The Rivals - Dylan Allen Page 0,234

heart gives one long, hard pump before it starts to race. I reach behind me to flip the switch on the porch light so I can see her eyes. Her pupils shrink and she squints, but she’s got a very pleased smile on her face.

“Don’t play with me. If you’re not ready, I can wait.”

“I ache… on the inside… for you,” she says with her sweet, closed-mouth smile that gives her lips a beautiful heart shape.

“You shouldn’t say shit like that. Not when I can’t put my dick where it needs to be.”

“Remi!” she exclaims and turns in my lap.

“What? You never heard the word dick before?” I raise an amused eyebrow at her.

“I’ve never heard you talk like that before… Well, except for at the wedding when you were drunk.”

“I wasn’t that drunk.”

She slaps my shoulder. “What? You were talking all of that… you were touching me…”

“I only said that because I was fucking miserable and I needed to hold you and say those things to you without you slapping me.”

“You are so crazy.” She giggles.

“About you, yes. And I have been since the day I saw you in that bookstore, Kal. I’ve been waiting a long fucking time. I’m an honorable man. I would have never done anything to disrupt your marriage. But I won’t lie, I prayed like hell you would.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

I run a slow hand down her back “No, I am. When I think about the havoc my dad’s decision wreaked, I feel like an ass for the way I behaved last time I saw you. I was asking you to do what he did. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone’s child.”

“You were upset that night. You didn’t mean it.” She tries to console me. But I don’t want it.

“I did mean it. You just loved your daughter enough to say no. My father…”

Her previously relaxed brow wrinkles, and her mouth contracts like she’s had an unexpected bite of something sour.

“That’s not fair, Remi. He didn’t know he’d never see you again.”

“He did. My mother told him. My grandfather cut him off.”

“Your father came from a world where anything he wanted, he got. Where no one dared to say no. And he thought that when he left your mother, she’d calm down and you all would find a way to coexist.”

“Well, he was wrong.”

“We all think that sort of thing only happens to other people. I mean, do you think I imagined that my mother would go to jail, and I’d be in foster care? She was a shitty role model, but I lived a normal life. I went to school. Lamented my looks and had crushes on boys who weren’t always nice to me.”

“You told me no,” I point out.

Her eyes turn sad. “Yes. Because that kind of surety was stolen from me a long time ago. I know how easily everything can change. I know that children deserve the best we can give them. They are so innocent, and I wanted to make sure my child had the best possible chance at a normal life.”

“She’s lucky you’re her mother,” I tell her.

“I’m lucky to be her mother. But, that doesn’t mean that I don’t regret saying no to you. I regret it every day.” Her quiet confession is the last thing I expected to hear.

“Really?”

“I was so worried about depriving her of things I thought she needed to be happy. But I never imagined how much I’d be depriving myself of, in the process.”

I cup her face, cradle it in the palm of my hand and stare into those pools of breathtaking brown that are always a reflection of what is really in her heart.

Right now, all I can see is love. Shaped, molded, transformed and bolstered by time and distance. But at its core, it’s the same love we found that summer.

“Losing you fucking hurt, Kal… but I don’t think I would trade this journey for anything.”

She shakes her head and smiles wistfully, but with joy, too. “Me neither.”

“When I left for Howard, I was nursing the biggest heartache of my life. And I got through and was driven by my need to cling to and honor my time with you by doing something that spoke to my heart.”

“So, I helped you embrace your sensitive side?” she quips.

“I’m not sensitive,” I growl.

“Oh, baby… you so are.” She smiles, gently.

I ignore her, pointedly. “I said all of that to say… I loved you then, but I wasn’t ready.”

“Well, how introspective of you,”