Second Chance Baby (Crescent Cove #18)

Chapter 7

SEVEN

I had just officially shown my hand.

In a manner of speaking.

Now he’d know I was kind of a stalker, except I was stalking my own family. Well, once upon a time when I hadn’t been smart enough to protect what I had. I hadn’t felt worthy of it because I’d never known what it was like to have a traditional one. So my fears had led to me throwing away all the goodness I’d been gifted.

But I’d learned something over our years apart. That if I dug in my heels and went after something, I could get it through sheer persistence. At least when it mattered enough.

And this mattered more than anything.

He stared at me, not speaking, as if he was trying to make sense of what I’d just told him.

“Why?” he finally asked.

I drew up my knees and looped my arms around them. “I haven’t touched a man since the last time I touched you.”

“So…today?” His dimples winked and I laughed, even though it really wasn’t funny.

Even though I’d cried myself to sleep so many times when I went to bed alone, knowing I’d probably lost my only chance for love in my life.

Because no other man could possibly do.

“I meant other than today. There’s been no one else, Trav. Deliberately. I went on dates here and there, and a couple times I got close, but I just could not do it.”

I didn’t keep talking, even though I knew he had nothing to add on that score. A guy like him with a rampant sex drive would have nothing to share that would make me feel any better. Not that I wanted him to be alone like I was, but I couldn’t deny the idea of him with some nameless, faceless woman, rolling across tangled sheets, was enough to make me want to curl in a ball.

Okay, maybe I did want him to be alone. I was no saint. Just because I wanted us together again, and if he was alone, maybe that meant he’d realized the same as I had.

That once you’d been with someone so important, you could not settle for just anyone. Someone not meant to be yours, if you were blessed enough to get lucky again.

“I’m still stuck on my mom being your informant. Did she ever even hint to me she was cluing you in? No, she did not.”

“I begged her not to. Literally begged. There may have been tears.”

“You never used to cry. When you broke your ankle, I didn’t see one tear.”

“Life changes you. Or at least it changed me. Or maybe it was childbirth.” I shuddered. “That definitely taught me there was no shame in crying. Because that shit hurts. ”

“Yeah, you almost broke my hand.” He laughed, but sympathy was rife in his gorgeous eyes. “I had to say I was impressed.”

“At my strength?”

“No, that my hand withstood Killer Bridget.”

Playfully, I shoved his shoulder, giving into my own giggles as he started tickling me. Just like the old days, he always knew the spots I would react to the most and left me writhing in helpless stitches. But after a couple minutes, my laughter turned into tears.

Saying nothing, he tucked me into his arms, silently kissing my eyelids until the tears dissipated. And I opened my eyes to the principal in Scream talking about desensitized kids. “If they were desensitized back then,” I said hollowly, “what are they now?”

“ Shh , don’t think of hard questions like that.” He kissed the side of my head, easing away as Carrington careened into the living room, her attention riveted on the TV. “Oh, they’re having the party now. Time for all the cool kills. Like garage door girl.”

“Tatum?” I asked as Carrington crashed onto the couch beside me and started digging out handfuls of cheese balls from the big container we’d purchased.

“Yeah.”

I watched her eat for a few minutes then I gave into my desire for cheesy goodness. “Hey, gimme some of those.”

“Did you see this righteous dip made by me?” Travis grabbed the platter off the coffee table and began shoving chips into the creamy cheesy dip filled with brightly colored peppers. “Nice and spicy,” he announced between bites.

Carrington grabbed a couple of Doritos and loaded them with dip before taking big bites that proved the dip was just fine.

I was okay with that, because that left the cheese balls for me. And the pretzel rods and some of the mini candy bars.

Before we’d even shrieked and laughed our way through the first Scream movie, we’d made a serious dent in the snacks. Then we decided it was time for dinner, so why not have some rotisserie chicken with some of the potato salad we’d picked up.

