Chapter 37 #2
When she does, she stops dead in her tracks. “Whoa.” She gives me a once-over, her dark eyes melting. “How do you expect me to hold you to your promise to keep your hands to yourself when you look at that?” She waves her hands wildly at me. “I want to lick your abs.”
I burst into laughter.
She slaps a hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud. I’m just really tired and I think I’m a little tipsy.”
“Please.” I gesture to my torso. “Help yourself.”
“No, no,” she chants, flapping her hands. “I know where that will lead and I’m telling you my body needs a break.”
Chuckling, I pat the empty space beside me. “Then get your ass over here and go to bed.”
With a small frown, she eyes her laptop. “I should check my email again. Lucy has been sending nursery ideas, and I’ve been terrible about checking my inbox.”
She settles on the opposite side of the bed, too far away for my liking, so I slide an arm around her back and scoot her over so we’re touching.
“I think your love language is physical touch.”
I scoff. “What the fuck is a love language?”
She pokes my nose. “Stop scrunching your nose at me. It’s cute and makes me want to kiss you.”
With a hum of approval, I kiss her.
“Noah.” She giggles, pushing me away.
“What?” I ask, blinking innocently. “You can’t tell me you want to kiss me and not expect me to give you what you want.”
She rolls her eyes.
She doesn’t have the first clue just how tightly she’s got me wrapped around her finger. More than almost anything, I want her to be happy.
Propped up against the pillows, she sighs and scrolls through her emails.
When she stops at one from Lucy, I point at the screen. “Circus theme?” I shudder. “Really?”
“You don’t think it’s cute?”
I cringe. “I mean … I guess. I just hate clowns.”
Her jaw drops. “Noah Baker, are you afraid of clowns?”
“Maybe,” I grumble.
Her laughter fills the whole room. “Oh, man. I can’t believe you’re afraid of clowns.”
Arms crossed, I narrow my eyes on her. “Why is that so weird? Lots of people don’t like clowns.”
“I know.” She scrolls to another email from Lucy, this one with images of a nautical-themed nursery. “You’re just so … you. It surprises me that anything would rattle you.”
“I don’t know whether to be flattered you think I’m so impenetrable or hurt.”
She types out a response to Lucy’s question about whether the nautical thing has been overdone. “Just be flattered.”
“Do Lucy and Alyssa know what they’re having yet?”
“No.” She clicks on another email. “They’re team green.”
“Team green?” I shift to face her. “What the fuck is that?”
“They’re waiting until the baby is born to find out the gender.”
I frown. “I don’t know if I could wait.” With a thick swallow, I assess her, one particular question rolling around in my head. “Do you want kids?”
Her sigh is a light one. “Yeah, one day.”
I try to hide my smile, but when her lips tip up, mine follow.
We still haven’t put a label on what we are, but I can’t help but think this is as serious for her as it is for me.
I could see a future like that for us. One with marriage and babies.
But not until I retire. I don’t plan to play forever.
I’d rather stop while I’m ahead and hopefully, in a few years, have more kids and be a present father figure.
Maddie’s wonderful, and she’s taken this lifestyle in stride since it’s all she knows, but I want to do things differently in the future.
All of my thoughts drift away when I spot one of her email’s subjects.
Position Opening.
I point at it. “What’s that?”
“Oh.” She turns to me. “I was going to talk to you about that. There’s an open teaching position back home. It’s fifth grade, which I’d love, but it starts in August. I asked for more information but I … I’m not going to take it. I can’t leave you and Maddie like that.”
Chest tightening, I press my lips together.
I knew from day one that her aspirations did not include being a nanny. Teaching has always been her goal. As happy as she seems with us, it’s understandable that her dreams haven’t changed.
“Sabrina.” I swallow past the lump in my throat. “If it wasn’t for Maddie and me, would you take the job?”
Her silence is deafening. The way she keeps her focus on the screen rather than on me is telling.
“Sabrina?” I prompt.
She clears her throat. “Yes.” The answer is succinct. Unsurprising, really.
Heart sinking, I shove my fingers through my hair.
“It’s okay,” she goes on. “There will be other jobs.”
Jaw locked tight, I side-eye her. “If I remember correctly, you were struggling to get hired on at the local schools. That’s why you’re stuck with me.”
Her shoulders fall. “Don’t say it like that.”
I rub my jaw, my brain frantically scrambling for a solution that would allow her to follow her dream without taking her away from me. Time and again, I come up empty.
If she stays on the tour with us, it’ll be well into November by the time we head home.
By then, finding a teaching position will be next to impossible.
I’d have no problem paying for her to stay with us and care for Maddie, but if we’re going to date in earnest, I don’t know how she’d feel continuing to work for me.
Sabrina doesn’t strike me as the kind of woman to like that her boyfriend’s paying her salary.
Bitter regret forms inside me, turning my stomach. Why the fuck haven’t we talked about this? God, I’m a selfish asshole. My career has taken the front seat day in and day out, and that’s not fair to her. She has her own dreams, and they existed long before I came along.
