Page 117 of Single Dad Dilemma
Unthinkingly, I laid my hand on the side of his throat. “Do that again,” I commanded quietly.
The look in his eyes made my stomach tremble, but he lifted his chin and did as I asked. Lower this time, and longer.
I closed my eyes and dropped my hand.
“Do you get sick of the hard parts of your life?” he asked, his thumb gently rubbing the side of my thigh, back and forth, back and forth. It was an absent-minded touch, almost like he wasn’t even aware he was doing it.
Because it was easier, I kept my eyes closed while I answered. “Sometimes,” I whispered.
“When?”
It would have been simpler for him to reach inside me and pull the words out himself. In front of him, after last night, this was the most difficult thing he could’ve asked of me.
“It keeps getting harder to pack up and leave. To find somewhere new and feel that excitement. Sometimes I’m just ... tired. But I don’t know how to stop.” My hands curled up into fists in my lap, a last-ditch effort to keep from reaching out to him. “That’s all I ever wanted growing up. To see everything. My parents didn’t have much, so living simply wasn’t hard for me. And I saved and saved and saved to take a trip as soon as I turned eighteen, right after I graduated from high school. It was the first time I got on a plane. First time I saw the ocean.”
Barrett’s fingers drifted over my cheekbone, gently tucking some hair behind my ears.
Holding up my body was too hard; my spine collapsed like wet cardboard under his gentle touch, and I sank forward, allowing him to hold me up for a little while. My forehead rested against his shoulder, and Barrett curved a strong arm around my waist, his hand moving up and down again.
Being able to hide in his embrace allowed me a moment to open my eyes.
“Then when they died, I couldn’t stay.” My tears were gone after last night, and for that, I was thankful. “I sold their house, put somestuff I couldn’t part with in a storage unit, collected what life insurance had been left to me, packed the dog in the car, and took off.”
Barrett remained quiet, his nose dipping briefly against my temple as he inhaled slowly, then let it out again.
“Stopping feels like I have to face everything I’ve lost.” Summoning whatever courage I had left, a hidden reserve that should’ve been long gone, I lifted my head and looked him full in the face. “Sometimes I want to,” I admitted in a broken whisper. “And sometimes I don’t think I’m capable of it. That I’ll run from it for the rest of my life.”
Barrett cupped my face in his hands, and I closed my eyes again, overwhelmed by the warmth and strength in that hold.
“Then stay somewhere,” he said urgently. His thumbs brushed over my cheekbones, and my eyes couldn’t stay shut anymore. “Just for a while. How are you going to know until you try?”
The flutters in my stomach turned to giant wings—panic spiking with each great big whoosh along my insides, so intense that it stole my breath. “Don’t do this.”
His eyes were bright, intense in a way I hadn’t seen before. “Don’t what? Don’t tell you that I want to see more of you? That I want to take you out on a date? That I want to watch movies and explain football and see you with my kids and take you to bed? That I want to wake up next to you and let a hug from you be the best part of my day? I wantmore, Lily, and I cannot let you leave here without knowing that.”
The heavy press of overwhelming emotion made my throat close up, and I pinched my eyes shut again, shaking my head until his hands moved from my face. But he didn’t drop them, and he didn’t back away. He simply shifted them down until they held each side of my neck, his thumb underneath the line of my jaw.
Barrett was unmoving in the face of my fear.
“Look at me,” he said gently, firmly. “Please.”
Everything he’d listed sounded like a life someone else was meant to live. Movies and kids and football and baking cookies and snowstorms and letting him take me to bed. Simple hugs at the end of the day. Warmth and family and affection and ... and love. There was a part of me screaming for all those things.
I wanted to be the one he came to when the whole world questioned him. Wanted to sit at school concerts with him by my side. Letting him hold me every night the way he held me before.
And bed. Yes, I wanted Barrett to take me to bed. I wanted to finish what we’d started last night, so much so that my heart screamed itself raw, hissing wildly to scare away the fears still holding my brain prisoner.
But it was those things—the memories of goodbyes I hadn’t been ready to say, coffins and stupid flowers and empty words from people trying to make me feel better, knowing I was facing down a lifetime of missing the people I loved—that were the loudest. I didn’t want them to be, but they were. For ten years and four months and seven days, they’d driven all the decisions, and I wasn’t sure how to pry them away from the steering wheel.
When I forced my eyes open and saw the way he was looking at me—the heart in his eyes—I did the only thing that felt right.
I told him the truth.
“I just took a six-month job in Florida,” I said unevenly. “Ican’tgive you what you want.”
I expected him to step back. For his hands to drop from my skin. His eyes to shutter and his mouth to form a firm line.
But none of those things happened.
