Page 79 of Her Dragon Daddy Disaster
“Sarah,” I said. “I need you to tell me something.”
“What?”
I took a breath. “Do you truly care about me? Or is that all an act, too?”
There was a pause. The fingers tightened around mine. “I do care about you,” she said. “I do, Levi. I’m sorry about Malakai. I can only imagine how badly it must hurt.”
I smiled weakly, though she couldn’t see it. “Me abandoning you to be a single mother for five years couldn’t have felt good either.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “More than you can ever imagine. I wish I’d been there to help you through it all. To show you the type of person I can be.”
Understanding flooded through me as something else became clear. Yet another of my mistakes revealing itself.
“You are showing me, Levi. Showingus. Don’t go all fatalistic on me now!”
I smiled, broader and toothier now. “I’m not,” I promised her. “I’m just realizing how stupid I’ve been. The things I should’ve done the instant you showed up and revealed we had a son.”
“Dad?”
A tiny voice spoke.
“Hey, little dude,” I said, my fingers gripping Sarah’s even tighter. I hadn’t realized how badly I wanted to hear his voice.
“Are you okay, Daddy?”
“Yes,” I assured my son. “I’m okay now. If anything, I’m better than okay.”
“You are?”
“Mmm hmm.” I took a cleansing breath. “I see clearly now what I should have done, my son. The things I did or didn’t do and what I would do differently. It’s all there. I just had to look for it.”
I’d tried to stay the same person as before while also learning how to become a father. A dad. But that wasn’t how it worked. I saw that now. If I wanted to become a good father, then I had to put my son first. Above everything. Keeping him safe was my biggest priority.
Which meant instigating a coup was off the table.Especiallyif it meant Malakai taking the place of the current sovereign. That could not be allowed to happen.
“What do we do?” Sarah asked. “I … I feel kind of helpless, Levi. I’m supposed to be the one with the training. But we’re pretty trapped.”
I snorted. “No, we aren’t. Now who’s getting fatalistic?”
Silence.
“Don’t worry.” I squeezed her hand, then kissed the back of it. “I’ve got lots of things figured out.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that I love you both and that we’re getting out of here. Together.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Sarah
My mind was still reeling, trying to process the implications of what Levi had just said, when thesecondhalf of his sentence came rushing in.
“We are?” I asked, grateful for the shift in topic.
Love? I wasn’t ready to talk about love. Between the two of us? He was crazy.
