by Shayla Black
expression tell me he’s trying to figure me out. “Daddy.”
My heart stops. I blink at my son, hardly daring to move. Then I risk a glance at Britta, who’s gaping at us in stunned silence. A resounding yes is on the tip of my tongue. It’s one thing to push her to look past her resentment to see what’s in her heart. But it’s another to force her to allow Jamie to acknowledge me before we’ve both agreed the time is right.
“What do you want to do here, angel?”
She bursts into tears—something else I don’t think would occur if wine hadn’t happened tonight. “God, it’s like you’re a force of nature and I can’t stop you. You invade every area of my life and wreak havoc—”
“I intend to put us back together,” I swear. “You just have to let me.”
I’m stunned that I’m getting choked up, too. I don’t know whether it’s because the three of us are finally under one roof together like a family or because it’s so gratifying to think that, on some level, my own son recognizes me. You know what? I don’t know why. I don’t care why. Despite what my dad has preached my whole life, emotions don’t always make a man weak. The flow of them makes the whole family unit stronger.
In this case, they’re giving me the fortitude to push ahead when I’m sure a lot of people would tell me to back the hell off, so I refuse to judge myself now. I’m rolling toward our future.
With her body racking and her eyes leaking, she slowly approaches us, smoothing Jamie’s hair from his face. “Yes, baby. He’s your daddy.” Then she looks at me. “Don’t push me anymore tonight.”
I hug him tight, kiss his forehead, and revel in a long second of bliss that my son knows the truth, that he’ll call me Daddy for the rest of his life.
But as I hear Britta pace, I realize I can’t let fear, resentment, or anger fester between us—or I’ll lose her. “I didn’t suggest to him that I’m his father or coach him to call me that.”
She turns to me, frowning as if she’s trying to hold herself together. I know this is a sensitive topic. And wine makes her emotions float closer to the surface. Always has.
Maybe that works in my favor tonight.
“The pediatrician told me it wasn’t uncommon for kids without a steady father figure to start looking for one at some point. But until tonight, he’s never done it. It blindsided me. I know in my heart this is both inevitable and best for Jamie. I just…” Britta doesn’t finish her sentence, simply turns away.
I need to go after her. I need to figure out how to soothe her pain.
My first solution to make her feel good is sex…but that’s easy. It’s not going to fix a situation this complicated. I have to really use everything I’ve learned over the last couple of years and talk to her. I have to listen and try to say the right things.
I’ve never been great at that, but the stakes are too high to fuck up now.
“Good night, son,” I murmur to Jamie as I lay him in the playpen.
“Daddy,” he gurgles again as I hand him a stuffed bear.
“I’ll see you in the morning. I love you.” I kiss his head again.
As I slip out, I flip off the lights and leave the door cracked so Jamie isn’t afraid in his new surroundings. Thankfully, he doesn’t make a sound other than a sigh as he slides into sleep.
When I turn, Britta is on the lanai attached to the bedroom, looking out over the inky ocean and the silvery moon playing peekaboo with the clouds.
“I’m sorry you weren’t ready for that,” I say softly behind her, resisting the urge to touch her, offer her comfort.
She shakes her head. “I tell myself that I’m worried you’ll crush Jamie if you walk away again. But I realize it’s all wrapped up in my bigger anxiety. How do I simply trust you again? You can’t fathom what you’re asking of me. What—”
“Yeah, I can. You saved your virginity for the man you’d marry, and you thought that was me. I admit I seduced you. I admit that I wasn’t a great boyfriend. But it was lack of skills, not lack of feeling. I loved you then. I love you now. I know that’s hard to believe after everything I put you through, but I wish you’d try, angel.”
“I’m in a terrible position. Everywhere I turn you’re there, in my face, against my body, trying to barge your way back into my life. Memories I haven’t thought of in years come out of nowhere to slap me.” She breaks into sobs. “Makaio wanted me this weekend. I kept thinking about the first time you and I…” She shakes her head, tears now streaming. “And I couldn’t.”
The guttural, primal part of me wants to throw a party. She turned down sex with her fiancé because I barged into her thoughts—and crowded him out of her heart. She didn’t admit that in so many words, but I feel it. I’m closer to breaking through than I even knew. Little by little, all my assurances have been wearing down her resistance. She just needs a few more signs, more proof that I’m here for her and I’m always going to be here for her.
On the other hand, I hate to see her so torn. Every moment of weeping she stifles into suffering silence is a blade to my heart. I’m furious that I have to finish ripping her apart before I can put us back together.
I grab Britta and fold her into my arms, soothing her with a hand down her back and a whisper in her ear. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not! I’m engaged to another man but I’m letting the one who broke my heart comfort me because it feels confusingly right. I can’t do that. I can’t give you the power to hurt me again.”
“I never will. That promise isn’t just words I’ve strung together. I am determined to make you happy. I am committed to it. I know when I left it fucking hurt. And I know because I didn’t just break your heart. I broke my own. Everything Keeley said tonight was true. I was a mess. I could have used a good therapist, sure. But I desperately needed a friend. I looked everywhere for something close to what you and I shared. In every bar, on every beach, on every app meant to facilitate a quick hookup.”
