Midnight Sommelier - Anne Malcom Page 0,26
was a decent amount of pain and probably still a bit tipsy, he made a point to think on every word before he replied.
“I’m sorry, babe,” he finally said. He wasn’t afraid of those words like a lot of men were. “You’re right.” Or those ones. “I ... fuck.”
The word surprised me—David didn’t curse as a rule. He was far too well bred for that. I, on the other hand, was brought up with many manners but also played poker with my dad and his buddies so I had a dirtier mouth than most truckers.
He ran his hand through his hair, knuckles red and torn.
His eyes shimmered with emotion as they met mine. It hit me, right in my chest, right in that organ that belonged solely to him.
David stood, wincing as he did so, but that didn’t stop him from crossing the small distance between us so he could hold my face in his hands.
“I care about you so much, Bridget,” he murmured. “You’re my everything. I love you. The thought of anything happening to you...” He trailed off. “Seeing that guy put his hands on you, it did something to me. In the more primal parts of me that I thought I had better control over. I want to protect you from everything in this world, and I know that’s impossible. But I’ll do my best to protect you from the caveman inside me.”
I grinned, moving forward to press my body against his. “Well, maybe not all of the caveman. I think we can find a use for that somewhere.”
And we did find use for that caveman. Some of the hottest sex we’d ever had.
Of course, the caveman appeared less regularly over the years, with kids, jobs, and responsibilities getting in the way.
But despite the fact I abhorred violence of any kind, I did like it when my husband got rough with me in the bedroom. Granted, he only did it sporadically, because David’s baseline was not aggressive. But I had a feeling Zeke’s would be.
Which, pulling up to his house with his daughter in my backseat, was a totally inappropriate thought to have.
“Ryder, you go on inside and quell your aunt Alexis’s anxiety. I’ll take Luna in to her dad,” I said, turning off the car and looking to both houses. Each was lit up like a goddamn Christmas tree. I’d told Luna to text her dad the gist of what was going on since by the time we’d gotten things sorted, it was after her curfew.
Ryder looked to Luna’s house, then to ours. Then to Luna, quiet in the backseat. “I can come in,” he offered. Ah, my ever-chivalrous boy. The urge to burst into tears and lay my head against the steering wheel was strong but I managed to fight it.
“As sweet as that is, honey, I need you to go into the house. I’ll handle it,” I said, doing my best to sound like a mom who handled things.
Like my mom. She was a handler. She spoke in a calm yet capable tone that made me believe she would be able to fix anything.
Maybe I used to have that tone, though even when David was alive I doubted it. I loved my children more than life itself but I was not cut out to be a mother. Didn’t have the maternal instinct my mother had. When Ryder was born, my mom stayed with David and me for the first month because I didn’t think I could handle it.
Granted, I was an idiotic twenty-year-old who definitely couldn’t handle it. After she left, I called her at least twice a day until Ryder turned one. Then it was only once a day.
David called my father once a day to get advice on how to handle the crazy, overprotective mom.
My parents had both been dead for ten years, yet I still had moments where I’d started to dial their number before I remembered. I wish I had that with David, moments of forgetting he was gone.
But every moment was a heart-wrenching reminder.
7
I’d never been inside Zeke’s house before. Luna was a regular at our place because she was Ryder’s friend. There would be no reason for me to venture over to her house. Of course not. No one there for me.
Definitely not the man I’d not being able to stop thinking about since that moment on the porch.
I didn’t know what I expected. He was obviously a dark, motorcycle riding, badass alpha male. So usually with that