I would give him anything.
Including my hotel room key—maybe especially that.
“Okay,” I breathe.
He squeezes my hip, then his hand falls from me and he takes a step backward. I hold in the sigh that wants to escape at the loss of his touch, turn toward the stroller, and bend slightly to get the key out of my bag.
My fingers shake as I unzip the pocket where the key card is. I don’t know why I’m so nervous, anxious, whatever it is. I shouldn’t be. But him being this close, the way his hand felt, I don’t know what to expect, but I know what I want.
And I want Eli.
I know that I shouldn’t because the last time I threw caution to the wind, I had a surprise nine months later.
So I need to cool it down—from the inside out.
A few minutes later, Eli has left to go to the car seat, and I am left sitting at the picnic table holding a sleepy Ryan. He won’t nap long before he will wake up hungry. Rocking him slightly, I can’t help but wonder what tonight is going to bring.
Hopefully nothing too dramatic. Although I’m pretty sure if anything dramatic was going to happen, it would have been last night. Picking my phone up, I send my dad a text letting him know that I’ve heard from Eli and he’s invited us over to his house for dinner.
DADDY-O: You be safe.
My dad has always been and will always be a man of few words unless he’s really got something to say. Then he’s going to say it, and it’s going to mean something—it always means something when he talks to me.
I love my dad.
Since my mom left, he’s been my constant, and I would have never been able to do anything that I’ve done without his help, especially when it comes to Ryan.
We will. We love you.
After I type my response and hitSend, then I go ahead and attach a selfie of the two of us. Me holding Ryan, who is sucking his thumb, halfway to dreamland. A few moments later, Eli’s pickup truck is back, and I watch as he jumps out of the driver’s seat.
He walks toward me, scratching the top of his head as he does. “I have no fucking clue what to do with that thing. I tried to hook it up for at least five minutes.”
I press my lips together, and my shoulders shake as I try to hold in my laughter. I fail. He rolls his eyes to the sky, then lowers them to meet mine again. Standing, I make my way over to him, my gaze searching his.
“Can you hold him? I can get it all hooked up.”
Tentatively, he reaches for Ryan, who doesn’t even try to move as he’s being switched from me to Eli’s hold. He’s exhausted. After the game last night and then playing all afternoon, he is really done for the day.
As I walk toward the pickup, I feel Eli’s gaze on me as I quickly lock the seat into place, then turn to him and hold out my arms. He shifts his gaze from the seat to my eyes and then frowns.
“You did that far too easily,” he announces.
I laugh. “Yeah, I’ve done it a few times.”
A few moments later, after I’ve shown him how to fold the stroller, he heaves it into the bed of the pickup, then I climb into the front seat, he does the same into the driver’s seat, and away we go.
This man is a complete stranger, yet he is tied to me in a way where we will be linked until the day we die. Sitting next to him, I have never felt more comfortable than I do right now. It could be a false sense of security, but I don’t care. I’m going to just accept it for what it is at this point.
All of it.
I’ll worry about any fallout later.
NINE
WRENLY
Eli pulls up to a house,and I’m surprised. It’s a real house. I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe an apartment or a condo. But this is a real house, with a front porch and the whole thing.
