“That may be true, but it’s up to the person to decide when they’re ready to do the work.”
Henry’s mouth curves, his exasperation gone. “Hmmm.”
“What does that mean?”
He guides me across a stone walkway to a bench overlooking the sea. “It means”—he sits and tugs me to rest on his lap, propping my cane beside us—“that I’m thinking.”
I play with his silky hair. “Have we given up on a tryst?”
“Delayed it.”
I search his placid features. “You look very calm for a man who’s had his plans thwarted.”
“You’re here with me. What is there to be upset about?” He slides his palm up my back, his expression introspective. “I think I learned a lesson these last two days.”
“What lesson is that?” I lower my head to his shoulder and place my hand on his chest, the smooth fabric of his tux warm beneath my fingers.
He closes his hand over mine, holding me against him. “Sometimes the thing is not the thing.”
“Not following.”
“I wanted to be close to you.”
I nod.
“In my mind, I framed it as wanting to help you relax. What I really wanted was to understand what you needed. And here we are. Close, without the thing I planned for. When we talked about having kids, I wondered—”
I lift my head to look at his face and he self-corrects. “I hadconcernsthat you and I would change. I was trying to figure out how we could become parents and keep our relationship exactly the same. But we won’t. We can’t. Our priorities would change. Our schedules. The amount of time we were alone with each other would be drastically reduced. Children would even alter our environment.”
My heart settles somewhere near my feet, but I’d never try to convince him to change his mind. “That’s true. No child deserves to grow up feeling resented or like they’re a burden.”
“Your parents are garbage.” He scowls. “Are you sure I can’t kill them?”
My lips twitch, and I roll my eyes. “Oh, hush.”
He scans my face and drops the subject of my awful parents. “For the record, I wouldn’t resent a child we brought into the world. But I was looking at this the wrong way. The question isn’t ‘Can I prevent us from changing?’ It’s ‘Does change automatically mean worse?’”
I force myself to breathe. “It doesn’t.”
“Did you ever hear the stories about how much I initially resisted my father marrying for the second time?”
I frown lightly. “I don’t think I did.”
“I was around seven or eight years old. As far as I was concerned, our family was fine the way it was. We were three men on our own.” Amusement curls around his last sentence. “The point is, I didn’t want some strange woman and her little girl in our lives. They were going to destroy my routines. And, my God, did they ever.”
I smile at the image of little Henry presented with a feral, preschool-aged Bronwyn for a sister.
“I didn’t remember what it was like to have a mother who worried over me or went out of her way to make sure I had what I needed. I had Dad, and he was a great father. But receiving more love, different love, wasn’t a bad change. It took getting used to, but my life was better. I had to share my father with a woman and another child. But he smiled more. The two of them didn’t push us away. And Bronwyn.“ He breaks off with a huff of amusement. “She was this little pink firebrand. Always loud and in trouble. Always looking up to me like I knew every answer. Always willing to put herself between me and anything or anyone she thought might hurt me. She was”—he shakes his head—“incomprehensible.”
I nod, almost afraid to hope where this conversation could lead. “I know.”
“She told me once that I had to be her big brother because I was tall, nice, and told her what to do. I said she was allowed to be my little sister, and she was annoying, but cute. She took cute and annoying as both a compliment and a requirement for the position. My life was good before the two of them. It was better after.”
I squeeze his hand.
“I’ve always known I’d love a child, but, I didn’t know if I’d still love who I was,” he says.
Whoa. “That’s valid, Henry.”
