Nine #3
“I’ve thought about it a long time, and maybe it was the life I thought I had, how I felt about myself…
I dunno. But like, when the kids hugged me, I was reminded of who I was, but we were all…
distant. I was losing them, making so many wrong choices where they were concerned, but then you were here when I got home…
and it was like I woke up. Like I’d been sleepwalking, and then a switch was flipped and I was alive again. ”
“You realize that was time and the changes the kids made, and probably your pain and grief and anger finally subsiding. There was healing going on there.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he agreed, meeting my gaze. “Maybe everything aligned. And maybe it’s simply that you were supposed to be here for the kids and for me, and my life suddenly balanced out because you showed up.”
“You seem so calm about this, but we both know you’re straight, so maybe it really is time to start dating and find a new wife for you and a mother for the kids.”
“No.”
I waited a moment. “What?”
“No,” he repeated.
“Nothing else? Just no?”
He nodded. “I know I touch you all the time, I can’t help it, but I don’t know if you’re aware, you do the same.”
“I do not.”
He chuckled. “You crowd me, you bump me, you lean on me, a lot, and you always sit right next to me.”
“No, you do that to me.”
The throaty laugh was too good a sound. I had to smile.
“This is one of your favorite maneuvers,” he said, and shoulder-checked me gently.
“But you do that too.”
“Then,” he said with a shrug, “I suspect it’s because we want to be closer, to do what we did earlier in your room, but neither of us had the balls to act.”
I scoffed. “Again, you’re straight. There’s only ever been women.”
“And you’re what, gay?”
“Bi, actually. There have been women and men.”
“Okay.” He flipped the dish towel over his shoulder. “And have any of those been long-term commitments?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I was in the Army for a long time and normally deployed in the worst places, seeing horrible things. Then I was a homicide detective in the worst part of the city, seeing horrible things. It’s hard to be a rock for someone else when you’re barely holding your own shit together.
And now I’m a fixer, and when I’m at home, I just want things to be easy, and that means my friends, and that’s as deep as I go. ”
He crossed his arms and stared at me.
“You need a partner, Luke, and that’s not me.”
“And yet,” he said, grinning.
“And yet what?”
“I dunno, Nash, you’re awfully good at being a partner, taking care of me and the kids.”
I gestured at the living room, where the girls were. “That’s because you have great kids. Anybody could do well with them.”
“But interestingly enough, there was no one between their mother and you.”
“That’s because you haven’t dated.”
His eyes narrowed. “So I should date, is what you’re saying?”
“Yes,” I muttered, even as my stomach rolled suggesting that to him.
“Did you feel it, in your gut, when you said that?”
I would not answer him if my life depended on it.
“I don’t know how it feels to you, Nash, but even thinking about you going anywhere with that lawyer… I thought I was gonna throw up.”
My gaze returned to his face.
“I mean, what the hell? When Caitlyn cheated on me, I was sad, not jealous. When the lawyer was putting the moves on you at my fuckin’ dining table, I saw red. I wanted him the fuck outta my house and away from you.”
He was being honest. It was only fair that I was as well. “If you could wait and not date until after I leave, I would appreciate that.”
“Because?”
“Because I feel very… Okay, so there’s another reason why I’ve never had a long-term thing with anyone.”
He hopped up on the counter, getting comfortable. We had to stay there—anywhere else and Tatum and her friends would hear us from the living room. “Tell me. I’m ready.”
“You’re being funny. Don’t be funny.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll never be funny again. G’head.”
I took a breath. “See, I get very… I…”
“Possessive,” he stated like he knew, not at all like he was guessing. He said it like he could see right into my heart. “You get very possessive. The belonging and the mine , that’s what happens, doesn’t it?”
I searched his face.
“I know. I see it. The kids feel it, and they need it so badly, to be wanted and needed and loved, so they cluster around you and soak it up.”
It was a lot of honesty, and I had to breathe and not look at him.
“You hug them and squeeze them, and even Griff, who’s sixteen, hugs you every night before he goes to bed. I got a kiss on the cheek the other night and nearly died of happiness right there.”
I coughed softly. “I saw you. You froze.”
“I didn’t want to scare him away.”
“My father hugged and kissed me all the time. And he probably did it because he was trying to make up for my mother not being there, but he did.”
Reaching out, he cupped my cheek, and I lifted my eyes to his. “You’re a natural caretaker, Nash. Do you know that about yourself?”
“Normally it comes out as protective, and that I do know.”
“You’re selling yourself short. Because you don’t just want to protect my kids and me. You want to love us. All of us.”
But that could never happen. “Listen to?—”
“No. You listen. Because right now, at this moment, you think of Griff, Dar, and Tate as belonging to you. I wasn’t here at first, so there was no distance between any of you, there was no having me be the last word, so you, the big, scary hawk, took my three little ducklings under your wing, and that was it. ”
I scowled at him.
“You have no idea how dark your eyes get when you’re lookin’ at me like I’m nuts.”
“Ducklings?”
He nodded. “Yep. They imprint fast.”
“Who are you?”
