I stared at the wall, not sure how to respond. I’d been hoping he’d do something, but I hadn’t been expecting this. Although, given how much I’d relied on Shane in the past, was it any wonder he was out of fucks? Especially when it seemed like I was determined to deliberately fuck up the one thing in my life that had been going well. “I… I mean…”
“I swear, E, the next words out of your mouth better not be an excuse.”
“What if I hurt him, Shane? What if I’m not enough?” I asked. “I told myself this was going to be casual, blow off some steam, show him what good sex was, and now… fuck, I have fucking butterflies! Whenever I’m around him, it’s like I can’t fucking breathe! I didn’t want this. I told myself I wasn’t doing this again. But apparently, I don’t get a say in how I feel.”
Like it or not, my heart had made a decision about Danny without running it past the rest of me. Although I was pretty sure my dick had sponsored the decision, given how my libido had been behaving.
That was another thing I could add to my list of failures along with my marriage and my complete inability to keep Danny at arm’s length. If I’d listened to myself in the first place, turned Danny down, and not given in to my dick, I wouldn’t be in this mess.
I’d just be alone.
And miserable.
And Danny would have found someone else… which was a thought that made me angrier than it should have.
Not just because I couldn’t bear the thought of Danny being with another man, but because I knew nobody could look after him the way I could. No one else could give him what heneeded, or see how fucking brightly he shone, or appreciate that adorable-as-fuck head tilt and puppy eyes.
It could only be me.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Shane said softly. “It might have started out casually, and I mean, I can see why you got involved because he sounds exactly like your weakness. But the mullet, seriously? He looks good in shorts, though. And he’s got a sweet face, very puppy-like.”
“Are you stalking him?”
“Oh please, there’s only one Danny on the Knights. He wasn’t hard to find.”
“I should never have told you.”
“Maybe, but nobody else is going to tell you the truth.”
“And what’s that?”
“That you like him, and that you’re terrified it’s going to end badly like things did with Reed, so you’ve decided to make the decision for Danny. That way you can both be miserable but at least you might save yourself from even more pain in the future. You’re cutting off your nose to spite your face because you think it’s best, not because it actually is. And you’re letting your dickhead of an ex-husband live rent free in your head instead of throwing him out like the cockroach he is. Don’t let him dictate the rest of your life, babe. You’re better than that.”
“I know,” I said. Shane’s words weren’t anything I hadn’t already thought, but it felt different hearing them from him rather than my own mind. And somewhere deep in my chest, a flame of stubbornness caught light.
“Look, I know you’re scared, and you have every reason to be, but you’re only thirty-eight, babe. You can’t spend the rest of your life being lonely and miserable because you might get hurt again. Life hurts, but that doesn’t mean you should stop living it. And maybe things won’t work out between you, but you won’t know unless you fucking try! So try, E. Because you deserve to behappy. And if you’ve found someone that makes life worth living again, then it’s worth putting yourself out there.”
There was an earnestness to his words, and a painful truth too.
Shane was right. I owed it to Danny to let him make his own decision about us and I owed it to myself to live the life I wanted. My relationship with Reed would always be a part of my past, but it didn’t have to define my future.
My heart might be broken and chipped and missing bits, but that didn’t mean I didn’t deserve to be loved.
If Danny wanted me, then I’d give him everything I had and more.
Because he was the one who’d pieced me back together again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Danny
I was halfwaythrough scrubbing my bedroom skirting boards when I became aware of a knocking on the door, followed by the harsh sound of the doorbell. I looked up, dirty cloth still in hand, and frowned, annoyed at the way my heart leapt.
No, bad heart. Very bad. You aren’t allowed to make decisions anymore because listening to you is the reason I’m in this mess.
Although more of the blame should be levelled at my dick, since that had definitely had a greater say in any of the decision-making.
It wasn’t allowed to have any say in the future either.
