He heaved a sigh. “I’m not sure what’s going on with her. She’s only seventeen but she’s moved out of her parents’ place and into a building that’s less than ideal. She was smart enough to keep the chain on when she opened the door, and she wasn’t entirely inclined to speak with me so she never took it off.”
My slow brain wasn’t that slow. “No one would let her rent an apartment. She’d never be able to sign the lease.”
He hummed, but the sound was distinctly disapproving. “I know.”
“She could have had someone co-sign on it, I guess? There are sublets or she might even have used a fake ID.”
“I’ll try to find out tomorrow when we meet before school. But, long answer short, I couldn’t tell you what she looks like because I didn’t see her.”
I bit my lip. “One of my charities is for single moms—”
He snorted. “You think I didn’t know that already?”
My head bowed. “Yeah, of course, you know about FAST.”
“Where there’s a paper trail, I know everything about you, Rachel Laker. I just don’t know the shit you’ve kept from me.”
“I’m shocked you don’t,” I choked out.
Although, maybe it’d be easier if he already knew and I wouldn’t have to say a word.
“I could have learned the truth. Where there's a will, you know? But I realized a long time ago that if I did, if whatever happened to you wasn’t something you shared with me, it’d break a link between us.”
My brow furrowed. “I don’t think anything could break the ties that bind us, Rex.”
“No?”
“No,” I said softly. “I’m sorry about Christmas Day.”
“Which part?” he demanded grimly. “The hospital or after?”
“Both, but this apology is for after. I shouldn’t have told you to get out. I just thought you’d…” I sucked in a breath. “I just thought you’d go upstairs or something. I didn’t think you’d—”
“Go to California?”
“Yeah.”
A short laugh escaped him. “It wasn’t intentional.”
“No?” A small kernel of hope unfurled inside me.
“No. I needed to ride, needed to clear my head, and then I just took off.”
Staring at the fancy lamp on the nightstand, I reached for the glass of water I’d placed there when I’d headed into the guest room and gulped down a couple of sips.
Wishing it were Zinfandel again, I murmured, “You want to get to know Wynter?”
“I do.”
“Why now? Because of Bear?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that fair to her?” I asked carefully. “Letting your grief push you into a relationship with her? One that didn’t exist before?”
“It probably isn’t fair, but now that I’m down here, I’m glad that I came. Her building’s a dump, Rachel. She can’t stay there. I can’t imagine what her family’s fucking thinking letting her live in a place like that.”
“Maybe they don’t know. Maybe she ran away.” Which, now that I thought about it, didn’t make this conversation any more palatable. Grimacing, I mumbled, “Scratch that. I’m glad you’re down there too.”
“Do you have feelings for her?”
The pain that question triggered stunned me. “Of course I do,” I snapped. “Jesus, Rex. I know I come across a certain way, but I’m not made of stone, dammit.”
“You never talk about her. Notwithstanding that argument with Scott.”
“Neither do you,” I hissed, aggravated by the disapproval in his voice.
“Because I can tell it upsets you.”
“Why wouldn’t it? I gave my daughter away for strangers to raise, Rex. Do you think that was easy for me to do?”
“I don’t know. We weren’t talking much back then.”
I gritted my teeth. “Bullshit.”
“Why is it bullshit? We weren’t talking, and all I knew was that you looked like you were dying. Not just physically, but whenever you held her.”
My fingers tightened to the point of pain around my glass as I thought back to that horrible, horrible time. “I felt like I was.”
“If you’d been able to, would you have had an abortion?”
“I’m going to hang up the phone now,” I whispered, unable to believe he’d asked me that.
“Don’t you dare, Rachel,” Rex boomed down the line. “I want answers. If we’re three thousand miles apart, maybe you’ll give them to me.”
“Are you just trying to hurt me? I know I hurt you on Christmas Day, but it wasn’t intentional.”
“It took me a round trip from one coast to the other to clear my head, Rachel. To know that we don’t work.” A choked gasp gusted from my lips, but before I could say a word, he continued, “But I want us to. You’re the only woman I can imagine loving. You’re the only woman I want to be with, and yet, if something doesn’t change, the next ten years are going to look exactly the same as the last, and I can’t handle that anymore.
“Something’s gotta give, or we have to step back and away from each other. Make the incision now and try to move on because I can’t do this anymore. I just fucking can’t, Rachel.”
I thought about the baby in my belly, thought about how the next ten years would be different from the last, and I knew this was as good a moment as any to tell him I was pregnant, but the words didn’t fall from my lips.
Rex was honorable.
He was a good man.
He might be an outlaw, might be the suspect in a hundred crimes that the cops couldn’t pin on him, but that didn’t take away from the truth of the matter—he was dutiful. When he loved, he loved hard. When he cared about someone, they were the luckiest person on the planet. His sacrifices, first with Wynter, then with Bear, proved that.
And he wasn’t wrong.
That was the worst thing of all.
Something did have to give. Something that, preferably, wasn’t our sanity or our hearts.
I couldn’t deal with more heartbreak or with the next decade looking like the last—even with a baby to shake things up.
“Answer me this, Rex.”
“Anything.”
“How long are you intending on staying down in California?”
He was quiet until he bit off, “That’s what you want to ask me?”
His disappointment was clear.
“For now.”
“For as long as she’ll talk to me. I want to build a relationship with her. That could mean I’ll be on the back of my hog tomorrow or it might mean six months from now—”
“Six months?” I cried.
“Whatever it takes,” he said softly.
My throat tightened because that sounded like a threat, but I managed to choke out, “I have a proposal.”
“What’s that?”
“Before I say a word, I want you to know that I love you, Rex.” Nothing. No response. “I’ve loved you since I was a teenager, and I know that I’ll love you until the day I die.”