Page 51 of The SEALs' Single Mom Baby Surprise

Not yet.

22

SLOANE

I’m surprised that untangling myself from Sterling isn’t as awkward as I imagined. When he grabs my hand to hold on the drive home, I can’t help but grin to myself. I even catch a lingering smile on him.

Back at his house, he tucks me between him and his car for a sweet, lingering kiss. I revel in it far too much.

Inside, I fall straight back into mom mode. Rhett is in the kitchen, a gun in pieces across the kitchen table and a towel in his hand as he cleans it. His knowing smile sends heat to my cheeks and up my neck.

I turn to where Jack is splayed out across the couch with Reese sleeping soundly on his chest. Part of me wants to be annoyed that she isn’t in bed, but the other part of me—the louder part—is taken by how cute they are. I never once walked in to find Alistair cuddled up with my daughter, even though he’s had a hand in every part of my raising her.

Shaking my head, I can’t leave them like this, as adorable as they are. I gently lift Reese off him and gather her in my arms. She’s bleary and doesn’t fight, but at least she’s not a limp noodle.

Jack opens his eyes to watch me, but I’m surprised when he follows me upstairs to put her to bed. My chest tightens at the room set up for us. It was once a little girl’s. The remnants of her touch remain although the space was changed into a guest room some time ago. The walls are still a soft purple. A few stuffed animals are stacked by the closet door. Crayon or marker colored a rainbow and flowers in the lower lefthand corner of the room, almost hidden behind the dresser.

That pang from putting Sterling’s family in danger rebounds. What happened to them?

I know the divorce rate in the military is high, but the lingering emotions in the house—in Sterling—lean toward some other outcome. One much worse than the mere separation of one life into two.

I settle Reese down on the bed and tuck an animal in her arms. Kissing her forehead, I whisper her my love and will her to have sweet dreams.

As I close the door behind me, I turn into Jack and those tree-trunk arms crossed over his barrel chest. His eyes narrow as he examines me. I have to try to not be embarrassed by what I’m sure he sees.

“I like her,” he says, surprising me. “She’s smart as a whip.”

I hug my sweater more tightly around me. “She is.”

A beat of silence washes me with foreboding.

“She told me some interesting stories… about a man named Alistair?” His scrutiny, gauging the changes in my posture, my micro-expressions, spikes fury in me.

“What kind of stories?” I’m barely able to control my anger enough to ask because I am dreading what he’s about to tell me.

“Like how Mommy has to be a different person when he was home. How Mommy became small when he was around because he liked to tell her what to do and what to think. How he liked to pretend Mommy wasn’t smart, like she wasn’t a good Mommy…”

I hold my hand up, silencing him. Peering down the hall, I see two other rooms, so I pull him into one. I do not want to have this conversation where my daughter can hear because, apparently, she remembers all of the shit I thought I'd sheltered her from.

Closing the door, I take a breath and turn to Jack and how the low light from the window makes him look like a predator, waiting to tear at flesh.

His hands meet the door on either side of my head, boxing me in. Voice low, he just keeps going, “How Mommy would give and give and give, but he’d not help until she asked. And he’d use it to stretch her thinner. How she had to ask to use her own money.”

The dark gravel that laces his jab takes the breath out of me.

My hands meet his chest before I realize what I’m doing. Pushing, hitting, shoving at him. “Stop it. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

How has my baby seen so much? How much of it did he prompt and draw out of her with his tactics?

He grabs my fists, spins us around, and leans us back against the door with me clutched to his chest. “They’re not just stories, are they?”

“It’s none of your business.” When I tense up to push at him again, his grip tightens, but he doesn’t hurt me, doesn’t grind my bones together. He doesn’t have me pinned, but he’s keeping me immobile.

“Currently, it is very much my business.”

My hands curl into fists. “Not now, and not ever, will it be your business.”

The tension in him shifts, and somehow, even though we’re pressed together, we get closer. Heat radiates off him. Cedarwood and orange blossom waft from him, and I curse myself for the way my fingers uncurl against his taut muscles.

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