He chuckled. “You think of them as yours, and then I came home, stepped into the mix, and guess what?”
“I think I’m gonna go to bed and let you deal with?—”
“Oh hell no. You have to stay with me to monitor all the children. I didn’t agree to do any of this alone.”
“Yes, but shouldn’t you?” I pointed out. “Don’t you think you should get used to doing things by yourself so you can?—”
“No, actually. Because you don’t want me out there doing that.”
“Why don’t I?”
“Because I belong to you. You want me home, in my bed, safe, like Tatum and Dar. All warm in the nest, and then you will take your other bird out and drop him off and worry until he gets home.”
“I’m not going to worry about?—”
He laughed at me.
“You don’t know me.”
“Oh, the hell I don’t,” he said, leaning forward. “You give me all the reasons you should go, but I’m not stupid. There’s nowhere you’d rather be than with us.”
I stayed quiet, because lying was no good. I couldn’t do that, not to him. He’d had his share of that already.
“And I wish I could offer you everything right this second, everything you need, but I don’t know what—I mean, I want to see if when you kiss me again, if it feels the same or if that was just a one-off.”
I wasn’t going to ask, but I couldn’t help it. “How did it feel?”
“Like I didn’t want you to stop. Like I wanted you to lie down so I could kiss you more and touch you.
And see, I’m possessive too. That’s why Caitlyn cheating was so…
I trusted that she was mine. That she was out there, walking around in the world, thinking, I have a home with Luke, with my kids …
but she was looking for more because I wasn’t enough, and because of that, my kids lost out too. ”
“That’s not what happened, and you know it as well as I do. She could have prioritized those kids, but she didn’t pick them.”
“No, she didn’t. And now, when I think about her, there’s nothing. When I think about her being gone, all I am is sad for my kids.”
“Yeah, I?—”
“But now, when I think about you going, leaving me, leaving the kids, I feel this emptiness in the pit of my stomach.”
“But I won’t stay here for?—”
“And then I thought we were done with that, and at least for a time that would allow me to breathe and plan and figure out what I wanted, what I could give, but then your friend today says he can move you right after Thanksgiving, and now, because of you, I’m dreading a holiday I’ve loved since I was a kid. ”
“Oh, that is some bullshit,” I snapped, then turned the sprayer on him.
His yell brought Tatum from the other room.
“What are you two doing?” she admonished us. “I have company.”
Luke was laughing. “I’m very sorry. I?—”
“And why are you wet?” she asked him, clearly irritated, hands on her hips.
“Listen, Nash started it, and then?—”
“No,” she growled, then her angry eyes were on me.
“In my defense, your father said something really stupid.”
“But that doesn’t mean we resort to violence.”
She sounded just like me, which was troubling.
“Stop fooling around and don’t embarrass me,” she scolded us, her voice full of derision and disappointment. “God.” The foot stomp before she flounced away was classic.
Luke couldn’t stop laughing.
“Get down from the counter,” I instructed, “and go check on?—”
“Stop,” he ordered me, hopping off and stepping directly into my space, pressing his lips to the side of my throat.
“Luke, the kids will?—”
“I need you to call Shaw and tell him you’re going to stick it out with the family that’s crazy about you, and when the time is actually up, then we will all worry about what to do next.”
I put a few feet between us. “Things can’t be up in the air the whole time. That’s not fair to you, the kids, or to me.”
Suddenly, he looked both sad and tired, and I felt like crap for being the cause. “I don’t know what you expect me to do.”
“Figure out what you really want,” I said simply. “That’s all anyone can ask.”
“And what if I want it to be you, want to have you in my life, but the physical piece is beyond me?”
“Then we’ll be friends,” I assured him. “I could be your friend.”
“You kiss all your friends the way you kissed me?”
I scowled at him. “Obviously, time apart will help that.”
“So you’d just leave?”
“That was the plan from the start,” I reminded him.
We were both quiet, and for my part I realized that honestly, it was probably best that I went home in December. There had been no one since his wife, and when I’d stepped into her spot to help, he got confused. If you wanted someone, you knew right away. You didn’t need time to figure it all out.
“I need you to stop and let us all breathe, all right? You said I deserve to be happy too, remember? So allow me the time to sort this all out.”
“You’re not supposed to become involved with your fixer,” I said, because it was true and because I needed to say something.
His laugh, man, I could not get enough of the sound. “I bet if I called Shaw right now and asked him how many fixers Torus Intercession loses to love, it’ll be a pretty big number.”
It was more than half over the years. “No,” I lied.
His chuckle was filthy as he slipped his hand up under my heavy shawl-collar sweater, under the T-shirt, to my skin. “Another amazing thing about you is that you’re a terrible liar.”
Everywhere his fingers touched, I felt heat and ripples of need, and it was hard to get my breathing to even out.
“Could you please give in? You have to give me a second to figure out my life,” he murmured, gently knocking his forehead on my shoulder. “I deserve that time.”
He did, but honestly, so did I. And if he decided it wasn’t me, that he didn’t want a man, then what was I supposed to do?
“I would never say it wouldn’t be you.”
That wasn’t true at all, but all I could do was wait.