Chapter
Fifty-Four
Hayes
* * *
We allow all my teammates and Callie to stay for dinner. Afterward, they take the kids to the ice cream parlor, giving us time alone together. Foster wasn’t on board at first, but Lincoln found his new favorite Colts player, much to Easton’s displeasure.
Leighton takes my hand and leads me to the stairs. “Come on.”
“Baby, it’s been so long since I’ve had you, I want to take my time.”
She stops on the second stair and turns around. My hands find her hips, and she bends down to kiss me. “I’m not bringing you up here for sex.”
“Good, because after the kids go to bed tonight, I’m gonna spend an obscene amount of time feasting on your pussy before I slide inside you. I missed my playmate.”
Her cheeks flush, and she moans. God, I love those sounds.
“Okay, you need to stop with the dirty talk until after I show you this.” She tugs my hand, and I let her lead me up the stairs.
She stops at the top, not taking me to her guest room. I realize that Sky and Patrick’s bedroom door is open. She pulls me through the doorway.
It looks as though she’s in the middle of painting. The space has been cleared out of everything except a ladder—and the picture of Leighton and Sky resting on the otherwise empty dresser.
“What do you think?” she asks.
“I think it looks great. The color’s a little feminine for me though.” She tilts her head, and I walk over to her. “I love it. I think this will make a great bedroom for you.”
“And you?” Her eyebrows rise.
I pretend that my heart isn’t leaping out of my chest at her suggestion that I move in here. “You want me to move in?”
“I know it’s sudden, but going through all their stuff, it told a story of their life together, and I realized that I want that. I want the different decades of our favorite clothes hung in the closet. Years of makeup in a drawer. I want to accumulate stuff with you.”
“So romantic.” I chuckle.
“So, I suck at words, but I want to lie next to you every night. I want lazy mornings where we order donuts for the kids so we can stay in bed just a little longer.”
I pull her to me and kiss her forehead. “You’re taking all my lines. I’m supposed to woo you, and now you’re wooing me.”
She rests her chin on my chest and stares up at me. “I think we woo each other. That’s the whole point, so the spark doesn’t go out.”
“Baby, the spark is never going away.”
“It might. But like you said, that’s life, right? We’d find it again.”
In this moment, I can’t imagine never wanting her.
“So?” She bites her bottom lip.
I stare into her eyes and cradle her cheek with my hand. “I love you, Leighton Sinclair, and I’d love to move in with you.”
She blows out a breath and sighs. “I thought you were going to say thanks, but no thanks.”
I frown. “Why?”
She shakes her head. “Because I thought I messed this up between us, and you might want to take it slow. That my issues?—”