In not long at all, we were all sprawled on the couch under the fuzzy Halloween throws Travis had handed out, halfway between giggles from a sugar high and a post-dinner coma.

I fell asleep sometime between the end of the second movie and the middle of the third one, and when I finally roused, it was past midnight and Carrington was sleeping with her head on the plush arm of the couch even though it was very late for a school night. “Guess we didn’t plan that very well, huh, kiddo,” I murmured, brushing a kiss over my girl’s forehead. “Also, when did you get so gangly?”

But she curled into my arms as if she wanted me to carry her to bed. “I’ve got her,” Travis murmured in his sleep-roughened voice from behind me, nudging me aside to lift our daughter into his arms. She hadn’t gotten any less gangly, but somehow he shifted her as if she was weightless. He was just such a natural with anything parenting-related. No wonder I’d assumed I couldn’t do any of this the “right” way with him as my example.

“This is why,” I muttered, causing him to slant me a speculative glance.

He held up a finger then murmured he’d be right back. I sat on the couch and paused the movie, sitting back to close my eyes and gather my thoughts. I hadn’t intended to go down this road, but maybe it was exactly what we needed.

Why else would it have come out at that very moment? Especially when the absolute last thing I wanted to do was talk about emotions?

You never wanted to, and that’s why you lost him. You can’t do the same thing again and expect different results.

He came down, smiling wryly. “She was sleeping perfectly until I put her in her bed. Then she was wide awake, saying she wanted to see the rest of the movie. Luckily, I’m used to her, so I just sat on the side of the bed and waited her out. She was back asleep in two minutes.”

I managed to smile although I didn’t much feel like it. I knew I was at the brick wall that I couldn’t pass without scaling it, and I didn’t feel ready. I didn’t want to rip open the wounds I spent so many years building scar tissue over, but I had no choice.

Not anymore.

But he didn’t force me to speak until I was ready, just waited me out the same way he was clearly used to waiting out Carrington.

He gripped my hand, holding on even when it started to shake. “Take your time. There’s no rush.”

I had to laugh at that one. “Obviously not, since it takes me an eternity to face what everyone else just does naturally.”

“How do you know that?”

“I can see them, Travis. All the women I knew in school who are now parents just knew how to do it naturally. They tackled it head on. None of them ran away.”

“And you know that by watching from the outside, right? That’s the way to find out every detail about a situation, isn’t it? If someone watched us, they’d get the truth of us just studying our lives from the outside, wouldn’t they? And if so, what is that truth? Tell me, please. I want to know.”

He made me laugh again, though this time, it was far more subdued since none of this was actually funny. “No, of course not. I just made assumptions because I saw what looked like so many happy families. Like your family. Your parents are so incredibly functional . How could I ever compete?”

“Who ever asked you to?”

“Me,” I whispered. “I figured that’s what you wanted, and I just couldn’t compare. That I would end up disappointing you, since I wasn’t made to be a homemaker.”

“So what? I kind of like being the house husband. So, you can be the international super model and support me, and I’d be fine with it. I wasn’t sure I would be, but having you with me again is worth everything. I’ll just stay at home and take care of the kids.”

“What kids? We have one. Unless you haven’t told me something…”

“Nope. Just conveniently didn’t wear a condom today.” He jerked a shoulder and played with my fingers. “It wasn’t intentional but now that it’s done, I’m fine with it.”

I narrowed my eyes. “It wasn’t intentional?”

“No. Just never even considered it. Didn’t care about it. It wasn’t even in my brain. And if it had been, I didn’t have one in any case. Granted, it’s been a damn long time since I’d been in that situation.”

He obviously meant being with me sexually. Not being with anyone. Because a guy with his kind of sex drive wouldn’t put it on ice for years just for some chick.

Even if that chick was me.

But didn’t you do the very same thing for him?

“What if I don’t want more kids?” I asked quietly, needing to know.

“I’m fine with that too. I already have the best daughter on the planet. Maybe our best is in her, and if so, that works for me.”

