Jake. I’ll be good. Don’t worry. I just need a little rest and a brownie hot fudge sundae.”
“Can dessert cure anything for you?” he asks.
“Most things,” I admit.
His eyes search mine. “And what about the things it can’t? What are those?”
The memories his questions spur cause insta-discomfort inside my chest.
I swallow thickly and get up from the stool to escape. At first, I don’t even know where I’m headed, but I figure out an excuse pretty quickly. “I’m…uh…just going to run to the restroom. Yes! That! Be right back.”
I make it around the counter, but I don’t make it much farther before Jake stops my progress, pushing my body gently toward the wall.
I back up swiftly until I can’t go anymore, and he boxes me in.
“What is it, Holl? Where does the pain in your eyes come from?”
I lick my lips, thinking about the morning I walked into my kitchen to find my fiancé and his assistant standing much like this, his loving hand on her pregnant belly.
It hurts to think about—it always does—but the feel of Jake’s hand as it settles on my hip takes some of the sting away. In fact, it’s like a warm balm on a slow-to-heal wound.
Achingly slowly, his face moves toward mine. My heart thrums and my breathing quickens, but for as much as I want to squeeze my eyes shut and break through the fog, I cannot. I can’t look anywhere other than the deep recesses of his blue-green eyes, and moving my body at all has ceased to be possible.
It’s only him and me and this moment, and the distinct, vibrant possibility of it ending with his plush lips on mine. I’m fairly certain my body would absorb right into the wall and stay there forever if it thought it’d extend the time of physical contact—if it thought his hand would move a little lower on my hip where his fingertips would meet flesh.
I’m just about there—just about to the point of delusion from which I can never return—when a small female throat clears behind us. Apparently, David Blaine has nothing on my ability to levitate when I’ve been caught horny and red-handed by a seventeen-year-old girl.
Strangely, though, Jake doesn’t even flinch, turning to face Chloe like he wasn’t seconds away from groping me expertly.
Which makes me wonder…maybe he wasn’t? I mean, did I make that whole thing up in my head?
“Home from the movies already?” Jake asks, voice completely even and steady. I swear, I almost think he’s not human. Part werewolf or vampire or something, perhaps. If I talked right now, I’m pretty sure it’d sound like I swallowed a dump-truck load of gravel.
Chloe rolls her eyes, sliding onto the stool on the other side of the counter. “Hailie’s mom called right when the movie was starting—right in the middle of Ryan Reynolds’s shirtless scene. Demanded she come home right then. It was traumatic, to say the least.”
“Oh no. How awful. You know, anytime I’m in the middle of a Ryan Reynolds shirtless scene, I turn off anything that could interrupt it,” Jake teases her like only a dad can.
She laughs and rolls her eyes again. “It’d be like you getting interrupted in the middle of a shirtless scene with Mila Kunis. Or some actress who looked like Holley.”
Jake laughs and nods, stating, “Gotcha,” but my eyebrows pull together. Um, what?
“Anyway,” Chloe says, shrugging again. “Her mom’s got two different personalities, and tonight, the strict one came out for no reason.”
Jake rounds the counter and kisses Chloe’s head before tilting it back to look her in the eye. “What do I always say?”
She nods. “I knowww. We don’t know her reasons, but her reasons are none of our business. She’s the parent.”
“Ah,” Jake teases with a laugh. “You really have been listening.”
Chloe smiles. “I didn’t make a big thing of it. Hailie did. But we left right then anyway.”
“Good,” Jake affirms. “As always, I’m proud of you.”
Chloe blushes a little as she glances at me—as if what she’s done tonight should make her feel embarrassed in front of me, rather than the other way around—and then a smile tugs at just one corner of her lips. “Thanks, Dad.”
I don’t know that I’ll ever know a better feeling than affirmation from your dad. It’s certainly been my saving grace through the years. If I hadn’t had my own paternal pillar of support through some of my shit, I don’t know what I would have done. It makes me feel all warm