She wrenches out of my embrace, and I let her. “I don’t want to hear how many girls you fucked, Griffin Reed. I don’t!” Her face looks crestfallen, her eyes so sad. “But I can do math. Now you want me to believe that you missed me so much that you had sex with hundreds of women while we were apart? How is that supposed to convince me that you loved me?”
“I don’t know the exact number. I didn’t keep track.” But her estimate sounds about right. “I tried to replicate the way you made me feel. And this will sound totally messed up, but it should tell you that I never could replace you because—I realize now—you’re everything to me.”
Britta wraps her arms around herself and mulls my words over. “It does sound messed up. As much as I hate you for it and want to call you a liar, I can’t. Because I tried some of that, too.” She swallowed. “After making love with you, being with someone I didn’t care about at all was one of the most terrible, hollow emotions I’ve ever inflicted on myself.”
Her admission opens a fresh wound in my chest. I don’t think for one minute that she’s talking about her relationship with Makaio. And the last thing I want to hear about is Britta in bed with yet another guy. But I have to know that she actually understands. We both have to purge the past.
“What happened?”
She shoots me a sharp glance, then shakes her head. “The details aren’t important.”
“I don’t need who, when, and where. Tell me what it felt like when someone else touched you.”
“The first time?” She looks hesitant.
Of course there was more than one time, more than one man. We were apart for three years. I stupidly threw myself into the singles’ cesspool about three weeks after our split and stroked all through the waters until I finally crawled out sixteen days ago. Britta is far more cautious. She would have waited, maybe hoped we could patch it back together. I wonder what made her finally decide to give up on me.
“Yeah.” We can start there. If she needs to talk more, we will. I will attempt to suppress my homicidal urges.
“The night I received the naked pictures of you and Tiffanii, I went to some bar on Front Street. I don’t even remember which one. I drank a lot, so I don’t recall his name, either. He listened to me talk about our breakup for a few minutes, then asked me if I wanted to have sex. I said yes.”
I close my eyes and try not to feel betrayed because I have no right. No, I try not to feel as if her words ripped my heart from my chest and squeezed out the blood with her bare hands. She had sex with someone else even before I did. “Why? Because you were angry?”
“Furious,” she admits softly. “I wanted to hurt you. Not that you even knew when it happened, but I just… I don’t know. I kept seeing the snapshots of you and that plastic bitch together. I know you’ve said you didn’t voluntarily sleep with her—at least then. I can believe she rigged the scene since she was always jealous of what we had, enjoyed stirring up drama, and had no conscience. But that night, I didn’t want to feel like the naive virgin you’d taken advantage of anymore. I didn’t want to stand still like the clingy ex-girlfriend who couldn’t move on. Maybe I needed to prove to myself that I’d be all right without you. I’m not sure anymore. I just know that, when it was over, I went to his bathroom and threw up. Then I gave him a fake number and cried all the way back to our apartment.”
I clench my fists, but if I’m going to lash out at something or someone, it should be myself. In a lot of ways, I did this to her. I forced her to confront the future without me when she was reeling and enraged and fucking lost.
“It hurt you,” I croon in a soft voice that’s somehow a small consolation to me, too.
“Yes. I couldn’t sleep in our bed, so I sat up all night, waiting for you to storm back in, seething about what I’d done. To demand that I give you back the body that belonged to you because you’d always been so possessive. But hour after hour passed without anything except silence and regret. That’s when I knew you were never coming back.” Tears fill her eyes and spill again in a stream of sorrow. “I found out I was pregnant a week later. Once Jamie was born, I dated a little off and on. Sometimes, I’d sleep with someone to see if I was finally over you. But no… I went from feeling sick and stupid to being frozen and empty.”
I understand. Most of my life, I’ve slept with women I didn’t have an ounce of feeling for. That’s how my old man taught me it was done. That’s what life reinforced. I never really knew anything else existed—until Britta.
She shrugs. “Either way, I felt deeply alone. And god, I need to shut up. I’m giving you so many weapons to use against me. You’re probably thinking gleefully about how sentimental and stupid I am and—”
“No. Never.” I finally risk cupping her face. “I’m thinking about how I would do anything to change that week of our lives. But I can’t. I can only ask for your forgiveness.”
“I think I’ve forgiven you.” She finally looks right at me, our gazes connecting in a snap I feel all the way to my toes. “I simply don’t know if I can forget.”
I want to kiss her. Right now. I want to imprint myself on her, show her exactly how I feel in a way I’m good at—certainly better than speaking a bunch of words. If I could show her the difference between the guy who randomly picked up women in a bar and gave them a good time because it temporarily masked how crappy I felt about myself versus the man standing in front of her desperate for the chance to make her mine because I love her, maybe she would understand.
I lower my head, inching so, so slowly toward her lips. She sees me coming, grabs my biceps, holds her breath. I feel her body tense. I dip closer. Her eyes slide shut.
