‘He won’t fight for her.’
Sierra polished off the rest of his wine. ‘Maverick will leave the decision up to her. He might –might– tell her how he feels. But he won’t pressure her. And he won’t ask her to stay because the last time he did, it blew up in his face spectacularly.’
Markus knew that. Isn’t that what he’d told Shannon when she spouted that bullshit about being pressured into having the kid? ‘Make me a promise.’
‘After you just put Shannon in her place? Sunshine, I’d go to the moon for you.’
Markus picked up her hand and kissed the back of it. ‘When it happens, we don’t let them get away with being stupid.’
‘I hate interfering.’
Markus burst out laughing. ‘Bitch, youloveit!’
Sierra looked stunned for a moment, as if she couldn’t believe he’d actually said it. But when she started laughing, she laughed loudly. ‘Oh, God, I really do! People can’t be trusted to make decisions for themselves!’
They laughed until they both had tears streaming down their cheeks, and every time they made eye contact, they only laughed more, laughed harder.
Markus thought that while he and Nina might have been soulmates, he and Sierra were kindred spirits. They had the same need for planning and organization, the same obsession with success and ruthlessness in carrying it out.
Like most of the decisions in Markus’s life, once he decided that he and Sierra were going to be lifelong friends, he grabbed ahold with both hands. So, when she stood and started cleaning the kitchen, which was usually Mav’s chore, he pushed to his feet to help. ‘Tell me your story.’
‘My story?’
‘Everything,’ he confirmed as he threw food scraps into the bin. ‘Including why you feel sympathy for that bitch?’
‘That obvious?’
‘You’re fierce and stubborn and love your brother and niece, and yet you didn’t pile into Shannon as I’d have expected …’
‘It’s one of those long, sad ones,’ she warned.
Markus looked up at that. He saw the grief in her eyes, felt a little jolt of surprise at the intensity of it. But because he knew that friends didn’t shy away from the pain, he topped up his empty wine glass and passed it to her.
‘I think that Shannon might have actually suffered from PPD, and I make a conscious effort to withhold my disdain for her because of it. And it’s hard. Because I hate her. Not just for what she did to Mav, or for abandoning Poppy. But because my baby died, and I will never understand how she could just walk away from hers, from Poppy, when I would have done anything for even a single minute with mine …’
Markus gave her time. He stood at her side while they did the dishes. He didn’t speak. He just listened as Sierra talked, telling him things she hadn’t told anyone else.
She told him that she’d birthed a stillborn baby at full term, and that the biggest regret of her life was that she’d refused to hold her dead child before they’d taken her away. She told him she’d only ever loved one man, and that she’d loved him since she’d been fifteen years old. She told him that whoever had said the opposite of love isn’t hate, but indifference, had been wrong, and that you could only truly hate someone proportionate to how much you had once loved them.
Chapter 17
Although Mav’s internal alarm had him rousing at four-thirty the next morning, for the first time in his life he didn’t feel like he had the energy or the willpower to get out of bed. And the fact that he dreaded the photoshoot wasn’t the full of it. Some, but not all.
Rather, the woman curled up against him, her head on his shoulder, her arm flung over his chest, her leg strung over both of his was the heart of the problem because even as Maverick told himself he should get up, he didn’t want to wake her. He didn’t want to leave her side at all.
She was almost halfway through her stay, which meant that in only two weeks, she would pack her bags and walk out of his life as if she’d never been a part of it.
Terrified of the thought, needing to remind himself that she was still there with him now, he raised his fingers to her arm and distractedly traced a pattern on her bare skin.
It was hard not to compare her to Shannon, even though he knew in his heart that the two women were as different as day and night. Nina was reserved and quiet, almost shy, and she guarded a gentle heart. Shannon was loud and flirtatious. Vivacious. And cold.
But they were both career women, working in fields that made it hard to balance family. And unlike Shannon, who had made promises and then balked, Nina had only been honest with him from the start. Hadn’t she insisted on those ground rules that first night?
‘What are you thinking about?’
Her sleepy voice had him glancing down at her. Her eyes were still half closed, her long lashes hiding them from view. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you,’ he said quietly, and kissed the side of her head.
‘I could hear you thinking in my sleep.’ Her cheek curved against his bare chest when she smiled. ‘Are you worried about the photoshoot?’
