takes a wary step back. Her chest is heaving, the pulse at the base of her neck is pounding, and fuck me, all I want to do is swipe my tongue across her flesh and taste her. She’s wrong. We don’t just share a daughter together. We share a lot more. We have chemistry. There’s an inexplicable spark between us, even when we were younger, even when I did everything I could to run from it and pretend I didn’t notice her. But I’m not running from it anymore. I want her. I want this. I want my fucking family.
“You and I both know there’s a lot more than that between us. Luna isn’t the only reason we keep finding ourselves here. I want—”
“Selene, honey, Rita is asking for you,” Bobby hollers from the back door, ruining the moment. She’s still staring at me, wide-eyed, her chest rising and falling in rapid motion. I didn’t get to finish saying what I wanted to, but she gets the gist. She’s going to hear me out. I’m not doing this anymore. Not when I have a beautiful woman before me and a beautiful daughter in there waiting for me.
“Let’s go.” She clears her throat. “I have to get back to work.”
When I walk back to my table, Luna is staring at me curiously, and my lungs squeeze in a vise. Fuck. I hope she isn’t afraid of me. I take the seat across from her, giving Rita a smile in thanks.
“I’m sorry about that, Luna. I shouldn’t have—”
Surprising the shit out of me, my little girl leans forward, wearing a conspiratorial grin on her face. “That was awesome, Daddy. But you really should’ve punched him.”
I choke on a laugh. Jesus Christ, this kid.
I love her to death already. I have since the moment I found out she was mine, maybe even before that.
I’ve just tucked Luna into bed, and I perch on the edge, setting down the book she wanted me to read to her. Four times.
“I gotta get going, Luna. But I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
She smiles up at me, eyelids drooped with fatigue, and spreads her arms, indicating she wants a hug.
“I love you, Daddy,” my little girl breathes into my chest, stopping my heart midbeat. I clutch her body to me even tighter. I slam my eyes shut, despising Selene and caring for her in equal measure. I want to hate her. Hell, I have every right to hate her, but I can’t. Because at the end of the day, she gave me my daughter. Something about her makes it impossible for me to hold on to my anger. Something so heavy that it makes it hard to breathe or think when I’m near her.
Luna settles back in the sheets, and as soon as her eyes close, her little chest rises and falls deeply as sleep pulls her under. I quietly make my way out of the bedroom, saying my goodbyes to Gavin and Cece. I am still giving Luna time to adjust, but I don’t want to do this forever. I want to be able to sleep under the same roof as my daughter.
After the eventful lunch at the diner, I spent the evening with Luna at Gavin’s. It didn’t escape my notice how tired he looks. Every day, he seems to look thinner and thinner. I can see why Luna asked what she did.
My mind drifts to the conversation I had with Gavin in his living room after the diner incident. We watched Luna play with her toys on the far end of the room, each of us stuck in our own heads. He was watching her with sadness in his eyes. It was one that hit me square in the chest.
“When are you guys going to tell her?” I ask quietly.
His nostrils flare, the muscles in his jaw jumping with barely restrained emotion, and he clears his throat. “Selene doesn’t want to tell her yet.”
My gaze narrows on Gavin. “You haven’t told her how bad it is yet, have you?”
A sheen of tears builds in his eyes as he watches his granddaughter. “It’ll break her heart. She blames herself for a lot of the time we went without speaking. She’ll never recover from this.”
My eyes slam shut. I feel a deep throbbing coming on at the base of my skull. “It’ll break her if you don’t tell her, Gavin. Does Cece know?”
He’s quiet for a long beat. “She knows. The woman hates my guts, and even