But then, long before I was ready for the moment to end, she shifted beneath me, trying to free herself from my weight pressing her into the mattress.
“I could get used to this,” she said softly. “Lying together like this.”
“Good. I want you to get used to it.”
She stilled for a moment, blinking up at me. But then she renewed her efforts to shove me off her. “Bathroom,” she said. Which I already knew. This was her routine, so the quiet moment of togetherness was over.
I rolled off of her, throwing an arm over my forehead in frustration as she scurried out of my bed and shut me out again. Two steps forward, one step back. That was how it always felt with Ravyn. And I knew all too well that this was normal. My depression hadn’t been anywhere near as deep and ingrained when I’d had to deal with it over the summer. So I supposed I should be grateful that she was taking steps forward at all.
That didn’t stop me from wanting more, though.
I heard her flush the toilet and turn on the sink, so I crawled out of bed and disposed of the condom, grabbing a tissue to clean myself off. The longer she stayed in the bathroom, the more frustrated I grew. Because she was leaving me alone with my thoughts when all I wanted was to be completely wrapped up in her.
That was the problem. I wanted more, and I didn’t think she could give me more.
Did it make me a selfish bastard for wanting to hold her for a while after sex? That seemed backwards, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was exactly how she might see things.
The faucet shut off, but Ravyn still didn’t return to the bedroom. And I had intended to make us both dinner, before we’d ended up in bed, so I pulled on a pair of shorts and headed for the kitchen to do exactly that.
She might not be in my arms, but she wasn’t running away from me, either. I had to keep reminding myself that we were making progress. Besides, I shouldn’t be too quick to jump into another relationship, anyway. It’d only be intelligent—for both of us—to take things at Ravyn’s pace.
By the time she joined me, wearing a Thunderbirds T-shirt she’d found in the closet and likely nothing else, I’d sorted and opened the mail that had been piling up for a few days and gotten some serious work done on our dinner.
My sister had sent me a few professional portraits of her daughters, which I needed to get framed and hung at some point. For now, I set them aside on the counter on top of a stack of bills and focused on the meal.
I had chicken bubbling away in a creamy tomato sauce, veggies sautéing, and pasta boiling. It might be one of five meals I knew how to make, but it definitely met my nutritional needs. And it tasted pretty damned good if I did say so myself.
“Smells good,” she said.
“See? I’m not a one-trick pony. I can play hockey and feed myself.”
“I never thought you only had one trick.”
“No? What else do you think I can do?”
“I don’t know.” She gave me a sexy grin. “You’re not too bad in bed.”
“Not quite a skill necessary for survival, but I suppose it’s not a bad one to have,” I said with a wink.
“Definitely not.” Ravyn came fully into the kitchen and hitched her hip against the counter. But then her eyes strayed to the stack of mail I’d left out with the photographs on top, and she visibly tensed.
I should have thought to put them away. After the way she’d freaked out around my teammates’ kids that day, and then her explanation as to why she had such strong reactions, I’d been doing everything I could to keep children out of the equation between us. No random visits from the guys’ families. I was hyper-aware of things with Bear whenever Carter was in town so we didn’t have a repeat of that afternoon. I didn’t take her places we’d be likely to run into babies.
It wasn’t something we’d be able to avoid forever, but there was no reason to blindly walk into a situation she wasn’t ready for, either.
But instead of breaking down, Ravyn blinked a couple of times, her gaze still on the photographs, before crossing over to the other counter. She looked down at the images with a sort of determination that I’d rarely witnessed in her before glancing over at me again.
“Who are they?” she asked.
Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as I’d feared. “My nieces. That’s Lucy on the left and Charley on the right.”
“Charley’s an interesting name for a little girl.”
“Short for Charlotte. She’s kind of a tomboy, though. Three years old, and she’s already decided Charlotte is too girly for her.”
Ravyn laughed. I was both surprised and relieved to see how she was taking this. No, the girls weren’t here right now—we were only looking at photographs—but I just wasn’t sure what Ravyn was ready for.
“Do they have different fathers?” she asked. Not a surprising question, considering Lucy was clearly Hispanic and Charley was clearly not. Lucy had sleek black hair and a tan that would put most beach volleyball players to shame, while Charley had strawberry-blond curls and fairer-than-fair skin that burned in a nanosecond.
“Different fathers. Different mothers, too,” I said.
She hitched up a brow in question.
“My sister and brother-in-law adopted them. They both came into the foster care system at about the same time and latched onto each other, so everyone wanted to keep them together.”
“Oh. That was good of them.” There was no missing the hitch in her voice, but she didn’t run off to hide or anything. She stayed in the kitchen with me.
“There are a lot of good people out there who want to adopt kids,” I pointed out. “Melody and Shawn couldn’t have any of their own. They tried for several years. Lots of fertility treatments and whatnot. Eventually, they decided that having a family was more important to them than how they came about getting their family. You know? And they looked for kids to adopt who might have been harder to place, for whatever reason.”
