Late Nights & Love Lines (Single Dad Hotline #2)

21. I’ll never tell you a lie

21

I’LL NEVER TELL YOU A LIE

SEBASTIAN

“ S ingle Dad Hotline, I’m your helper, how can I help you?” Rowan asks.

“Will you please add my fucking number into your phone?”

Her soft laughter rings through the phone and under her bedroom door.

“Can I come in?” I ask, pressing my forehead to the cool wood surface separating her from me.

“What? Where are you?”

I knock softly on the wood frame, and her gasp soothes my racing mind. I’ve been home from the hospital with Miles for three days, but the second I walked through the door, life sped into fast-forward mode. I’ve been putting out fires ever since.

Her door opens, and she stares up at me through her lashes, wearing something resembling pajamas, but I’d be forced to blind a man if anyone else saw her in them.

“Are you okay?” she asks, holding on to the doorknob as if it’s the only thing keeping her upright.

I nod, basking in the sight of her. “Can I come in?” I ask again.

She sucks in her bottom lip and bites down on it before nodding and moving to the side.

The entire room smells of her light floral scent—roses. It engulfs me, and reminds me that this is home, here, with her and my children.

Rowan quietly closes her door and climbs back into bed, pulling the covers up to her chest. I follow her but sit on the edge.

“I got a pretty hefty cleaning bill today,” I say with raised brows.

She rolls her eyes. “I’ve already sorted that out with both Leo and Lottie. Seren didn’t do it, but because she didn’t want to rat out who did, we cleaned the place together. I’m not sure what to say about the bill. Do you want me to pay it?”

“Why would you pay it?”

She shrugs. “Because I didn’t force her to tell me who did do it?”

I shake my head with a huffed snort. “No, it’s okay. I’ll pay it. I’m glad she trusts you to tell you the truth. She cares about you, Rowan. A lot.”

Her swallow is loud in the otherwise silent house. “I know. I like her too.”

“I was kicked out of the nanny camp program.” Saying it out loud sounds ridiculous.

Rowan lifts her knees to her chest and cradles them while resting her chin on top.

“I heard,” she says. “I’m sorry about that. Lottie didn’t see any other way to stop the prank wars from snowballing.”

My shoulders have been a permanent accessory to my ears since finding out because what the hell do I do now?

“How’s Miles tonight? By the time I got Kade into bed, the light was already off in your room.” Her voice is my own personal lullaby—soft and melodic, but with a hint of sadness that never goes away.

I have Miles sleeping with me right now so I can keep an eye on him. Letting him out of my sight for too long brings back the fear of seeing him crumpled on the floor.

“He’s good. Kids are a lot tougher than we are sometimes.”

“It’s easy to be resilient when the world hasn’t crushed the belief of goodness from your spirit yet,” she says absently.

That’s the truth she’s lived with, and perhaps she doesn’t understand that it’s not normal to be so beaten down by life that you give up before adulthood.

“He asked for you when he woke up from anesthesia. It wasn’t me, or Pappy, or even his mother he wanted, it was you.”

“That’s…” Her brows pinch down. “I don’t know what to say.” The words are barely audible.

“In a very short time, you’ve left a mark on my kids—and on me. That’s not something that happens all the time.”

“Pappy did say I was fated, right?” Her joke falls flat, probably because we’re both starting to believe that maybe he’s been right all along.

“Seren said you promised to stay until we found a nanny she approves of.”

Rowan tugs on her bottom lip, pinching and rolling it between her thumb and forefinger.

“I did, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot.” She lifts her head, and a multitude of emotions flash in her eyes. There’s a healthy dose of fear, but also something akin to excitement.

Bending my knee to rest on her bed, I angle my body toward her. It brings me within inches of touching her.

“You realize she may never approve of anyone.” That’s my biggest fear. That Rowan’s made a promise she won’t be able to keep and Seren will hate her for it.

She nods for a long time, her gaze going distant as she mulls over my statement.

Then she shrugs. “She likes me though.”

My face breaks into the first smile I’ve had in days. “She does like you.”

The way she lifts her gaze to mine, staring at me through thick lashes as though she’s shy and worried about my response, does unthinkable things to my blood pressure.

“I don’t know how to stay.”

And my smile falls into crushing despair.

“But maybe, if I keep giving you my todays and my tomorrows, you’ll…teach me.”

I’m struggling to understand what she just said because I could have sworn it sounded as though she had no plans to leave at the end of the week.

“I’m going to need you to explain what that means.” She has my full attention, but I’ve lost the ability to control my reactions, and my fingers twitch while I wait.

