Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Rowan
I ’d lived with Chance for two weeks now.
My feelings for him were deepening every day, even if I tried not to acknowledge them. We ate dinner together each evening and, more times than not, hung out in the family room afterwards, whether we had the TV on or got carried away with a conversation or even just sat quietly reading our own things.
Spending time with him was more than just comfortable. I found myself looking forward to our evenings together. Even if they did result in wild dreams starring him as more than just a friend or roommate.
I was slowly getting to know his daughter better too. I got the sense she longed for the female companionship, and I thrived on our connection too.
Maybe it was dumb or overstepping, but I’d picked up a Valentine’s gift for Sam.
It was after eleven p.m. when I spotted the hair clips and box of candy I’d spontaneously grabbed at the Country Market, sitting on the dresser in my room. Tomorrow was V Day, and I wanted her to start her day with a present. I remembered all too well how it felt to go through February fourteenth with no boyfriend and no valentines.
Chance drove Sam to school each morning, and they usually left before I made it downstairs, so I picked up the items plus a cute card and gift bag for the clips and crept out of my room in my leggings and a long-sleeve pajama tee. Chance’s bedroom door was closed, and I suspected he was watching TV from the faint light under the door. He’d admitted he often fell asleep with it on, just like I had so many nights in my Gram’s last months.
The rest of the house was dark, so I lit the way with my phone.
It’d been a week since my ultrasound and my promise to Chance to get to know his daughter. The promise wasn’t necessary, as I had every intention of it anyway. From our first meeting, Sam hadn’t been what I’d expected from Chance’s few comments about her.
She seemed like a sweet girl who was struggling to find her place in this world. She had a pretty smile that didn’t quite erase the hint of sadness from her eyes.
My pregnancy sugar cravings were real, and yesterday I’d convinced Sam to help me make chocolate peanut butter cupcakes. Neither one of us had much prior cupcake experience, but the dazzling selection at Sugar Babies last week had inspired me. Inspired me and had me daydreaming about all the flavors I’d passed up to settle for a single chocolate peppermint.
The bakery here in town, Sugar, specialized in cookies and donuts. I’d indulged in my share of those, but nothing swayed my need for a rich, fluffy cupcake with a big mound of sweet, creamy frosting.
Our baking endeavor had been one of the first times Sam and I had spent more than a few random minutes together outside of dinners. At first she’d been shy, but the more we chatted, the more she’d opened up. I hadn’t pried, but with Chance occupied by a hockey game in the other room, she’d confessed she didn’t have any friends except a girl named Kinsley, who was in several of her classes.
From what I gathered, Kinsley was brainy and not popular, which Sam made sound like a strike against her. In my eyes, it was the perfect opportunity to deepen the friendship. I’d mildly suggested that, being careful not to come across as parental or teacher-ish. Sometimes a girl just needed some low-key girl talk.
Our cupcakes turned out ugly and homemade-looking compared to the works of art at Sugar Babies, but they tasted sublime.
In the kitchen now, I turned on the dim light over the stove and located a pen so I could sign the humorous Valentine card. As I was stuffing the card in the envelope, Chance came down the stairs.
“Hey, what are you doing down here?” he asked in a hushed voice as he entered the kitchen.
Holy hell. Apparently I was feeding my fantasies with some man fodder.
He wore gray sweatpants and a black tee that stretched across his chest. His feet were bare, hair sexily mussed, and his biceps bulged appealingly where his sleeves ended.
I swallowed and tore my gaze away to the candy. “I picked up a Valentine gift for Sam. I’m setting it out so she sees it in the morning. It’s not much, just a little something so she doesn’t have a sucky Valentine’s Day, in case she doesn’t get anything else.”
“From what I’ve heard, she won’t get anything else,” he said sadly. “And I am a shithead of a father. I didn’t even think about giving her something.”
I held the box of candy out to him.
“She’ll love that,” he said.
“You can give it to her. I’ll give her the hair clips.” I held up the three pack of flower-shaped clips similar to the one she’d complimented when I wore it, then placed it in the gift bag. “And the card, because I already wrote in it, and you and I aren’t quite on joint gift-giving levels.”
“Not quite.” He looked from the candy to my face. “I’ll owe you big-time.”
I shook my head. “Remember we’re not keeping score? There’s a place on the back for to and from. I didn’t write anything yet.”
