Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
“I’m in.”
Thank goodness. My breath escaped my lungs in one big whoosh, and my shoulders relaxed.
Despite the mounting tension between us, that was the only answer I wanted.
The answer Anna deserved. As much as I tried to be enough, she needed her dad, especially now that he knew about her.
It was one thing when he was in the dark, but now that he’d seen her, met her, it would be much harder to hide the truth as she grew.
“Okay.” It wasn’t much, but it was all I had at the moment.
Now that we'd cleared that up, I had no idea what to say to Jace.
So many questions flashed through my mind—How is this going to work?
What about your schedule? Are you taking your recovery seriously?
How will Anna fit into your life in the public eye?
—but no words left my lips. Instead, I fidgeted on the couch, bringing a throw pillow into my lap and playing with the tassels.
Jace’s eyes met mine before I ducked my head down.
His eyes were too knowing—saw too much. How did people do this?
Stand across from someone you barely knew but wanted down to your bones?
Okay, so Jace was still attractive, but that didn’t matter.
Everything had changed. I was no longer the grieving girl trying to find a moment of normalcy; he was no longer the struggling ball player looking for someone to share his bed for the night.
No matter what happened in the past, Anna had to be our priority now.
At least, that was what my head demanded.
Every other part of me screamed to go to Jace, to erase the limited space between us, to capture his lips with mine and see if that one night between us had been a fluke.
I mean, it had to be, right? I’d most likely built it up in my mind, only seeming so perfect because I had little experience to compare it to.
Even with that reminder, my body vibrated with need; my fingers ached to reach out and touch him.
Fucking Jace Lyons. When he wasn’t around, my libido was a non-starter, in hibernation after having Anna.
But the moment his eyes met mine, it took everything in me not to beg for one more night.
Jumping up from the couch, I stepped behind it, needing a barrier between us. “Anna’s going to be down for a little bit more. If you need to go—”
Please go. Save me from this awkwardness and my desperation for the last man I should want. Co-parents. We needed to be co-parents. If Jace was going to be a part of Anna’s life, I needed to get used to seeing him in that role only.
“No,” Jace answered. “It’s my one day off, and we’re flying out to Phoenix in the morning. Do you mind if I just…” His voice trailed off as his eyes darted to the bedroom door, picturing Anna on the other side. “Can I stay for a bit? Hang out until she wakes up?”
“Y-yeah,” I said, moving into the kitchen. “You can stay if you’d like. I don’t know how long she’ll be, but if it gets too long, I’ll wake her up. Otherwise, she’s up all night, babbling in her crib.”
Jace stared at me, his expression giving me nothing.
What did he think about all this? He’d brushed off my offer of a paternity test, but what if he changed his mind?
There wasn’t anyone else who could be her father, but he didn’t know that, not for sure.
All he had was my word, and who knew how much weight that carried?
“Are you hungry?” I called out to Jace. No answer.
When I turned around to ask him again, we collided, and my hands landed on his chest. The deep, woodsy scent of his aftershave overwhelmed me.
The last time we had been this close, he’d been tracing his lips over my collarbone, splayed out on his sheets.
God, that man could kiss. Just the memory was enough to overwhelm me.
As Jace’s hands found my hips, his tongue dipped out, wetting his lower lip, and my eyes traced the movement.
But just as fast as we collided, we broke apart, Jace planting himself against the far wall of the kitchen. My chest heaved as if I’d just run ten miles. Before I could say anything, Jace shook his head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I-It’s fine,” I stammered. “It’s a small house.”
“I like it,” Jace said, nodding up at the moulding around the window.
It was just over the sink, and my favorite view from the apartment.
It wasn’t much, just a small patch of grass that separated us from the buildings on the opposite street, but in the spring, brightly colored tulips burst out from the group, making it a sea of pastel blooms. Jace stepped closer to me.
“Love the details in places like this, especially if the owners preserve them right. Gives you a sense of how much hard work people used to pour into their homes.”
“When my mom first bought this place, it used to freak me out, especially in the bedroom. There are these little cherubs carved into some of the moulding.” I shuddered.
“You have a point there,” Jace chuckled for a moment before his face fell. “Before, you mentioned living in the city. When did you move back?”
“A while ago.” As much as I wanted to tell him more, my mouth refused to budge. Jace might be a part of my life now, but that didn’t entitle him to my past or my secrets. “What about you?” I asked. “Are you still over at the same house?”
“Technically,” Jace answered, moving away from me to lean against the counter.
As I pulled out stuff to make a chicken stir-fry, he shifted to accommodate me, even taking the carrots to slice while I worked on prepping the chicken.
After I finished, I ran the green beans under hot water, and he worked with a steady rhythm, his knife thumping against the cutting board in the same pattern as my pounding heart.
“To be honest, I haven’t been staying there.
Moved into temporary housing when I came back to the city. ”
I arched my brow. “Why?”
“Lots of reasons,” Jace said, keeping his eyes on the knife.
“It’s been closed up for almost two years now, so it’s going to need some work to get it back into shape, and if I have to—” He snapped his mouth shut with a slight shake of his head.
“The team hooked me up with some housing right next to the stadium. Got a month to month lease.”
Temporary.