“I can’t promise forever, it feels too… I don’t know. When I think about that, my palms get sweaty and my vision blurs. Then the walls start closing in on me as if I’m slowly drowning and I can’t break the surface.”

Whiplash would be easier to handle than this conversation.

“Okay,” I say, dragging out the word. Forever with me feels like a slow death, got it.

“And, well, Lottie offered me a dream job, but it would start in September, and now because of you, it’s not really feeling like a dream job.”

I’m trying to follow along, but I can’t tell if she’s coming or going and it’s fucking killing me.

Dropping her face into her hands, she groans. “I’m not explaining myself very well. I don’t know how to do this, Seb. I’ve never cared enough to even try before.”

That little asshole called hope springs anew in my chest.

“You’re saying you care—about us,” I clarify. It’s hard to keep my grin in check, but if we have to walk through this taking baby steps, I’ll hold her hand through every single stage.

“I think I do,” she sobs, as if it’s the worst tragedy since Romeo and Juliet .

It’s not nice, but I laugh, and it makes her cry even harder, so I climb onto the bed and pull her into my side.

“Is caring really so bad, Peach?”

“Yes,” she chokes out. “It is. That’s why I never, ever do it, but you assholes sucked me in with your voodoo powers, and now” —she hiccups—“I think I care. A lot. And I spent years not crying in front of people, Seb, years. Then you come back into my life and now I can’t s—stop.”

“Oh, Rowan.” I’m trying to be compassionate, but I also want to shake her a little.

“It’s good that you care because I, we care about you too. So much that the thought of you leaving has made me sick to my stomach for the last three days.”

“W—w—why do you people do this then?”

Her hair sticks to the tears on her face, so I brush it behind her ears. “Because, sweetheart, a life without love and caring isn’t a life at all. It’s going through the motions but never experiencing the beauty of it. Human beings are capable of the greatest love and the most brutal heartache, and sometimes you wouldn’t have one without the other, but that doesn’t mean you don’t try. If anything, it means you keep reaching for it until you find the place where you belong.”

“I don’t know that I belong anywhere.”

“Jesus, Rowan. Of course you do. You always have. You’ve just been too stubborn to see it. You belong with us, with me and Pappy, with the kids. You belong here in Sailport Bay, where everyone who has met you is ready to adopt you into their lives without hesitation because of who you are and the heart that you have. Even if you can’t see that, it’s all here, waiting for you.”

“Stella said they’re an orphanage for lost souls.” She chuckles and blows a snot bubble at the same time. It’s something I’ve only seen babies do, and it makes me laugh harder. “Ugh. I’m disgusting.”

“You’re amazing.” And you’re mine . Someday, when she’s ready for that level of commitment, I’ll tell her that, but for now, I keep it to myself.

I hand her a box of tissues from the nightstand and wait patiently while she pulls herself together.

With a handful of dirty tissues, she squares her shoulders and offers the smallest smile.

“Tell me what you want, Rowan. How can we make this work?”

She blanches, the little color she had draining from her face.

“What’s the matter?” I ask, already knowing I’d move heaven and earth to fix everything I could.

“Nothing.”

I don’t even have to fully form an expression of disbelief before she’s correcting herself.

“It’s just that, Lottie, well…honestly, never mind. I’ll deal with Lottie.”

“Will there be an issue with you giving me your todays and tomorrows?” The excitement fizzing through me now is the same as when I was a kid on Christmas morning, waiting for my parents to get up so I could run down to see if Santa had come.

She swallows heavily.

“No,” she nearly shouts, and I pull back to search her face. “It’s just, todays and tomorrows until September. Then…”

“Then we’ll renegotiate?”

“Um…renegotiate what?” I’ve never heard a person’s voice actually quiver as Rowan’s does now. She lives with very specific fears I’ve never experienced, but that doesn’t mean I can’t learn to help her overcome them.

“From now until September, you’ll give me your todays and tomorrows as our nanny while we work out exactly what’s happening between us on a personal level. In September, we’ll decide if we need to adjust your title.”

“That’s not really what I meant.”

“No?” I question, then drop my lips to her cheek, absorbing her tears with my lips. With my mouth next to her ear, I whisper, “Then be very clear about what you did mean, Rowan, because there’s no part of me willing to walk away from anything we’ve already started.”

“September,” she mumbles as I kiss and nip down her neck.

I press my smile into her skin. “I’m glad we’re in agreement then.”

“I feel like you tricked me.” She moans as I trail a finger along the hem of her V-neck T-shirt.

“It’s only a trick if it’s not the truth, and I’ll never tell you a lie, Peach. Never.”