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“Hmm…if she wants to. I’d be a big hypocrite otherwise. I’ll teach her how to ride responsibly, the way my dad had with me. He drilled safety rules into my head until I was saying them in my sleep.” She shuddered in my arms. “I can’t think about letting my baby drive away on a bike.”
“It goes fast. Feels like Sage was born yesterday, and she’s a whole teenager now.”
“Do you think you’d have more kids if you found the right person?”
I froze. A hundred thoughts whirred in my head, all too jumbled to grasp the right thing to say. There was no right answer to a question so out of left field.
“Clara, what the fuck?”
She shot up and twisted around, alarm evident in the drop of her jaw and brightness of her eyes. “What is it?”
I rubbed my forehead, taking a breath. “You’re asking me about meeting the right person when I’m holding you in my arms. You don’t think that’s something I’d take offense to?”
She blinked at me as rapidly as my heart stuttered in my chest. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I—”
“Just don’t take me seriously, do you?” I reached around her to grip her hair at the base of her skull. “Because I’m a few years younger than you? Is that still a hang-up? Tell me what it is so I can demolish your reasoning.”
“I take you seriously, Jake. I wouldn’t have you in my bed or around my daughter if I didn’t. But I know most things aren’t forever, and you and I already have a lot of obstacles and baggage between us. It isn’t crazy for me to think you and I are part of each other’s story but won’t be at the end. That doesn’t mean I’m not into you or don’t want to be with you. I do.”
I shook my head. “I thought I was a pessimist. Jesus, that’s some dreary shit to have in your head. Can’t we ride this out and see where it goes without thinking about the end?”
“Jake…” She touched my face, stroked my beard. Then she gently described the hell she’d gone through. “The way you’re protecting Sage from being hurt? I have to do the same for myself. You wouldn’t have recognized me three years ago. I was utterly decimated, and I mean that in a true sense. Everything I thought I knew was false. The life I’d planned was gone in a blink. Breathing was difficult—and that was automatic. Doing anything I had to put thought into was impossible. Nellie was the only reason I kept going, and even that was touch and go. I can’t go through that again. I know myself, and I won’t survive it. My heart was pummeled far too hard. It can’t withstand another round. The damage was far too catastrophic.”
This was the first time she’d truly opened up about her ex and the wreckage he left behind, but it wasn’t the first time I felt violent toward him. What he’d done to this woman was a crime in itself. We couldn’t even have a night out without his shadow darkening it.
I was not that man. He might’ve destroyed her trust, but she had to see we were not the same. It wasn’t her fault, but it still pissed me off. What he’d done had colored how she saw the world—including how she saw me.
I slid my hand from her hair to her throat, cupping her beneath her jaw. “I can’t make promises of forever. I can promise, no matter what, I’ll never lie to you, and I’ll always be gentle with you. I’m not him. I won’t add more scars.”
“I know you’re not him. I swear, I know that.” Pushing up to her knees, she held my face in her pretty hands. “I do feel safe with you, but I can’t help protecting myself. There’s nothing you need to do to prove yourself to me. I don’t know if I’m stuck like this or need more time.”
I got her. She was coming from a place close to where I’d been—blindsided and left behind. Hers was on another level of hell, but I still got it. If we’d tried this a few years ago when my guard had been at full strength, we would’ve never gotten past the bedroom. Putting my ego aside and truly thinking about it, Clara was being a lot more vulnerable and open than either of us gave her credit for.
“We have time, sweetness. I can be as patient as you need me to be.”
She swallowed hard against my palm. “Thank you for that. But if I say stupid shit, call me on it. The last thing I want is for you to think I question your integrity or motives.”
“I have no problem calling you on your shit. I think you know that by now.”
That broke the tension around us. She snorted a little laugh. “I guess that’s true. You don’t have trouble speaking your mind.”
“Even when I’m wrong.”
She giggled. “Especially then.”
With a growl, I grabbed her around the middle and yanked her into my lap. Lowering my face to her neck, I nibbled and licked while she squirmed and dug her nails into my hands locked at her belly.
“Jake,” she breathed, “stop eating me in public.”
“No one’s watching.” I touched my lips to the side of her neck. “Your skin is the finest feast I’ve ever had, you know that? After our first time, I thought about your skin for months.”
“Thank you…so long as you don’t plan to make a suit out of me.”
I kissed her neck again then put my lips to her ear. “You never know.”
That got her giggling again, and the sound made my chest fill. This woman might’ve thought she’d been torn up and put back together wrong, but with a laugh like that, light as an afternoon breeze and carefree, she was just right.
After a minute or two, she turned her head, her mouth grazing my cheek. “Should I get off you?”
