feel the determination to convince me in his lips. He holds me, breaking free and burying his face in my hair as I stare at the door Troy vanished behind. “Mar, I didn’t plan this, but hear me now. I’m going to be one hell of a father to that child. I promise you.”
I close my eyes and relax.
At around three o’clock in the morning, I’m awakened by Troy. Glancing back to see Jack asleep, I slip out of the bed in my panties and tank top to follow the Viking into our shadowy hall.
He says, tone dead, “I’m leaving.”
“I know.”
This takes him aback, but he explains anyway, “I can’t be low man on the totem pole anymore. If it had been my child...” Staring at me, Troy waits for me to say something. Does he want an argument? We have fought over this already and still this is his solution.
Why fight him?
You can’t make somebody do something they don’t want to do. They might stick around for a little while but sooner or later they do what they wanted to anyway.
Touching his face I memorize it one last time. “I love you.”
Tears jump to his eyes, and I can tell he didn’t expect to get emotional, but he covers my hand with his own and presses it into his cheek. “I love you, too. I just can’t.”
He releases me and my fingers float to my chest as I watch him leaving. I’m a glutton for punishment, so I follow him out and see his suitcase packed. Fuck that suitcase and fuck this memory.
“I’ll get the rest of my stuff later.”
“That’s not necessary. Jack will have it sent to you.”
Troy looks over his shoulder, a funny look in his eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure he will.” Taking out his keys, he slides two off the chain and places them by my roses, one finger pushing them toward the graceful bouquet in an ungraceful way.
As soon as he’s gone, I run over, pick them up and fling them across the room with all of my strength. They skip across the kitchen island, clattering to the tile floor.
Jack appears in the doorway to our hall, naked, hair messy, eyes trying to focus on reality rather than his interrupted dream. “He’s gone.”
I nod.
Blinking a few times, Jack glances around our home, imagining how things were and how they will be. “How do you feel about that?”
“I didn’t want him to stay.”
“Really?”
Despite my emotions, and the fact that I already miss him, I just shrug and nod because my voice hurts.
Jack walks to me, investigating my face. “You sure?”
I nod again.
“I didn’t really see how it was going to work. I’m too much an Alpha male. Add a child and I would not have wanted another man around for long.” My jaw slackens. Jack cups my chin with his index finger. “I love you. So I gave you what you wanted. Another man. But I’m going to be enough for you from now on. You watch.”
He picks me up so fast I gasp, latching my hands around his thick neck as he grunts, “Time for bed.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
MARION
Samantha looks down at my seven-months-pregnant belly. Her gaze darts back up to my face as she blurts, “Something I never thought I’d see!”
Waving her statement and all of its obvious causes away, I walk inside the small studio, checking out black-and-white framed photographs of dancers from eras long gone by, a waiting room crammed with cute chairs lining the perimeter and a couple of small tables, where parents can watch their kids if they want to through a large glass window. Hooks are screwed into the south wall, a forgotten green jacket on one, with empty cubbies stacked below.
“So, you and Lexi run this place?”
Samantha follows me into the space where they teach kids. “I don’t know if you’ve met our cousin’s wife, Paige?”
“Haven’t met her,” I answer while looking around. “But I know of her.”
Who doesn’t?
Paige is married to Gabriel Cocker, hugely famous rockstar heartthrob. When he went off the market about a million women cried. At least.
Samantha explains in her usual no-big-deal sort of way, “She has a few yoga studios. Om This?”
“I’ve seen them around.”
“Lexi used to run the books, so she’s doing that for us now, since numbers aren’t really my thing. But dancing is. I mean,” Samantha hurries to say, “Lexi loves to dance, too, but…”
So she doesn’t keep hanging herself with awkward-rope, I finish her sentence. “But she gave up dancing when