Heather tilted her head to the side. “That isn’t true. It’s not a fair perspective. You didn’t choose to be born, but she chose to have you.”
“She couldn’t have seen ahead to the consequences.”
“Perhaps not. But that doesn’t negate her part in it. I could’ve easily felt that way about my mom. She raised me without any help at all. It was really hard, but she never made me feel like I was a burden. We were family.”
“Family, to me, has always meant something different. It has always been something…to do. A challenge.”
“I don’t want that to be the case for our child.”
“Neither do I.”
“Did you always want children?”
He shook his head slowly. “To tell you the truth, I hadn’t thought about it. In my experience, loving another person is exhausting.”
“Your mother?”
“It’s a terrible thing to say.”
“Maybe. But it’s not untrue.”
There was nothing more shocking than feeling like maybe the one person who had ever understood this was Heather.
And she had always been there. Yet they had never spoken. Not about this. Not about anything.
They finished their meal, and got back in the car, headed back to the hotel.
As they walked through the lobby, and to the elevator, he looked down at her, and she looked up at him. The expression on her face was soft. Different than any other way she had ever looked at him before. There was understanding there.
Intimacy.
And that had certainly never passed between them before.
The elevator carried them to their floor, and they walked down the hall, to the suite.
He let them both in, and closed the door behind them.
She looked at him, with determination. Her eyes glittering as she stepped toward him, pressed her hands to his chest and stretched up on her toes to kiss him.
The kiss was soft, tentative at first, but began to increase, deepen.
She tilted her head to the side and parted her lips, sliding her tongue against his.
A shiver went through his body.
They’d had each other hard. They’d had each other mean. This was something else entirely.
There had been very little kissing. Consuming, yes, but no kissing.
He captured the back of her head with his hand, her hair like silk as it slid through his fingers, as he kissed her deeper, longer.
As he wrapped his arm around her and held her hard against his body.
She whimpered. Her fingers curling around the collar of his jacket as she clung to him.
As she deepened the kiss, and it went on and on.
The dress was beautiful. The dress existed so that he could take it off of her.