“Sabrina.” I grasp her hand and rub my thumb over her knuckles.
“You have to take the job. This traveling thing … it worked for me and Annie because she wanted it too. She didn’t care about college.
Once Maddie was here, all she wanted was to be with us.
But you have other dreams, and you deserve the opportunity to pursue them. ”
Heat pricks at the backs of my eyes, but I choke it back.
“And shit. Annie and I … I’ve been so fucking selfish. Maybe she did have other goals and I was too blinded by my own to see them. I don’t want to hold you back.”
“No,” she blurts out quickly. “Something will work out. It has to.”
I shake my head.
“Noah,” she pleads. “You’re leaving for the Olympics. You need me.”
I cup her face. “I’m always going to need you, Curls.
But I…” I clear my throat, searching for the words to make her understand.
“I’m following my dream right now. Annie …
I’m only now realizing all she gave up for me, for my career.
I don’t want you to do the same thing, okay?
I … I’ve been seeing a therapist, and she’s helped me see so much.
Including how unintentionally selfish I’ve been for most of my life.
I love you too much to force you to follow me while I live out my dreams. I don’t want to hold you back. ”
“You love me?” Tears pool in her brown eyes.
“Yeah, pretty girl.” I stroke her cheek with my thumb. “I love you.”
Her bottom lip trembles. “I love you too. I want to stay.”
I wet my lips and exhale a shaky breath.
God, this is fucking hard. “Do you want to stay because your dream has changed, or because you love Maddie and me? Baby,” I add softly, wiping at a single tear that crests her lashes and rolls down her cheek.
“Loving me, loving her, it doesn’t come with conditions.
You can still love us and not give up that part of yourself. ”
The way her lips thin tells me all I need to know.
“You have to take the job.”
She lowers her head, but I don’t remove my hands from her face. I want to hold her as long as possible.
“I haven’t heard back from her, and the email sat in my inbox for a few days before I saw it. She might’ve found someone else already.”
“All right.” I clear my throat. “If that’s the case, and you want to, then stay. But if the position is still available, I want you to take it. I don’t want you to ever feel guilty for pursuing your passions.”
Another tear cascades down her cheek. I wipe it away quickly.
“What does this mean for us?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I basically live on the road. I’m not back home often. It’s … if you’re teaching, we wouldn’t see each other often.”
“So, what?” She sniffles. “We break up? I know we haven’t talked about where this might lead, but it feels big. It feels real.”
“It is real, sweetheart.” I rub my thumb over her trembling bottom lip.
Fuck, I hate this. I want to be selfish.
I want to tell her to forget the job and stay with me, but I can’t.
I’ve been a selfish asshole for far too long and I can’t in good conscious continue.
I can’t take away her dreams her. “I don’t know what the right answer is here.
I don’t want to break up, but this staying together won’t be easy, so”—my throat tightens, making it hard to get these next words out—“maybe a clean break is better.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
It’s the last thing I want.
I’d give anything to take it all back and forget I ever gave voice to that option in the first place.
Pulling away, she covers her face with her hands and lets out a muffled “fuck.” Shoulders rising and falling with labored breaths, she asks, “Why are you doing this?”
The sheets rustle as I get closer and gently pry her hands from her face so she’s forced to see my face, to see just how painful this is for me. Just how badly I’m suffering.
“Because, if you stay with me, I worry that in five, ten, twenty years, you’ll look back and wonder what if.”
She sniffles. “I hate you.”
I brush her tears away. “No, you don’t.”
“Ugh.” She drops her head back. “No, I don’t.”
“If you didn’t want the job, you would’ve deleted the email. You wouldn’t have responded. But you’re interested, and you need to see where this opportunity leads.”
“Can you stop making sense?” she groans. “I like it better when you’re wrong.” With a hiccup, she wipes at her face. “Maddie’s going to hate me if I leave.”
“No, she won’t, and you are leaving.”
“Yeah, she will,” Sabrina sniffles. “She’s going to think I abandoned her.”
“She won’t.” I grasp her wrists and squeeze. “I won’t let her. The two of you can FaceTime any time you want. I may be an asshole, but do you think I’d break my daughter’s heart like that?”
Lips turned down, she picks at an invisible speck on the sheet in front of her. “I don’t know about this.”
“Give it a chance. You’ll never forgive yourself if you don’t try.”
She nods, inhaling slowly to get her emotions under control.
“I’m doing this because I love you.” I press my lips to hers. “I don’t want to hold you back.”
Her fingers thread in the hair at my nape. “I love you,” she echoes.
We sink beneath the covers, hands exploring, lips connected with a desperation I’ve never felt before.
“I love you.”
“I love you.”
The words echo between us over and over again, and when I sink inside her, I make sure to show her just how deep that love goes.
And when she falls asleep, I do the hardest thing I’ve had to do in a long time. I pull out my phone and purchase a single plane ticket in her name.