“What was difficult about placing Lucy and Charley?”
“They weren’t babies, to start. They were one and a half and two by the time Melody and Shawn met them. And Lucy isn’t white. Charley might not have been too tough to find a home for on her own, but she outright refused to go anywhere without Lucy, so…” I stirred the veggies and the sauce, keeping one eye on Ravyn.
She took what appeared to be a calming breath. “So a sick baby might be hard to place, too, even if it’s a baby. I mean, if someone wouldn’t want a gorgeous little girl just because she’s got dark skin—”
“Your son was adopted,” I cut in. Letting her thoughts run away with her like that wouldn’t help anything.
Her head shot up, and she blinked hard a few times. That didn’t stop the tears from streaking down her cheeks. “How do you know that?”
I wiped my hands on a paper towel and turned so I could face her fully. “I don’t know it, but I believe it. With everything in me.” I wanted to wrap her up in my arms, but right now the temperature of the air between us made me think she’d push me away if I tried it. So, as hard as it was, I kept my distance.
“But what if I passed on the HIV and nobody knows about it?” Another tear fell from her cheek and landed on her chest, darkening the turquoise of my T-shirt.
“You dropped him off at a hospital. With a nurse. They knew you’d delivered him at home, so there’s not a chance in hell they wouldn’t have run all sorts of tests to find out everything they could about him.”
“But we both know that HIV doesn’t show up for a while, usually. It could be months later, or even years. Like your teammate. The guy who put his hands on your throat. He could have it but they might not know.”
“Whether he has HIV or not, though, I believe with everything in me that they found him a good home with loving parents who are going to take care of him. Who’ll get him routine medical care. Maybe they’re a couple like my sister and brother-in-law, good people who couldn’t have children on their own but who have a lot of love to give.”
/> She still didn’t look convinced. I doubted she’d ever truly be, because this wasn’t the sort of thing that would ever go away even if she was certain she’d made the right choice, both for herself and for the baby.
I slipped her into my arms and pressed a kiss to her forehead, offering what slight consolation I could. She allowed that much, so I went in for more, tucking her head beneath my chin and holding on tight.
“What you did was the ultimate act of love,” I murmured. She shook her head, but I didn’t give her the chance to argue with me. “It was. You knew you weren’t in a position to give your child what he needed. You gave him the opportunity for a life you couldn’t provide, even if it meant you would suffer.”
And Lord knew she’d been suffering over this decision.
I held her for a lot longer than I’d intended to. To be honest, I wasn’t sure which one of us needed it more, and as long as she didn’t break contact, I wasn’t inclined to put an end to it. If we weren’t going to stay in bed and hold each other after sex, I wanted to get as much time with her in my arms as possible, in any way I could.
I’d always been into the cuddling side of intimacy as much as sex—maybe even more. Probably due to the affectionate way my parents had raised me. We’d been a family that was free with our hugs and kisses. I didn’t know any other way to be.
But eventually Ravyn straightened herself away from me, and I turned to stir the food before something burned.
She sniffled and reached for a paper towel. “So you and your ex…”
I tensed up when she trailed off like that. I might be out of practice when it came to the early stages of a romantic relationship, but conversations about exes so soon after sex and cuddling couldn’t be a good thing, could they?
“What about us?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light.
Ravyn shrugged, but her eyes were a hell of a lot more serious than the action implied. She boosted herself up so that she was sitting on the edge of the counter behind me. “I just thought, I mean, you two were together for a long time, right?”
“You could say that.” I stirred the veggies, trying to focus on dinner so I wouldn’t overthink where she was going with this. “Ten years? We were sixteen when we started dating. I met her when I was playing in juniors. We married at twenty-one, divorced at twenty-six, so yeah, ten years.”
More than a third of my life was with Chelsea. I’d never thought of it in those terms before, but it hit me like a brick right now. Crazy to think I’d spent so much of my life with her and I didn’t even miss her anymore.
But the look in Ravyn’s eyes was enough to make me lose my mind with worry. What had I done or said wrong? I didn’t have a clue, and she looked like she was struggling to keep it together.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, resting the wooden spoon in the skillet so I could give her my full attention.
She shook her head and shrugged again, but there were more tears pooling in her eyes and threatening to spill over. The wadded up paper towel seemed forgotten in her hand. “Did you… Did you two ever try to have kids?”
And we were back to kids just like that.
“We talked about it,” I said evenly. “We both wanted a family, but Chelsea thought it would be best if we waited. I was still early in my career, and she said we should be settled better before starting a family.”
Come to think of it, she might have been cheating early on in our marriage, so maybe she didn’t actually want to have a family with me. I supposed I’d never know the truth now.
Either way, I was glad we hadn’t gone ahead and had kids. That would have only made the eventual divorce messier, and it would have tied me to her forever, even if neither of us wanted to be. Now she could go on about her life and I could move forward with mine, and neither of us had to worry about what the other was doing.
“What about now?” Ravyn asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you still want kids?”
