Page 21 of Her Dragon Daddy Disaster
“Sarah!” I called out her name, face splitting apart at the thought of coming home to her for the first time.
The grin on my face died at the sight of Sarah waiting with tear-stained tracks running down her cheeks and a knife in both hands, held like someone who knew well how to use them.
Chapter Eight
Sarah
“Are you okay?”
It was a dumb question. He knew it the second it left his mouth. But the words had already been spoken.
“Am I … okay.” I repeated it like I was mulling it over, unsure of my own state. “Am I okay. Seriously,that’sthe best you could come up with? You see me like this. I’m sure I’m a mess, and you ask me if I’m okay?”
He grimaced, his cheeks dimpling in the process. It was actually kind of cute, the way he—
No!
“It was an automatic question,” he said. “I can see you’re not okay. Do you mind if I take the knives, though? They’re, uh, well, sharp.”
I lifted my hand to examine one of the blades I’d grabbed from the kitchen. It was the first thing that had come to mind as I’d leaped up from the couch upon hearing someone on the roof, not knowing if it was Levi or another stranger. “A knife is sharp. You don’t say.”
“Ha-ha. Very funny,” he deadpanned, holding out a hand.
Knowing the only danger I was in from Levi was his own cluelessness, I handed the knives over. It provided a good distraction so I could return to the couch and tuck something under the side cushion surreptitiously before he came over.
“What was that?”
I looked up to see him watching me.
“Huh?”
“What were you just doing to the couch?”
“Fluffing the pillow,” I said. “It wasn’t sitting right.”
His eyes told me he didn’t believe me, but for once, the big idiot didn’t push the topic. Perhaps the sight of me in tears with a pair of knives in my hands had unsettled him enough to let some common sense seep in.
“Why are you crying?” he asked, coming to sit beside me. There was a gap between us, so our thighs didn’t touch, but only barely. He was in my space, and I could feel his presence reaching out for me, trying to grasp me.
It was the same way he’d won me over when we’d first met. There was just something sointenseabout him, and I’d been unable to resist.
“Because,” I said, shaking my head as tears threatened to return, not trusting myself to speak further.
“Did something happen while I was gone? Did someone come in?” he asked.
It was impossible to feel the protective undertones of his question. Somewhere in there, he did care about me. It was just in a really fucked-up dragon kind of way.
I shook my head, exhaling at the same time. “No,” I said softly. “I was just mourning.”
Levi sat up stiffly. “Mourning? Did someone die?”
An empty smile turned my lips up. “Only the life I was forced to abandon to come here.”
My life …and Jake.My hand trembled uncontrollably as I nearly lost control once more. At that moment, I actually opened my mouth to tell him. To reveal that I had a son, a son he’d ripped me away from.
But I didn’t. That ever-present fear, the one where he would actually develop a brain and do the math and realize Jake was his … that fear coiled itself around my throat, stopping me from saying anything.
“Is that how you see it?” Levi said, reaching out to pull some of my hair back from my face. He tucked it behind my ear with a gentleness I’d forgotten he’d possessed.
