Page 110 of Even if It Hurts

I tilted my head to press my mouth to her palm. “I could spend an eternity with you just like this, and it still wouldn’t be enough.”

“Goodness, the things you say,” she said reverently before twisting in my arms just enough to look at me, her smile soft and breathtaking in the dark. “Honestly, Mr. Briggs? You should tell me you love me more often.”

I waited for it . . .

For the memories. For the icy fingers to trail down my spine.

But there was only the wild pounding of my heart as I looked at this girl who had become my entire world in such a short time. This girl who pushed me to be better. This girl who understood me in a way no one ever had—me included.

Pressing my forehead to her temple, I let my eyelids briefly shut and breathed her in. “What happens if I do?”

An exhausted, knowing hum left her as she shifted to her original position. “You let me help you.”

“With what?”

“Me loving you.”

I pulled her closer as her words played in my head again and again. Each time, I expected the traumatic memories to burst forward. Each time, I only saw a future I’d never wanted for myself and now craved like my next breath.

Lainey and me in a house in this small town. Raising Kaia together. Raising afamily.

“Buying you a ring,” I murmured as my eyelids shut again and heard her lethargic hum of amusement. “Asking you to raise Kaia with me. Asking you to spend the rest of your life with me.”

That’s what’s about to happen.

“This isn’t a Donut, and you aren’t babysitting her,” I said for the umpteenth time and forced myself to take a steadying breath before continuing. “Just be...mindful of what she’s doing.”

Silence filled the call for long seconds before Evans mumbled, “Sounds a lot like babysitting.”

“You have your life. Wren has hers. But if you see her getting into something she probably shouldn’t, find a way to stop it.”

“Right,” Evans said with a subdued laugh. “We talking about drugs, partying, or the guy she’s currently leading into her apartment?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and drew in a slow breath. “All of the above.”

Hesitation poured through the phone. “Not our business who she’s with, Briggs.”

I knew that, but in the past three months, I’d also witnessed Wren dart between guys until one finally gave her the time of day. I’d watched her “fall in love” with guys she’d met minutes before, only to be wrecked over them if she hadn’t already moved onto another. I’d listened to Lainey’s worry over hersister’s carelessness as Wren desperately sought the love and recognition she’d never gotten from her parents.

Wren was going to destroy herself long before she ever realized what she was doing.

“I’m aware,” I finally said, “but she needs someone to disrupt this destructive cycle she’s trapped in.”

A heavy sigh left Evans before he muttered, “Yeah, all right. I’ll, uh...figure out a way to ‘disrupt’ them.”

“Appreciate it.”

His only response was a grunt before the call ended.

Anyone else, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about them ending the call that way. Who was I kidding? Anyone else, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed the way the call ended, period. But this was Evans, and I’d been paying close attention to everything he said and did ever since he’d shown up for work a week and a half after the office had been destroyed.

Like I’d assumed it would, finding out about his dad had changed Evans completely.

He was no longer the excited guy, ready for whatever our work threw his way, so long as he could help people. He was angry and silent, letting his bitterness seep out into the world to try to hide the shame and betrayal he felt.

Granted, he was still at work every day and doing all I asked of him for the job, and more. He’d still agreed to move in next to Wren, even though he’d muttered, “I’m not a babysitter,” a couple dozen times since. But he needed someone to watch him the way I was having him watch Wren.

Even though Evans and I had wildly different childhoods with parents on opposite sides of the law, I knew all too well what happened to kids whose parents fell from the pedestal we put them on. We either did everything in our power to turn out nothing like them, or we followed in their steps.

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