still closed, but he keeps talking.
“It’s easier to keep people at arm’s length than to risk letting them hurt me.”
Forget his hand.
I need to touch his face. His cheeks. His temple. His lips. “That’s a lonely way to live,” I whisper.
“I look at you, and I see me.” His lids flicker open, and I lose my breath at the raw vulnerability shimmering in his beautiful hazel eyes. And yes, they’re hazel. Shimmering in golds and greens tonight. “Hurt so much by the people who are supposed to care the most. Afraid toopen up to anyone again. But so desperate to fit in that you’ll bend over backward giving and giving and giving until there’s nothing left for yourself.”
Heat prickles my eyes. “You fit here. You’re loved here.”
“There’s understanding the logic of it, and there’s feeling it, and they’re not the same.”
His voice is getting husky, and it’s taking everything inside me to not give in to the urge to let tears fall.
This man doesn’t want my pity, and I don’t want him to think that’s what I’m feeling. “That’s a little too relatable.”
“You get it. Nobody else—” He stops, clears his throat, briefly closes his eyes, and then he looks at me again, his thumb lazily stroking my belly. “I’ve never trusted anyone else to get it.”
“Why me?”
“Because it wasn’t until you started showing up to fix chicken coops and paint nurseries and organize roofing jobs that I would’ve done if you weren’t here that I realized what I was doing.” He squeezes his eyes shut again and lets out a massive sigh. “And I didn’t realize it. Someone pointed it out, but they weren’t wrong. Everything you’ve done for Hell’s Bells—you took over whatIwas doing to fit in. You get it. You know how it feels to want so desperately to belong that you’ll sacrifice everything you want for yourself to know that the people around you like you, even when you’re telling yourself you have to do all of the things because no one else will and this is where you’re needed.”
A few months ago, this would’ve left me feeling naked and raw and attacked.
But all I feel right now is a bone-deep connection to a man who understands me more than I understand myself, and wholikesme because I understandhimmore than I thought I possibly could.
“We’re a mess, aren’t we?” I say.
“Little bit.” His eyes flicker over my face. “But for the first time in possibly forever, I don’t feel alone in it.”
This isn’tLet’s work this out of our systems.
This isI could be very serious about a relationship with you if one of us had the slightest nudge to get there.
“Are we friends?” I whisper.
He studies me, and I find myself holding my breath like the fate of my entire life depends on his answer.
But when he finally answers, it’s everything. “I want to be more than your friend, but I know it’s complicated, and I know we have to go slow, and I know there are people in your life who need to come before me.”
“For a while,” I acknowledge.
“I spent my entire childhood wishing someone would do for me what you’re doing for your daughter. I get it, Maisey. I do. She needs to come first. So whatever it takes—however long it takes—for her to get comfortable with the idea of us, I can wait.”
“You know what you said to Junie tonight?” I whisper. “That was a superhero speech. Do you have any idea how badly she needed to hear that?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“And do you know the worst part?”
“There ... was a worst part?”
“Her own father wouldn’t have done that for her.”
