Page 47 of The Single Dad Project

“God, Flo.” Adam reached for her, surrendering to the need to touch her, comfort her.

Before, he’d resisted. But with this cloying grief thickening her voice, drenching her eyes until they appeared nearly black, he couldn’tnottouch her. Shifting forward, he slid his hand under her hair and cradled the nape of her neck. A shiver coursed through her, and she didn’t try to evade him. On the contrary, she leaned toward him, and he met her halfway, pressing his forehead to hers.

Her vulnerability tore at him with great, greedy handfuls. He harbored zero doubt she would regret this slip in the morning—hell, later tonight. But right now he took her defenselessness and covered it, protected it.

“It’s silly for me to feel so fuckingmuchnearly twenty-two years later, right? It’s not like Iremember, remember her. Not like I had a lot of time with her—”

“Don’t do that,” he growled, then softening his tone, repeated, “Don’t do that, queen. You lost your mother. It wouldn’t matter if it happened while you were a day old, it’s a loss of the woman who gave you life. A loss that deserves to be grieved.”

She shook her head, her forehead rolling against his.

“But,” she objected, “it’s not like I didn’t have parents. Parents who loved, adored and raised me—”

He squeezed her neck, cutting her off.

“It doesn’t mean the life you lost with your biological mother can’t be mourned. Having a great life doesn’t make less valuable the one you could’ve had if she’d lived. And there’s no guilt in thinking about what-ifs. Or in wishing things could have been different. She was your mother. Of course, you wish she could’ve lived to raise you, to teach you, to love you. I’d think even your parents would tell you that.”

Inhaling a shaky breath, Flo leaned back, dislodging his hand. Eyes closed, she ran her hands over the top of her head, smoothing one down her ponytail. She exhaled on a sigh and lifted her lashes, meeting his gaze.

“Go on with your story, Flo. You’re not finished,” he quietly urged.

“No, I wish it was, but it’s not.”

Falling against the back of the couch, she spread her fingers across her thighs and peered down at them as if they would somehow supply answers she sought. But he’d be the first to tell her, they wouldn’t. If they could, he’d have materialized his own answers a long time ago.

“After my mother died, Noah didn’t handle her death well. At all. My parents told me he deteriorated quickly into a spiral of grief and alcohol. I ended up spending more time with them at the inn because he just...crumbled. I had to practically drag it out of Moe, but the last straw for them was when they visited Noah’s house and he didn’t answer. They used their key to enter and found him passed out on the living room floor and me playing with his empty liquor bottles next to him. That night I returned to the inn with them, and they forced him into rehab. Only thing is...he didn’t return. Noah left rehab and didn’t come back to Rose Bend for me. He wrote a letter to Moe and Dad explaining how I was better off with them because he wasn’t in a place to care for me. In the letter were papers he’d had drawn up terminating his parental rights and granting Moe and Dad guardianship over me.”

He’d abandoned her. Her first father figure had abandoned her after she’d already lost her mother. Jesus. They had more in common than he’d believed. He remembered the pain and betrayal that seeped into his bones. And he suspected she felt the same. Knew the taste of that particular bitterness.

“I’m sorry, Flo. I’m so damn sorry.” He shook his head, the words sounding inadequate even as he voiced them. “I take it he’s back?” he murmured.

“Yes,” she whispered. “After all these years, he shows up. And calling me Deandrea.”

“Deandrea?”

She nodded. “That’s my birth name. Now it’s my middle name—Florence Deandrea Dennison.” Her fingers fisted on her thighs. “After years of just cards on my birthday and Christmas, he suddenly shows up out of the blue, calling methat. As if I’m the same little girl he claimed to love as his own and then walked away from without a backward glance,” she snapped.

But as quick as that glint of temper flashed, it was doused, and she along with it.

“Okay, queen, okay. Good, baby.” He cupped her knee, rubbed his thumb over the skin above it. “Do you have anything stronger than water in there?” he asked, standing up from the table, jerking his chin in the direction of the kitchen.

“Wine. In the refrigerator.”

“Okay, good. Be right back.”

He strode toward her kitchen and retrieved the nearly full bottle of Moscato. Within moments he returned to her with a glass and took his seat on the coffee table. He clasped her hand and pressed the wine into it. Then waited for her to sip.

“One more,” he urged when she lowered the glass.

When she obeyed, he took the wine, turned the flute so his mouth fit over the same place and drank, as well. Why he did that—such a small but intimate act—he couldn’t explain to himself, so he didn’t even try.

“You good?” he asked.

“Yes. No.” On a short laugh, she scrubbed her palms down her face.

“What did he have to say?” He didn’t want to press, but like a festering wound that needed to be lanced, he pushed her to get the last little bit out.

“I don’t know.” Another of those humorless, sharp-edged chuckles. “I left. After he called my name and started down the steps toward me, I got in my car and left. Like a coward. Or like the girl you’re always calling me.”

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