Page 135 of The Perfect Mistake

“Not yet,” I say.

She runs light fingers along my jaw. Her brown eyes are warm, so warm, the color looks almost liquid. “Just because I might have a different job,” she says softly, “doesn’t mean we have to stop seeing one another.”

No, it doesn’t. I’ll be here for as long as she wants me. Stolen nights in hotels when I have a babysitter. Dinners, if she’ll let me take her out on the few nights I might be free. I want to send her flowers when her studio opens and the lavish gifts she’ll never buy herself. Drape her in diamonds and cushion her in luxury. Keep finding new ways to make her come.

But the fear won’t leave me. That when she’s out of this apartment, when she starts to rebuild a life for herself, she’ll want more than that. A boyfriend her own age. A man without kids, a man who wants more kids, and a man who won’t one day be fifty when she is gloriously thirty-five.

“No, it doesn’t,” I say.

Her eyebrows drop down, turning her warm eyes troubled. “Alec?”

I kiss her instead, pulling her slim body against mine. She tastes good, and fresh, and familiar. The thought of one day losing this makes my head hurt, even as I’m kissing her, and even as she’s melting in my arms.

This, kissing her like this, is more than enough. It has to be.

She wraps her arms around my neck, and I groan against her lips. I love it when she does that. Like she wants to hold on to me forever.

There’s a small gasp across the room.

I release Isabel. Her hands slide down to my chest, and we both turn.

Willa is standing in the doorway. Sam is right next to her, peeking out around her arm. Both of their eyes are large.

Katja rounds the corner and comes to a halt behind them. “Kids, there’s no going— oh!”

All three of them stare at Isabel and me.

Her hands drop from my chest, and she takes a step back.

“Daddy,” Willa says. “Why are you kissing Isabel?”

My mind goes blank. It has disintegrated entirely, and I can only stare at my children with a sinking feeling in my gut. They’re the most important thing in my life. I’ve never introduced them to a woman. Never even raised an idea of me and another woman, other than their mother.

“Come on, kids,” Katja says. She has a no-nonsense tone in her voice, and I have no idea what she’s thinking of me at this very moment. “Let’s leave the grown-ups to finish their conversation.”

“But they weren’t talking!” Sam protests.

I run a hand over my face. “It’s fine. Thank you, but come on in, kids. Let’s talk about it.”

Beside me, Isabel shifts from one foot to the other. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

The apology makes my stomach sink even further. “Don’t,” I tell her. She’s done nothing wrong.

Sam walks into the room as if he’s here all the time. Willa follows at a distance, her eyes moving between me and Isabel like she’s trying to put a puzzle together.

I have no idea what their reaction will be.

I sit down on the edge of Isabel’s bed. “Okay,” I say. “What are your questions?”

Sam climbs up on the bed next to me. Willa drifts toward Isabel instead, who’s taken a seat on her desk chair.

My daughter rocks from side to side. “Does this mean you’re going to marry my dad?” she asks Isabel.

Isabel glances at me quickly before looking back at my daughter. “Uh, no. It doesn’t mean that.”

“So you won’t marry him?” Willa probes. Her voice has a trace of disappointment in it.

I clear my throat. “Isabel and I like each other a great deal. But it doesn’t mean that we know what will happen in the future.”

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