Page 69 of Unravel Me

“What are you doing here?” I whisper as he lifts Connor from the stroller, plopping a kiss on both his cheeks as my sweet boy squeals with excitement for hisdada.

“Couldn’t have my two favorite people walking in the rain,” Adam says simply as he buckles Connor into the car seat in the back of his truck. He closes the door and turns to me, smile slipping off his face. “Why are you crying?”

“I-I’m not,” I insist pathetically, swatting at my tears. “It’s the rain. It looks like tears, because, water, but it’s-it’s…” I sniffle, then hiccup, and drag the back of my wrist across my nose. “I’m not crying.”

He takes my face in his strong hands, thumbs swiping at the droplets rolling down my cheeks. “Then I’ll kiss the rain away,” he murmurs before his lips touch my cheeks, over and over, tiny kisses that make everything better and worse at the same time. And when I fall apart in his arms, he simply holds me against him, his voice in my ear, telling me he’s with me.

And I know he is. I know it by the way he keeps his fingers twined through mine, one hand on the steering wheel the whole drive back to his house. As I stand at the bottom of his staircase, watching him and Connor practice going up and down for ten minutes, the way Adam scoops him into his arms, twirls him in the air, and celebrates every time they make it back down. When he pulls out the wooden stool he built just for Connor so my little man can stand with him at the kitchen counter while they make dinner together.

And when he glances over his shoulder and smiles at me and his dog snuggled on the couch with a glass of wine, I realize I’m finding a home, a family, right here with a man who walked into my life one afternoon and never looked back, chose every inch of me, not just some of me.

“Are you anxious about heading back to school in a few weeks?” he asks me as we wash the dishes side by side after dinner, Connor and Bear playing on the living room floor.

“Yes,” I admit with a sigh. “My school schedule is so demanding, and this year will be even more so. Connor and I never spent so much time apart.”

“What’s your biggest worry with that?”

“That he’ll think he isn’t my priority. That he’ll feel less loved, less important.”

“I get that.” He hesitates, like he’s sorting his thoughts. “My schedule starts to pick up in September, too, and I’ll be out of town a lot. I think I’ve been a little worried about you feeling less important to me too.”

“I don’t think it’s about the time we have, but how we spend it when we’re together.” I press a kiss to his bicep before pressing up on my toes and fusing my mouth to his as his forehead comes to rest on mine. “And you always make me feel important when we’re together, Adam.”

“And I think you always make Connor feel important and loved when you’re together. So I get where you’re coming from, and I know you’re feeling guilty, but if it’s any consolation, I don’t think there’s a way in hell that kid over there feels anything other than so loved by you.”

Pressing my lips together to hide my smile, I squint up at him, poke his stomach. “I see what you did there. Sneaky boy.”

He chuckles, winking. “For what it’s worth, I am genuinely worried. But I know I’ll do my best to make you feel important, just like I know you’ll do your best with Connor, because you always do. You do it effortlessly, Rosie.”

“Maybe it seems that way, but it’s not easy.”

“No, because effortless doesn’t mean easy. It’s effortless because love is meant to be natural, something you feel so deeply and nothing can change it. But all love is hard sometimes.”

“It’s worth it though, isn’t it?”

He smiles, tucking my hair behind my ear before kissing the tip of my nose. “It’s always worth it.”

“Dada?” Connor appears between us, tugging at Adam’s shorts.

Adam ruffles his hair. “What’s up, little trouble?”

“Ee-ya, ee-ya, bo?”

“Ee-ya, ee-ya, bo?” Adam’s brows pull together as he repeats the sounds, trying to figure out what Connor’s asking for as he drags him into the living room. “Yeah, we can ee-ya, ee-ya, bo. For sure.”

Connor points at the TV. “Ee-ya, ee-ya, bo, Dada?” He puts his hands in the air and starts dancing around as Adam keeps repeating the sounds, almost silently, trying to piece them together. “Ee-ya, ee-ya, bo!”

Adam blinks, then throws his head back. “Oooh! E-I-E-I-O?”

Connor grins, clapping his hands as Adam finds a music video for “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” “Ee-ya, ee-ya, bo!”

My heart smiles so big as Adam scoops Connor into his arms, dances around the living room with him without a care in the world, the two of them singing at the top of their lungs, laughing, quacking like ducks, mooing like cows, meowing like cats. This man is so at home with a child in his arms, like it’s a role he was always made to fill. That he does it so effortlessly, and with nothing but enthusiasm, only makes me fall that much harder.

“Old MacDonald” turns into “The Wheels on the Bus,” about seventeen times over while I sit and watch, snap a few pictures that quickly become favorites, and as I’m about to break up their party and tell Connor it’s bath time, Adam’s phone vibrates on the counter next to me.

“You have a phone call,” I tell him.

“Not important,” he says through his laughter, Connor and Bear crawling on top of him.

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