Page 94 of One Touch

Ugh.

She glanced over her shoulder, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “I like this one.” She pointed to a sofa sleeper with a stupidly expensive price tag. “But I want to make sure it’s sturdy enough to withstand my wild plans.”

I snorted, shaking my head. “Careful there, Lils. Don’t want to give the salespeople the wrong idea. They might think you’re planning to have sex, rather than just bounce on the bed ‘til it breaks.”

She laughed, the sound bright and carefree. “Have sex on a bed? No chance! I only everdon’t have sexon beds.”

An involuntary rush of blood to my cock caused me to subtly rearrange my jeans. “Yeah,” I said awkwardly. “Same here.”

Lily sat down on the edge of the sofa sleeper. Her head was level with my crotch. Damn it, this was way more difficult than it should have been. “You know,” she said, “my mom used to get mad at me for bouncing on the bed.”

“Oh yeah?”

She nodded. “I was a naughty kid.”

“That doesn’t sound like you. These days, you seem a lot more rules-oriented.”

“Yeah, well, things kinda changed after my dad’s affair.”

It struck me that I knew very little about Lily’s life.

“Damn. I didn’t know your dad had an affair.” It must have been doubly shitty for her to discover Vlad’s infidelity, in that case. Fuck. If I ever got my hands on that good-for-nothing. . . .

“Mmhmm,” she said. “When I was a teenager.”

I sat on the edge of the sofa sleeper beside her. “Your parents stay together?”

“Nope. Well, they did for a year or so. But it ate away at them. Dad just left one day without telling us. We never heard from him again. Mom was so sad. I stopped rebelling against her and started doing everything I could to make her happy.”

“It isn’t children’s responsibility to make their parents happy.”

“Right. And I couldn’t do it, of course. So, when she got worse, I blamed myself.”

“I’m sorry.”

She sighed. “Thank you. You know, that’s when I really got into romance books. I wanted to read stories where people did get back together.”

“Makes sense. Shame the real world isn’t like that.”

Her pretty eyes flashed with sadness. “Right. About the best you can hope for in the real world is a hot fling and a failed engagement.”

“You deserve better.”

Our eyes met, and she smiled weakly. “No one deserves anything. Shitty things happen to good people.” A pause. “People like you.”

I nodded. “After I lost Marie, every fucking breath felt like a struggle. I had to figure out how to keep going, for Ava’s sake if nothing else.”

Lily’s eyes met mine. “How did you do it? How did you cope?”

I exhaled, the memories still raw even after all these years. “I didn’t have a choice. You want the truth?”

She nodded.

“People tell me I’m doing great. They say they admire me for looking after Ava in that dark time. They say stuff like, ‘I could never do what you did.’ But they don’t get it.” I shrugged. “I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t choose to be there for Ava. I didn’t choose to be a good dad, or whatever the hell I’ve been. I did the only thing I could do. I kept going. Not because I wanted to—I really didn’t want to. I wanted to give up.”

“But you didn’t.”

To my surprise, I felt her hand in mine. I didn’t pull away.

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