“Thank you. Double thank you. I really bombed that.”
“There’s no rule that dads have to get their kids a Valentine.”
“Doesn’t mean it won’t make her day better.” He scrawled a message on the candy box, and we set the gifts on the counter where Sam couldn’t miss them.
“I hope so. I’ve always told myself it’s a pointless Hallmark-hyped holiday, but that only goes so far when the girl next to you gloats about roses and candy.”
He nodded. “Surely you had a lot of boyfriends though,” he said, his tone teasing.
I didn’t have to think long to accurately say, “I’ve never had a guy get me anything for Valentine’s Day.”
His smile dropped. “Never?”
I shook my head. “I’ve only had one relationship that lasted longer than a few months, and he turned out to be not a gem.”
“In high school?”
I laughed. “Ever.”
He pegged me with a skeptical look.
“Fact,” I said.
He crossed the kitchen to the cupcake container, opened it, and took one out. “This is what I came down for. Want one?”
“Of course.” As if I could turn down an ugly cupcake. I walked over to that corner of the kitchen and took one.
“Tell me about the not-a-gem guy. When was that?” Chance leaned against the stove as he unwrapped his cake.
I settled against the cabinets that were at a right angle to him, swiped a finger through the peanut-butter cream frosting, and stuck it in my mouth, closing my eyes in appreciation. “I met Christian when I was still teaching. He tended bar at a place my teacher friends and I used to go for happy hour.”
“How long were you together?”
“About a year and a half.” The sweet cupcake was doing its best to counteract the unpleasantness of the topic.
“So he definitely had an opportunity to do Valentine’s Day right.”
I laughed dryly. “He had an opportunity to do a lot of things right.”
“But he was not a gem,” Chance said between bites.
“We’d been together a few months when I moved in with my grandmother. She’d started confusing her daily pills, her meals…a lot of things. She hid how much she was struggling from me, but there came a point when she couldn’t hide it anymore. My lease ended, and it was an easy decision for me. Christian didn’t like it. He thought I should move in with him.”
“And do what with your grandmother?” he asked, disbelief in his tone.
I just shook my head because that seemed rhetorical. “At that point, I was still working. I couldn’t go out as much because Gram sundowned pretty badly—evenings were her most confused and agitated time.” I said all of this without letting my mind go too deep into memories. “I invited him over instead, for dinner, a movie, whatever, thinking it was a decent compromise.”
“He didn’t agree?”
“He put up with it for a few weeks before he started complaining. By the time I quit my job, it was pretty clear we weren’t going to last. To be fair, I didn’t have much time or energy for anything besides Gram. I can’t really blame him for ending our relationship.”
“But Valentine’s Day is different. We can blame him for that,” Chance said lightly, then stuck the last of his cupcake into his mouth.
I appreciated that lightness so much.
“For sure we can blame him for that. So which kind of boyfriend were you? Did you nail V Day or screw it up?” I asked.
“Growing up, I usually nailed it.” He went thoughtful while he rolled up his empty cupcake paper. “Even when I was married, I always did something for Valentine’s. The last few years, I don’t think it mattered,” he said gravely. “But I still kept trying.”
There was something heavy in his tone, his words, besides sadness or grief. I tried to put my finger on what, but he avoided my gaze.
“You said she was an addict,” I said carefully, wanting to know more if he would go there. Wanting to acknowledge this part of his history if he would. If we were going to co-parent for two decades, it seemed important to know him better.
“Flowers and candy couldn’t measure up to a pill,” he said quietly. “ I couldn’t measure up to a pill.” His voice was raw.
I reached over and squeezed his arm, unable to not touch him, to try to assuage some of his pain. “Chance…”
He shook his head, like he was trying to shake it off. “I’m okay. Just…having someone choose drugs over you… It messes with a person.”
My heart cracked for him, for the pain he still carried. Not just grief and loss—God knew those alone were horrible—but Chance had extra scars.
“I think addiction can take the choice away from people,” I said. “It was never a fair battle between you and drugs.”
“Yeah,” he said on an emotion-laden exhalation. “Sorry that came out.” He tried to smile, as if we could blow off that heavy moment, but it was just a flicker of a grin. “Being married to an addict does lifelong things to a guy’s head.”