Jesus, my heart is going to gallop out of my chest. We’ve made so much damn progress tonight. It must be a sign that she’s working through her scars. Maybe, deep down, she even wants me back. I’m excited. I have hope. I’m—
“No.” She steps back, shaking her head. She worries her engagement ring on her finger. “I’m committed to someone else. You and I have chemistry. I won’t deny that. Some part of my heart still belongs to you because you were my first love. That part will probably always belong to you. But I’ve moved on, made different choices. You seem to want some fairy tale out of our time together. Griff, you’re not Prince Charming, and you weren’t around to rescue me from the tower, so I found my own way out.”
Britta turns her back to me and heads into the house once more. Dismissing me.
“Makaio isn’t going to make you happy,” I call after her, following with soft footsteps. “He can’t.”
She stops, glances at me over her shoulder. I hover right behind her, absorbing the heat of her body as the tropical breeze kicks up. In those silent moments, I sense her hesitation. I smell her. I want her.
I’m not giving up until I have her again.
She whirls on me and backs a step away. “And you think you can?
“Yes.”
“I don’t need that crazy, consuming, dizzying sort of ‘love’ again. He respects me. We don’t argue. We’re looking for the same things in life.”
I scoff. “Logic isn’t going to fulfill you, angel. He doesn’t love you. He doesn’t challenge you. And he damn well doesn’t excite you.”
She presses her lips together and crosses her arms. But she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t refute me.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” I invite her. Fuck that, I goad her.
“Leave me alone.”
“I’m not going to do that.” Ever.
“Go to hell.”
“I’ve been in hell for the last three years. Now that I’m with you again, I’m staying right here. You’ll figure that out sooner or later.”
“I prefer Makaio. He gives me space.”
She’s lying to herself.
I shake my head. “He doesn’t care enough to do whatever it takes to earn your heart. He didn’t take care of you when you were sick, and he doesn’t give a damn that you have the perfect fucking dream wedding in mind. You’re only marrying him because you think he’s safe. Because you think he’ll never leave you. Because he doesn’t know or care that you’ll never give him the power to hurt you. I won’t make you admit that out loud, but you know I’m right.”
She sighs. Her shoulders droop. “If I gave you what you wanted right now… If I said, ‘You know, Griff, you’re totally right. Let’s get back together,’ you’d be bored in under a month.”
“No.”
“You’d be sneaking away to add notches on your bedpost in less than six weeks,” she goes on as if I didn’t refute her.
I grit my teeth. “Hell no.”
“You would. And you’d be gone from my life—and Jamie’s—again in…three, maybe four months. What’s the point? Am I your ultimate challenge? Does your ego need to see if you can win me back so you can dump me again?”
“Fuck no!”
I shouldn’t touch her at all, not now, not when I’m worked up and she’s feeling defensive. Cupping her shoulders certainly doesn’t satisfy my need to have her next to me, under me, filled with me. But I want her used to my hands on her skin. I’m willing to start slow. I’m going to work a little more each day to erase the feel of every other man from her memory.
“Yes,” she refutes. “You don’t want to see that. Maybe you need to believe you’ve changed so you can live with yourself. Maybe you’re looking for meaning or redemption or… I don’t even know. Maybe you hit thirty last November and started to think about how sad it is to be unmarried and decided you should settle for the woman who once dreamed naively of the day you would commit and set up house and take meaningless vows—”
“None of that. Fucking son of a bitch. Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve goddamn said since I walked back into your life? I. Love. You. And if I was lying to myself about anything in the past, it was that. By burying that truth, I didn’t have to admit that I was wrong or that I’d screwed up or that my loneliness was something I completely deserved. It would have been really easy to keep rolling along in life and blaming you for brea
king faith first by stabbing me with Maxon’s secret deal. I have plenty of reasons to know exactly how cutthroat women can be when it comes to money and power and…” I realize what I’m about to admit. It’s actually on the tip of my tongue. But if Britta is horrified with me now, she’ll be completely revolted by my dirty secret. “Whatever.”
“Not whatever. Tell me,” she demands. “What did I ever do to you but give you my devotion and believe in you?”
“We’re not solving anything at this point. I’m done.” I shoulder my way past her and stomp through the bedroom, heading for the stairs to find my suitcase in the foyer.
Britta marches after me. “See? That’s just like you, giving up. Walking out. Thanks for proving my point, asshole.”
God, she’s pushing me. And pushing harder than I ever expected. On the one hand, it’s a good sign. She’d be happy for my reprieve if she didn’t care. On the other hand, I’m beginning to understand how she feels, why she’s overwhelmed by what’s going on between us.
“I’m not walking out. Get it through your stubborn head, I will never do that again. I’m stopping a destructive argument. I’m making sure we don’t say awful things to each other, like we did the day we ended. I regret calling you a bitch. I regret letting you go, not being there for you and Jamie. Hell, I regret everything I’ve done in the last three years except the things I’ve done since I came to your engagement party.”