Page 43 of Hold Me Until Morning

“Now why on earth would I want to do that?” He took a lazy pull of his beer, his thick throat bobbing as he swallowed.

He slung a muscled, tattooed arm up so it was hooked behind his head, and he rocked back farther in the chair. So smooth and easy and so damned good to look at that I swayed to the side.

It took me a second to realize I hadn’t said anything for at least a minute and was standing there mute, rooted to the spot. Staring through a lulling calm that still thrummed with energy.

He was conflict and peace.

Disorder ushered in by a warm spring breeze.

A paradox.

Clearing my throat, I tightened my hold on the strap of my bag, clinging to it like it might be an anchor. “I should get inside.”

He dipped his chin so casually. Like the interaction was trivial when the man was nothing less than an earthquake. “I’m sure I’ll see you around, Shortcake.”

There was that Shortcake again, and my chest clutched, the memory of him sitting beneath that tree with his boots stretched out in front of him, the man so distraught as we’d shared that cake.

It was the first time he’d allowed me to see him. To see deeper into the intricate layers of his depths. To see more than the careless player I had to believe he was.

Shuttering the thoughts, I hurried up the walkway, put the key into the lock, and swung open the door.

Any tension I’d felt a second ago drained when I stepped inside to find Lolly and Maddie gathered around the coffee table in front of the couch, a game of Candyland spread out between them.

Maddie was on her knees on the floor, and she threw her arms into the air when she saw me. Her plump cheeks dimpled when she gave me that adorable smile that wrecked me every time.

My heart was hardly able to hold the magnitude of my love for her.

“Mommy! You got home so fast. You gotta come play with us. I already beat my Lolly like a hundred times, and she needs your help super bad. She’s real terrible at this.”

Madison’s expression pulled in mortified disappointment.

Lolly chuckled and slanted me a knowing glance. “Little one’s too smart for me.”

“Well, then I guess Lolly and I are going to have to form a team, aren’t we?”

Lolly’s smile was soft. “We’ve always been the best kind of team.”

“That’s right,” I told her, sitting down beside her and squeezing her knee. “The best one there is.”

Maddie beamed from across the coffee table, those curls wild and her innocence stark. “Hey, I’m on your team, too. That’s gotta mean we all win, right, Mommy?”

I squeezed Lolly’s hand.

Yeah, that had to mean we all won. And I was set on the prize being this life.

TEN

HAILEY

It was a few minutes after ten that night when I was in the kitchen, unloading a few boxes.

When I’d fled to Boston three months ago, I’d furnished the small apartment I’d rented the best that I could, hoping to give Maddie any semblance of normalcy. Ripping her from the only home she’d known and dragging her across the country with only the clothes on our backs and her Princess Verona she’d been sleeping with when I’d left that night hugged to her chest.

I imagined that was when she’d formed the attachment to it, when it’d become a safety net, something she could count on always being there to give her comfort.

I’d brought all our things from that apartment with us because I didn’t want to fully upend her again, though she’d flourished while we’d lived there, the child coming alive in a way she hadn’t in Austin, as if her spirit had been tamped and tamed there, too, and that sweet spirit had only seemed to soar even higher now that we were in Colorado.

It was the right choice, coming here. I knew it all the way in my soul. The way the ground seemed to be a little more solid beneath our feet each day, even though the man next door seemed to be doing his best to disturb it.

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