Talk about a loaded question. Especially since we still weren’t officially a couple or anything. We might as well be, as far as I was concerned, but Ravyn still seemed to be gun-shy, and I didn’t want to push her.
“I do,” I said cautiously. “But things are complicated now. I mean, HIV doesn’t transfer from a father to an unborn baby, so that’s not an issue. But I can’t exactly try to make a baby with a woman who isn’t HIV-positive, too, without risking infecting her. And if she’s HIV-positive, then there’s always a risk of infecting the baby at birth, so… It’s complicated.” I drained the pasta, then put everything together in the big pot to combine it all, keeping an eye on Ravyn as I did. I still couldn’t read her, though, which drove me crazy. “What about you?” I asked. “Do you want to have kids?”
She stared at me, her face an impenetrable mask other than her rapid blinking. If not for that, I’d think she had completely shut down on me. It was just enough to point to the fact that she was struggling with whatever emotions she was feeling. She glanced down at the photographs of my nieces for a moment before once again meeting my gaze.
“I don’t think I could ever handle another pregnancy. It’d be too hard. Too many memories for me to get lost in.”
Then she fell silent for so long I thought that might be all she had to say.
I was wrong.
“But I suppose there’s always adoption.”
Maybe she was making more progress with her counseling than I’d believed. I took down a couple of plates and glasses for water, smiling to myself. It was a good thing I was as patient as I was determined, because patience was exactly what Ravyn needed.
FOR ONLY THE second time in the last couple of weeks, I wouldn’t get to see Drew today. Which felt…odd. And uncomfortable. While I was more upset about that than I’d like, there was also a part of me that was glad.
I worried that I was relying on him as a crutch. If that was the case, what would happen any time he had to leave with the Thunderbirds for a road trip? Was I doomed to go back to cutting myself as soon as he was gone or if he wasn’t around for more than a couple of days? I hoped I’d come to a point where that wouldn’t be the case, but I’d never know until I had at least a day or two without him.
After dinner last night and talking about things we’d never discussed before, we’d ended up back in his bed for a while. I couldn’t say I minded. A couple more orgasms yesterday would go a long way toward getting me through today, as I saw it.
I tried to keep that in mind while sitting in my room and sketching a design at INKredible Ink.
Today was looking to be a rare day off, even though I was at work. After coming in a little after lunch, I’d spent a few hours restocking all of my supplies and performing maintenance work on my machines.
I didn’t have any clients on the schedule for the rest of the day, and I’d already finished the designs for the ones who’d be coming later in the week, so there wasn’t too much for me to do other than wait around and hope for someone to walk in off the streets or maybe call and schedule an appointment.
Rick poked his head in while I was doodling. “Looks like a slow one today.”
“Mondays are always slow.”
“Sometimes I think about shutting down the shop on Mondays, too, but it seems like a waste.” He came into my room and sat on the chair like he would if I were going to work on him. “You’ve seemed better lately.”
I scowled and raised a brow. He was digging for information, and I knew it. And he knew that I knew it, according to his grin.
“Amazing what some counseling can do for a crazy lady,” I joked.
“Or getting laid. Whichever.” He winked.
“What do you know about that?”
“Shannon and I still get it on all the time, so I know plenty about what a good roll in the sack can do for a person.”
I rolled my eyes. “I meant what do you know about me getting laid—or not, as the case may be?”
“A hell of a lot more than you realize.
I keep an eye on you. Been doing it since the first day you showed up in my shop with a sketchbook, asking me to teach you to tattoo.” He linked his fingers and used them as a pillow behind his head, then stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles, settling in like he intended to stay for a while. “You’re like a daughter to me. You know that.”
“Yeah, well, my father wasn’t much of an example for what a father should be, so I don’t know what to do with you.”
“But you had a baby of your own, so you get what the concerned parent thing is like.” He didn’t give me a chance to argue that I wasn’t a parent, rushing on before I could get a word out. “You know I’m always going to worry about you. You know I want the best for you, and I’ll do anything I can to make sure you get it. Because that’s what parents should do.”
I blinked back tears and traded out my black pencil for a charcoal-gray one.
Rick’s eyes followed my hands, and he stared at my sketch. “Still no color, hmm? When are you gonna go back to your roots?”
I shrugged. At least he’d changed the subject. I’d been crying too much lately, and I sure as hell didn’t want to do it at work.
“Maybe I need to have a talk with that guy who’s driving you everywhere lately.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What kind of talk? And what the hell does that have to do with me working in color or not?” Rick was bouncing all over the place, kind of like my new counselor tended to do, and I didn’t like it. Because it threw me off. Kept me from being able to put my defenses in place.
“I don’t know. You tell me. Is Muscle Man treating you right?”
I choked on a laugh. “Muscle Man?”
“Well, you tell me his name if you don’t want me to make up a name for him.”
“Drew,” I said. “And I wouldn’t know how to recognize a man who was treating me right if you bashed me over the head with him.”
Rites of Passage Page 16