Page 99 of Mile High Ex's Dad
“What should I say instead?”
She doesn’t answer.
Because there is no softer version of the truth I just gave her. Not one that would mean the same thing.
I move a strand of hair back from her face. “You can be angry with me. Suspicious of me. You can refuse every question I ask. But you are not doing this alone if I can stop it.”
That gets through to her. I see it in the way her mouth parts, then closes again.
Not because she’s convinced. Because some part of her wants to be.
And I understand that too well.
After a moment she says quietly, “You don’t even know what you’re offering.”
“Yes,” I say. “I do.”
Her gaze drops briefly to my hand over her belly, then comes back to my face. “You really don’t care?” she asks.
About the father.
About the uncertainty.
About the mess.
“No,” I say.
That’s not fully true, perhaps. I care very much, just not in the way she fears.
I lean in and kiss her forehead, then her mouth, once and slow.
“What I care about,” I say against her lips, “is you.”
And that, unlike everything else between us, is becoming very hard to deny.
14
SIENNA
Seven Months Ago
We sitacross from each other in the private cabin with champagne in our hands and too much awareness in the air between us.
The flight has evened out. The worst of the turbulence is gone. The low hum of the plane wraps around the room, soft and steady, and the lights are turned down enough that everything feels unreal. Expensive. Private. Removed from the rest of the world.
He looks completely at ease here. One ankle crossed over the other, jacket off now, shirt open at the throat, one big hand loose around the stem of his glass. He watches me over the rim of it with that same calm, dangerous attention that has had my nerves in knots for the whole flight.
I’m trying not to stare at his mouth.
I’m failing.
“Don’t you want to go back to your seat?” I ask, and the words come out lighter than I feel. A little cheeky. A little reckless. “Or did you just bully your way in here for the atmosphere?”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “I did pay for this.”
I laugh.
That’s the problem, really. He keeps making me laugh when I should be more careful.
