He rakes a hand over his hair like he's torn on whether or not to believe me. But then, his wife left him and Dani, and Madi's mom abandoned her, so Kace doesn't exactly have a good record of examples. So why would he believe me? "Maybe… Maybe it'll be better now," I say as a compromise. "Since I'm no longer living there, she'll see that I'm just a friend."
"Yeah. I think so too."
Class starts, and I'm still feeling awkward. And more than a little hurt, though I have no right. "How's, um, Madi doing?"
Kace's jaw tightens, and I'm not sure why.
"She's been as moody as Dani. We're all…adjusting."
Adjusting to me not being there? Is that why he seems so upset? Because me being there was a good thing? "I'll, um, stop by sometime tomorrow and get my clothes and things. If that's okay? Maybe while you're at therapy? The girls can help me pack, and we can talk. I'll let them know we're still going to be friends, and…I'll be around. If they need me."
It's like Kace and I are strangers. More so than when we first met and I made that mad dash through his hospital room to the toilet to be sick.
I hate that we've come to this. I hate that I understand that Kace is simply trying to protect his girls from pain and loss because they've already been through so much. I want to protect them, too. Which means sucking up the fact that I have to do this for them. And for myself.
And Kace.
Love and hurt and pain are so tangled up together that I'm not sure where one ends and another begins. The emotions are that interwoven. That deeply embedded that I can't pluck one from the other.
I suck in a breath and turn away from him when it dawns on me that somehow during the weeks at his house, I've fallen in love with Kace. Pregnant. A caretaker. Not even a girlfriend. But as I search my heart, it's all there. The caring and understanding, the attraction and more.
How? How is this possible? Is this love?
We are friendly strangers now, and yet…
With every late-night ice-cream fix to drive away the nightmares, he's taken a piece of me. The shared amusement whenever Dani says something so sweet or cute or inadvertently funny, and we mark the moment with secret grins.
I've fallen for this golden retriever of a man who is so far over his head in family drama and issues that he barely knows I exist.
All the while carrying another man's baby.
I can certainly choose 'em, can't I?
"That's fine."
Fine. Yeah, I think, sucking in air like a drowning victim.
He's fine because we ended things in order to protect the girls, but now that reality has smacked me upside the head with the truth of my feelings, I see the writing on the wall. I knew he was going to end it, so I did it first. I did it to protect the girls, but deep down, I knew it was to protect myself.
Kace will guard his family no matter what. Even if it means denying whatever his feelings are for me—or any woman—to not add one more thing that could potentially hurt them. He undoubtedly sees me as chaos and pregnancy and a discombobulated life, and I can't blame him. I'm simply one more thing for him to worry about when he's already under a mountain trying to dig his way out.
He murmurs something about returning for pickup time, and I turn in time to watch him go.
And all I can think is now that the meds and hospital have made me better, I am anything but fine.
Around four a.m., I hear the sliding door behind me open and know it's Bronwyn coming to check on me.
"Mind if I join you?"
"It's your deck," I murmur wryly.
Instead of sitting on one of the other seats, Bronwyn sits beside me on the oversized lounge.
"Scooch over."
We split the cushion, and I brace myself for the chat to come.
"What's going on, Lindsey?"
