Page 33 of Single Mom's Daddies
“Only when I’m pretending it’ll help.”
“That’s a familiar game.”
She gives a short, quiet laugh. It hits somewhere deeper than it should.
We don’t speak again for a while. The silence between us is strange—comfortable, but not soft. It buzzes. Like the air just before a storm.
“What about you?” she asks. “You said you couldn’t sleep.”
I nod. “Bad dream.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Not really.”
Saffron doesn’t sayI’m sorry.She doesn’t try to soothe it over or fill the space with empty words. She just listens.
Which makes me want to talk. “It was about a woman. She was…special. She made hard things look easy. Smarter than the rest of us. Funnier too.” The memory tugs at my lips. I smile until the image of her holey forehead springs to mind. My voice grinds low. “Can’t change the past.”
Her mouth tightens slightly. “And so you don’t talk about her?”
“Only when I forget how much it costs me.”
She nods like she understands. And maybe she does. “There’s always a cost when it’s love.”
“You sound like you know from experience.”
“Ivy is my world. I’d do anything for that girl, and on several occasions, I have. But that doesn’t mean parenthood doesn’t have a cost.”
I nod. “Everything does.” And I realize something then—this thing I’ve been feeling around her? It’s not attraction. It’s recognition. There’s something in her that mirrors the worst of what I carry and still somehow shines.
With that realization, my hands…they crave. Maybe it’s a late-night thing or maybe because of the nightmare, but I need something to take the edge off. Something real. Solid.
Not a distraction. An anchor. Something to keep me in my skin. “Saffron,” I start, as I step closer. “Do you want to be touched?”
She blinks. “What?”
“Right now,” I say. “Do you want someone’s hands on you? Do you want conversation instead? Or do you want to be alone?”
She hesitates. “People don’t ask that kind of thing.”
“Good thing I’m not people.”
She snorts a giggle at that. But her lips slide from that smile into a parted gasp as she bashfully looks away. “I don’t know.”
“That’s not a no.”
“No,” she agrees, breath shaky. “It’s not.”
I take a slow step forward. She doesn’t retreat. My hand lifts, knuckles brushing her cheekbone. Warm. Soft. Her eyes flutter closed for half a second. When they open again, there’s no fear. Justwant.
And a hell of a lot of restraint.
I don’t know what this is. Not yet. But it’ssomething. I can feel it in the way she doesn’t move when I step closer, the way her breath catches when my hand lifts. We’re not touching—not really—but the space between us vibrates like it’s holding back a current.
My knuckles brush her jaw. She doesn’t stop me. Her breath hitches again, and I feel the sharp twist in my stomach that tells me it’s already too late to step back.
I lean in. Her eyes flick to my mouth. And then we crash.
