Page 65 of Late Nights & Love Lines
Tears dot her lashes, but her lips spread into a slow smile as she shakes her head no.
“Are you sure?”
She nods.
“Can you speak?”
She shakes her head again, then laughs. It’s a delicate sound, one I don’t recognize. It’s then that I realize, in all the time I knew her when we were kids, I never once heard her laugh.
Whatever I thought was going on between us shifts as my goals become clear. Rowan Ellis was always meant to be mine, and now it’s time to claim her in every possible way so I can hear that sound for the rest of my life.
I sit up and remove my shorts and boxers, reaching blindly into my pockets for my wallet.
Fuck, no. Please, baby Jesus, don’t do this to me. Where the hell is my wallet?
My movements turn manic. Our night cannot end this way. I stand up, my aching cock bobbing angrily against my stomach as I search the sand. Maybe it fell out somewhere.
“What’s wrong?” Rowan asks lazily. I pause mid-freakout to soak her in. Her smile is unlike any I’ve ever seen from her. She’s relaxed, and she’s at peace.
It’s how she should always be, and I swear on my life, I’ll make sure it happens.
“I can’t find my wallet,” I admit, hearing the panic in my voice.
Silence hangs heavily when I finally admit to myself that my wallet is probably on the entry table at home.
I turn to face her, pinching the bridge of my nose as I do because when her naked body comes into view it’s going to be a fucking kick to the balls.
“Have you been tested?” she whispers.
My hand immediately falls away from my face, and I scan her eyes.
I won’t do this to her. I won’t. Even as I think it, my resolve huffs out a laugh straight from the devil himself.
“I have.” Fuck. I’m a weak asshole. “After my ex, I got tested. There hasn’t been anyone since her.” I barely breathe as she processes my words.
Finally, she looks at me, but I can’t read the expression.
“I am too. And I can’t get pregnant.”
I must frown, because she continues. “It’s a long story, but endometriosis happened and honestly, I never wanted to saddle innocent kids with my DNA anyway.”
Something about that makes my chest ache more painfully than I could have ever imagined.
“Why?” I ask, falling to my knees before her.
She sits up and tucks her knees to her chest. It takes all my concentration not to stare at her swollen pussy.
“My dad loved me, but I’m the spitting image of my mom. So I obviously have her genes, and I refuse to pass that coldhearted bitterness on to innocent children. I’m not even sure if I’m capable of love, so when I had to have surgery for the endometriosis, I made sure there would never be an accident byhaving my tubes tied. I’ve known I didn’t want to have kids of my own since I was a child. I can’t take that risk.”
My mind is a firestorm of questions. But only one of them screams in panic. “You don’t want kids, yet you’ve always planned to work with them. And then you were a nanny. And now you help single dads. So, you do like kids, right?”
Logic says the answer should obviously be yes. But what if it’s not? What if that’s why she doesn’t want to nanny anymore? My children are the one thing I won’t give up.
I’m not a praying man, but in that moment, I find myself searching my life for anything I have to bargain away to God. I’ll give Him anything else if He doesn’t take her away from me before we’ve began. My career? It would be a bitch, but I’d do it in a heartbeat. My wealth? Done.
I’d give it all up for her.
She shrugs but shifts her focus over my shoulder to the ocean. “I do, I love kids. If things had been different, if my dad hadn’t died, maybe—” She stops abruptly. “I gave up wishing on stars a long time ago, Seb. This is me. Broken, messed-up me.”
