“I don’t know if I can trust this,” she whispered against his chest. “If I can trust that you won’t leave again.”
His chest tightened. This was what he did. She was protecting herself and their son.
He gently tipped her face so she’d look at him.
“I’m not going anywhere, Lainey. Never again.”
She didn’t answer right away.
His thumb brushed her cheek. “You don’t have to believe me yet. I’ll show you every day, every way I know how. God, I’ve missed you,” he whispered.
Her lips trembled a little. He pulled her close again, wrapping his arms around her.
“We have to tell him,” he murmured. “If you’ll let me be there.”
Lainey nodded. “I know.”
She pulled back from him.
“How?” he asked. “How do you tell a nine-year-old that his world just shifted?”
Lainey sighed. “Carefully.”
Finn leaned back on the couch, his hand still touching hers. “Does he ever ask about me? About his dad?”
She nodded. “He did when he was little but hasn’t for a while.”
Finn flinched. Would the guilt of abandoning them ever go away?
“I told him that his dad loved me,” she said softly. “That he was the best part of what we had.”
Thank God for that. Finn wasn’t sure what he would have done if Lainey had turned Luke against him, even though he probably deserved it. But that wasn’t the kind of person Lainey was. Had never been.
And the fact that he even thought that she would talk badly about him? He mentally kicked himself.
“I want to do this right. I want him to know I’m not going anywhere.”
She blinked back tears. “I believe you.”
“I mean it, Lainey,” he said, his voice fierce. “I’m not walking away from either of you again.”
She gave him a small, trembling smile. “We’ll figure it out. Together.”
And for the first time in a long time, Finn could see the future—their future—and it didn’t scare him.
It felt like hope.
CHAPTER 36
She didn’t meanto stare.
Honestly. But she did.
Watching Finn wash out their coffee mugs at the sink, the sunlight catching red and bronze highlights in his dark hair and his forearms flexing as he moved, was its own kind of sin.
He turned just as she opened her mouth to say something, but the words got stuck in her throat.
“What?” he asked, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.