“Everything works for you. You’re so fucking well-adjusted. No matter the situation, you just shake it off and deal. You don’t have the basic dysfunction some of us are born with where we can’t just roll with the punches. Where everything seems too hard and we’re sure we aren’t capable of handling it. So, we make sure the worst happens despite ourselves. We just look up one day and realize we are all alone by our own doing. Because we don’t deserve anything more.” I buried my face in my hands, well aware he was stroking my back.

“Says the fuck who? You ? Well, guess what, Killer, I’m still fucking here after all this time. So, what does that say? Guess I’m not as perfect as the pedestal you put me on, though I have no clue why. I definitely don’t roll with all the punches. I loved that little girl from her first scream, so that was the easiest part of all of this. But I didn’t know what I’d done wrong to make you stop loving me. I figured there was something, but I didn’t know what. But I had a piece of you, and I was going to do the fucking best I could by her.”

I lifted my head. “I didn’t stop loving you for one second. I stopped thinking I had any right to believe I was good enough for you. Other women told me all the time. What kind of dumb bitch would do what I’d done to a man like you? I didn’t deserve you. And they were right. They were right.”

“Says who? Not me. If you were so not worthy, why did I not want anyone else? Why did I kneel down next to my window night after night and ask what I could do to make you come back and want to stay? It didn’t matter what it was, I would do it. That was all I wanted. For you to come back and say you’d missed me even 1/10 th as much as I’ve missed you. Even that much would be a dream come true for me.”

“Travis,” I whispered, staring at him through streaming eyes.

“I fell in love with you when you were fourteen and I never could fall out. Never tried. Somehow it just kept growing. The longer you were gone, the more I wanted you back. So, you know what? If you were a dumb bitch, so was I, because no one else in the world even existed for me. I couldn’t see them, and I didn’t want to. I’ve been looking at you and f or you this whole time.”

I swallowed hard and reached for him, hanging on for all I was worth. “I’m right here. And today, I went to the drugstore to get those Plan B pills, and I couldn’t buy them. Because there never was a Plan B for me. You were every damn letter in the alphabet I wanted. I didn’t want to walk away. I pretty much crawled away. No part of me wanted to leave. But I had such bad postpartum depression and there were no women in my family to ask what was happening to me, since my mom was long gone and back then, so was my sister. Later on, we found our way back to each other, and she told me she’d gone through the same thing when she had her baby. But she hadn’t had someone to leave since her baby’s father had been a dick who hadn’t even stuck around for Amerie’s birth. She called me a dumb bitch too, by the way.”

“Oh, baby, you weren’t dumb. You just didn’t have any good role models, and you had hormones and all of that. You can’t blame yourself for not doing more than you were physically capable of.” He brushed away my tears, his thumbs so gentle on my cheeks. “You did the best you fucking could. As we all do every day. Do you think I don’t second-guess myself? I do all the time. I blamed myself for you leaving. That I hadn’t spent enough time asking you how you felt. But I didn’t know to do that, either. We both fumbled hard.”

“But you didn’t fumble with Care. You put her first in every situation. You stuck. And that was the best possible thing you could do.”

He smiled sadly. “Yet it didn’t keep you with us, so it wasn’t enough. I held on because I couldn’t do anything else. Even when my fist was empty, holding on so tightly was all I knew to do. That maybe if I stayed in the same place long enough, one day I’d look up and you’d be back in my arms again.” He swallowed hard. “It’s not heroic if you’re not capable of doing anything else. And I wasn’t. I had more days than not where I didn’t want to get out of bed and face a world you weren’t in. I didn’t want to deal with reality. So, I just closed my eyes and kept plowing ahead because I didn’t know what else to do.”

“I’m here now.” My voice broke as I cupped his face in my hands. “And now, you might want to get the police on notice, because if anyone tries to make me leave, they won’t succeed. I’m not going anywhere ever again.”