Without giving myself a chance to waver, I closed the space between us and put my arms around him, hurting for him, wishing there was some way to help him hurt less. A few heartbeats passed before I felt his hands on my back, wrapping around me, pulling me closer.
He smelled like strength and comfort, even though I was the one trying to comfort him. I breathed him in, trying to figure out what else I could say.
Before I could settle on anything, he pulled his head up, loosened his grasp, and nudged my chin up so our eyes met. Without warning, he lowered his lips to mine and kissed me, not like a friend who appreciated comfort or a late-night chat but like a man who’d been aching to kiss me for days.
In half a second, my body reacted, an ache awakening deep in my core as his tongue plundered my mouth aggressively. I kissed him back with no hesitation, no thought, just instinct and need. I ran my fingers through his coarse hair, pressing myself into him, reveling in the feel of his erection against me, confirmation that our attraction was still two-sided and very much alive.
He slid his hands down my back, slipped them under my shirt, and caressed my bare skin as we devoured each other’s mouth.
Quick, heavy footsteps sounded on the basement stairs. Chance reacted before I did, ending the kiss abruptly, whipping his hands from under my shirt, standing straighter. Just before the basement door creaked open, I stepped away from him, putting space between us and leaning against the counter, hoping like hell I looked calm and casual instead of flushed and turned on.
“Sam,” Chance said as she took the last step up to the kitchen. “What are you doing up?”
His daughter pressed a hand to her chest as her gaze bounced between us. “You scared me.”
“Sorry about that. You should be in bed, shouldn’t you?” he said.
“History test tomorrow. I’m studying. Need a snack.” She narrowed her eyes and looked from him to me and back again. “What’s going on here?”
“Nothing,” Chance said.
Terrible, guilty-sounding answer.
“Cupcake run,” I said, grabbing the container from the counter and holding it out to her, hoping sugar would distract her from her flustered father.
She glanced at the container and shook her head. “I’m in salt mode.” As she headed toward the pantry, she eyed us suspiciously again. “So you’re both just hanging out in the kitchen, having a midnight snack?”
“I was lying there thinking about the cupcakes,” Chance said, finally seeming to snap into nonguilty mode. “Rowan was here when I came down.”
She hadn’t noticed the Valentine gifts yet. I debated using them as a distraction now. It would ruin the surprise for the morning but offer an explanation for why we were in the kitchen.
“How much studying do you have left?” Chance asked.
I put the cupcakes back in their corner on the counter, then washed my hands, striving for nonchalance and normalcy. Just finishing up my midnight snack. Not kissing your dad at all.
“Oh, just a review of the Civil War,” she answered.
My brows shot up.
“Is that all?” Chance asked dryly.
“A review, Dad. I’ve read the chapters.”
“Need someone to quiz you?” I offered as I turned around from the sink.
Sam seemed to consider it briefly, then said, “I’m almost done, but thanks for offering.”
“If you ever want help, especially with science”—I raised my hand—“I’m your girl. I miss teaching.”
“Biology is my favorite class,” Sam said.
Chance looked surprised.
“What?” Sam asked. “You know I like science the best.”
“It’s just that you haven’t talked much about your classes. I’m glad to hear you like biology. Cells and mitochondria and DNA, right? Good stuff.”
Sam grinned. “You’ve told me before you didn’t like any science classes.”
Chance flicked a nervous glance my way, and I laughed.
“Really?” I asked.
“I was better at writing and reading,” he said, shrugging. “I’m a word guy.”
“Just a word guy living with two STEM girls,” I said, smiling at Sam.
“This is my lot in life,” he joked. “I’m just happy my daughter’s studying.”
“It’s not like I have a social life,” Sam said matter-of-factly. She pulled a bag of tortilla chips out, then took the hummus container from the fridge. “Might as well get back to it so I can sleep.”
“Sleep sounds good. Gonna try that myself.” Chance kissed the top of Sam’s head quickly, then headed out of the kitchen. “Night, STEM girls.”
“Night,” we said at the same time.
“Good luck,” I told Sam.
“Thanks. Night, Rowan,” she said, then carried her snacks to the stairs, closed the door, and thundered back down, not noticing her presents.
Then I was back where I started, alone in the kitchen. Except this time, my insides were still cooling down from Chance’s kisses.
I couldn’t help noticing how fast he’d run off, even before his daughter had gone back downstairs. It was as if he didn’t want to be caught alone with me again.