Page 68 of Awakening the Sheriff

“Can you…?” Keaton mumbled.

“Yeah.” I carefully pulled out, holding the condom, then tied it and threw it into the wastebasket.

“Good aim.”

“I played football in high school.”

“I bet you did, you sexy stud.”

He sounded tipsy, and I chuckled as I turned onto my back and dragged him on top of me. “There. That seems a bit fairer in terms of weight distribution.”

“I liked having you on top of me.”

“Not too heavy?”

“Nah. I’m stronger than I look.”

A tender softness settled in my chest as I held him, and I kissed the top of his head. “You’re the strongest person I know.”

He was quiet for a long time. “I’m so tired,” he finally said. “It feels like everything has been such a struggle the last year. Not you, but everything else.”

“I know. I wish I could help.”

“Mmm, this helps. You holding me helps.” A low chuckle. “You fucking me into the mattress helps. You have no idea how relaxing that is.”

“I have an idea. You sounded a little drunk there.”

“Drunk on you. Apt analogy.”

“I felt like I was high. Never felt like this during sex.”

He raised his head and met my eyes as if he wanted to check I was being truthful. “What have you been doing all those years, then?”

I smiled. “Tricia and I were so young when we first had sex. Seventeen. And once you start having sex to get pregnant, the romance vanishes, let me tell you.”

My smile faded as the memories flooded me. We’d tried everything, and with every cycle that turned into another disappointment, it got harder and harder. This wasn’t how I had planned to tell him, but I couldn’t ignore an opening like this. “My daughters aren’t mine biologically.”

He rolled off me, and we both turned onto our sides, facing each other. Keaton smiled at me, not showing any surprise. “I figured.”

“You did?”

“They both have brown eyes, Auden. Yours are blue-gray, and Tricia’s are blue too. Brown is dominant, so either she wasn’t the mother or you weren’t the father. And Dani looks too much like her.”

“Very few people know, though the girls do, and so does my family.”

“You don’t owe anyone that information. It’s a private matter.”

“Marnin is their biological father.”

“Wow. I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Tricia and I tried for a long time. The first tests showed everything was okay on her end but that my sperm count was low. But we kept hoping, you know? Of course, between my being deployed and then going to college and becoming a deputy, it took a long time for us to realize it wasn’t going to happen. When they tested me again, the results showed that my sperm was basically dead. We talked about IVF, but the fertility clinic warned us that if we used my sperm, the odds would be very low.”

“That must’ve been a hard pill to swallow.”

Even now, so many years later, my throat still tightened. “I was so angry with myself. All she wanted was a family, and I wanted to be a dad more than anything…and I was failing her.”

“It’s not your fault,” Keaton said gently. “You didn’t choose this or cause this.”

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