I chewed on my lower lip, keeping my eyes on the cutting board. “Jace, I hate to ask this, but your recovery…”
“Is a work in progress,” he sighed. “It’s always going to be a part of me, how I live my life. Baseball makes it hard to attend regular meetings, but I go when I can. But for me, it was never about the drugs. It was about tuning out the world.” Jace’s jaw tensed. “I, uh, I’m seeing a therapist.”
“You are?”
“There’s a lot to work through, but I’m taking it day by day.
” He turned to face me, his face tight with determination.
“I need you to know I’m not that guy anymore.
I’ve been clean for over fifteen months, and that was before…
” His eyes shifted to the bedroom behind us.
“Before I knew about Anna. I’m going do everything I can to not mess this up. ”
“I believe you.” I broke our stare, focusing instead on the green beans clutched in my hands. “Hopefully, this stir fry turns out okay. I found this new seasoning I’ve been wanting to try—”
“Why did you leave?”
The green beans fell into the sink at Jace’s words. Heat rushed through my cheeks as I struggled to regain my composure. “Wh-what do you mean?”
Jace placed the knife on the block and then stepped closer to me. When our eyes met, he reached out and took my hand. My fingers shook against his sure ones, unable to move away even if I wanted to. “Why did you leave without saying goodbye, Kinsley? Did I do something?”
“No.” I shook my head. “It wasn’t anything you did. That night…” I inhaled slowly, trying to find the right words to express what it had meant to me. “It was perfect. You were perfect. And that scared me.”
“Why?”
I chewed on my lower lip. How could I get these words out without sounding like I’d lost my mind?
After my mom died, I’d been so lost, so unsure of my choices over the past decade.
Sure, I was surviving, but that was all I’d been doing.
Going through each day, waiting to see if it was the one that changed the tide.
But being with Jace? He’d been the push I needed for so long, making me want to do more than just exist.
“You scared me.” Jace’s face paled, and he backed away, but I placed my hand on his chest to stop him.
“Not physically. I-I’ve never been good at dealing with other people.
And dating…it’s never been my thing. I was okay with that.
But then I met you…” Tears stung my eyes, so I slammed them shut, hoping to force them away.
But as soon as one fell, Jace was there, brushing it away with his thumb. “You made me want more.”
“And that was bad thing?”
I swallowed, unable to answer him. It might have been.
Jace’s thumb kept gliding across my cheekbone in silent support. He didn’t push, didn’t ask me to explain. He simply stood there until I was ready to open my eyes. And when I gathered the courage, his blue eyes were waiting, filled with more understanding than I could have ever hoped for.
“You scared me too,” he whispered. “I was drowning back then, Kins, and you were the breath of air I needed.”
The simple admission was enough to remove any rational thoughts from my mind.
I leaned forward and pressed my lips to Jace’s, claiming the kiss I’d dreamed about for years.
It was slow, timid, almost as if this were our very first kiss.
In a way, maybe it was. Not our beginning, but the beginning of something new. Something a lot less temporary.
Jace’s hands found my hips, dragging me closer to him.
My hands fumbled, needing his skin on mine as fast as possible.
An ache crashed between my legs, craving Jace more than anything else in this world.
In the past two years, sex had been a distant memory.
With my life revolving around Anna, it wasn’t as if I spent any time dating, and even if I could, I didn’t want to.
Not when Jace was out there, still owning the shards of my broken and dusty heart.
Just as I started to pull off Jace’s shirt, a cry came out from my bedroom. Shit. We bounced apart, ending up on opposite sides of the kitchen again. What the hell was that? Jace came here to get to know his daughter, and I mauled him the moment we were alone?
Jace opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off before he could.
“We shouldn’t have done that.” I moved my hands behind me, grabbing the counter to stop from reaching out for him. “This is already complicated enough. We need to focus on Anna right now.”
Jace’s bright eyes found mine, searching their depths for any hint of a lie.
If he looked close enough, he’d sure as hell find one.
Being kissed by Jace altered everything, bringing me back to life for the second time, reminding me of how it felt to be wanted—needed—to be more than someone’s overworked mother.
“Is that what you want?” Jace asked.
“Yes.” No. But it was the only choice. If Jace and I fell into bed again, who knew what the fallout might be? Breaking my heart would be one thing, but I wouldn’t risk Anna’s, not before she even had time to know her father.
Jace nodded, moving toward the bedroom, but before he passed me, he paused, kissing my temple. “You’re right.” What? As Jace pulled away, his fingers brushed mine. “Doesn’t mean I agree. We’ll keep the focus on Anna for right now, but that won’t be the last time I kiss you Kinsley.”
With that, Jace walked toward my bedroom, greeting Anna as she got up from her nap.
When he brought her out moments later, I showed him how to check her diaper and her favorite toys.
Then, we cleaned up dinner, and he sat on the floor with her for hours, not complaining once as she showed him every piece of plastic food in her toy box.
From my spot on the couch, I kept quiet, content to watch as they spent time together.
But every couple of minutes, my fingers drifted to my lips, retracing them and wishing it was Jace’s lips instead.
Platonic. Keep things platonic, Kins. But every time his gaze met mine, one thought kept repeating back to me.
There was no way that was our last kiss.