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For once, I should let her leave, because if I don’t, we’re going to talk about babies. And the last fucking thing I want to talk about is babies. Because babies lead to Kendall.
Chapter sixty-eight
Gabe
Abbie darts away from me and reaches for her clothes. I pull on my sweats, and shove a rough hand through my hair, and of course, she must think I hate babies. I don’t hate babies. I love fucking babies with those chubby cheeks that explode with giggles. They’re kind. They’re funny. Bad for them is flinging a shit filled diaper, and that mess, I can clean up. Others, I can’t. I just don’t want to have babies. I don’t want to talk about why I don’t want to have babies. Except, fuck me. Don’t I want everything I can get with Abbie?
She’s already pulling her shirt over her head, already back in her legging things she wears. She’s going to leave if I let her. I’m not going to let her. I catch her arm and pull her to me. “I’m a dickhead. I’m an asshole. I’m a fucked-in-the-head dickhead asshole with a closet of demons that I don’t want to eat you up like they do me. But I’m crazy about you, Abbie. Please don’t go.”
“You’re confusing me, Gabe,” she says, her fingers pressed to my chest, all soft and sweet and perfect in every way. When she touches me, I’m alive, I’m a different man. I’m a differentperson. I want things I shouldn’t want, things I can’t help but want with this woman.
“I get it. I do. But just know this. I wouldn’t be anywhere else right now, with anyone else. I want everything with you.”
“Everything?” she laughs bitterly. “We know that’s not true. We can’t even talk about babies or KM.”
I scrub my jaw and look away, inhaling with bad memories that want to surface.
“Never mind,” she says. “Let’s—I want to go home.”
I curse under my breath and shackle her waist. “Time, baby. I need time. I’m not shutting you out. I just need time. Can you give me that?”
She stares at me for several long beats and then her expression softens. “I’m trying. I have my own demons. They’re about trust and transparency. You know that.”
“I do and that’s why, pretty soon, I’ll be spread wide, like a dog wanting a belly rub.”
She laughs, a soft, sweet laugh that calms even all those the sharp edges of my past. “Is that a promise?”
“It is absolutely a promise. Do you know what you should do when there are two people with demons of the past in the same room?”
Her brow furrows. “No. What?”
“Eat pizza and drink wine. I say we try it and if that doesn’t work. We try another spanking.” I’m rewarded with more of her laughter. “I take that as an agreement on all suggestions. Hell, let’s be crazy and watch TV together.” I soften my voice and stroke her cheek. “Let’s just slow down and be together. Can we do that?”
“Yes,” she agrees softly. “I’d like that.
A few minutes later, we’ve taken Dexter out, and are now settled in the living room on the couch, with the pooch at our feet, begging for love. Abbie obliges and while she gives him love, we talk through the what and where of the pizza order, I fill wine glasses with a red blend, and we settle in to pick a movie. We end up with Game of Thrones instead, which we both discover neither of us has ever watched.
“Virgins together,” I tease.
She laughs. “Yes, well, virgins at something.”
I’m damn sure a virgin at whatever this is going on with her. I set-up the show to be ready to start when the pizza arrives and despite Dexter’s efforts to get between us, I nudge him back down and scoot close to her, our thighs pressed together. He then proceeds to knock over my wine which goes all over my shirt.
I let him off the hook because the damn dog was in a cage, deserted by his former family, and he gets to milk that shit a long damn time. I yank off the basic white tee and clean up the mess.
Once we settle back down to watch our show, Abbie is watching me. Her hand closes over the tattoo on my arm, her touch radiating through me, and suddenly, I could give two shits about pizza and TV.
“Faith and strength,” she says, repeating what I’d told her it means to me. “Things that remind you of your mother.”
I cover her hand where it rests on my arm. “Yes. Faith and strength. It reminds me that I need to be the man she wanted me to be.”
“But you don’t think you are that man.”
“Not as often as I’d like to be, but you remind me why I should be those things, that man. You remind me of all the things I once wanted.”
“Until something happened that changed you.”
“Yes. Until something happened that changed me.”
