I pull away in a daze and then giggle as I watch him trying to pull himself together. He’s in workout shorts, so he has no real way of hiding his erection. I lick my lips as my eyes lock on the outline of his—
“How horny are you?” he says through a chuckle.
I shrug, feeling the heat roll up my neck to the tips of my ears.
When the driver opens the door, I slide out first, Leo right behind me. He walks through the lobby and to the elevator, with his front against my back, his hardness pressed between us. He doesn’t speak a word as we walk to my apartment. The second I open the door he’s on me. Hands and mouth and everything all at once, and I push away the questions, the insecurities, the what ifs… until his fingers tug on the zipper of my dress. I freeze, lock up. And even through his lust-filled haze, Leo notices. He reads my body better than anyone. “What’s wrong?” he asks, his eyes unfocused.
I step away, my back against the door, because we’ve barely made it a foot into the apartment. Shame forces my gaze to lower, my voice to crack. “My body’s not the same, Leo.” I hate that my insecurities show up right now and that those insecurities are strong enough to make my eyes water, my breaths halt.
Leo doesn’t reply right away, doesn’t move, and when I look up at him, he’s watching me, a frown so deep it hurts to look at him. “Mia,” he whispers, stepping closer. He cups my jaw in his hand and kisses the tears clinging to my lashes. “I’m going to spend my entire existence proving that you have, are, and will always be perfect to me.”
And so that’s what he does. For the next hour, he shows me—in his own Leo way—how he sees me. He mutters filthy words between declarations of my beauty, of how the scars from carrying our child only make me sexier.
And then we talk, buoyant in our conversations—light and meaningless.
We don’t talk about what this means or how it can affect our son. We don’t talk about the unpredictability of our futures or the necessary choices we’ll soon have to make.
We act as if we’re seventeen again and we have the entire summer together, or our entire lives if we want it.
We don’t even remember the lunch that Dad ordered until we leave the apartment for dinner and see it just outside the door. We ignore the food… just like we ignore all of our unspoken uncertainties.
Chapter Seventy-Four
Leo
“What?” Mia laughs. “You are!”
I glare at her, my brow pinched. Of all the things people could say to offend me, I never thought the words helicopter parent would be included. “I am not!”
“You are so,” she says, pushing me to walk backward toward the park bench. “Benny’s fine.”
As she says this, I’m aware that my eyes are back on Benny, watching him climb one of the playground structures. Kids are running around him and above him, and it would only take one of those little shits to knock into him and cause him to fall, break a bone, maybe even get brain damage. My eyes narrow. “Careful, Benny!” I shout, and Mia presses down on my shoulders, forcing me to sit.
“He’s fine,” she says, and I’m sure she’s rolling her eyes, but I’m too busy watching Benny to look at her. I feel her sit down next to me, her body pressed to my side. I throw an arm around her shoulders. “Leo!” She’s laughing. “We come here all the time. He can get around this playground with his eyes closed.”
There isn’t even any grass or rubber below the equipment. It’s just concrete. Everywhere. There’s barely any grass anywhere that I’ve seen. In order for Benny to play outside, we need to walk or catch a cab to a park. We can’t just open the door and be like, “Have at it, kid.”
Now I know what Jay-Z and Alicia Keys were going on about in “Empire State of Mind.” New York really is a concrete jungle. But these streets don’t make me feel brand new, and the lights sure don’t inspire me. They make me anxious and itch to get home. Don’t get me wrong; I can definitely see the attraction and why some people love it. Maybe a few years ago, I would’ve been one of those people. But I’ve changed and so have my