“Right, sorry. Average .” I catch her flailing hand, linking our fingers, giving her a reassuring squeeze. “What’s on your mind, Rosie? Let’s talk it out.”
Heat creeps up her neck like a vine, but she holds my gaze. “I think you’re really handsome, and sometimes—especially when I’m in a bikini—I struggle being comfortable in my body. I don’t have a single ab, and you’ve somehow got eight of them. Plus, this…” She dips her fingertip into the dip of muscles in my stomach, tracing the line of my left hip, the muscle that disappears beneath my shorts, and she sighs. “This ridiculous V . Who invented this? Do you know what this does to a woman?” She smiles. Soft. Honest. Vulnerable. “I guess, next to you, I’m feeling a bit average.”
“If I hear that word come out of your mouth one more time, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”
Mossy eyes blink up at me, wide and full of surprise. She opens her mouth like she might argue it, say that fucking word one more time. Before she can, I grip her hips, jerk her forward, until she’s flat on her back, and I’m living out a vision I’ve been dreaming of since I met her—her, beneath me, lips parted, chest heaving, heat staining every exposed inch of skin.
“The only thing average about you, Rosie, is your height.” The words are thick with gravel, a too-generous heaping of pent-up lust for a woman who’s been occupying my brain for the last few weeks. My knees bracket her in, one hand doing a slow glide up her luscious side, over immaculately flushed skin, sunshine and daisies, more skin, and so, so much warmth. “And all the things you see as imperfections are where somebody else, like me, finds beauty.” My thumb runs over the indent in her chin, the teensiest piece of perfection I’ve ever seen. “Like this dimple. It’s so perfect, I’ve found myself wanting to kiss it at least five times today. And these hips…” My hands shake as my fingers rain down on her sides, grazing her waist, skimming the edge of her bathing suit bottoms where they wrap around the wide flair of her full hips. Every touch is a hunger barely restrained, a starvation I haven’t felt before. “Jesus, I wanna grab them. Burn my fingertips right into them. So much, it’s painful to stop myself from doing so.”
The second her hands come up, a frantic touch that scrapes through the hair lining my jaw, that restraint snaps, a thread that was barely hanging on. I drop my hips to hers, and pressure explodes low in my stomach as she presses into me, a guttural, inhuman sound rumbling in my chest when she moans, like she’s as starved as I am. Smooth legs come around my waist, and my hands grab onto their only lifeline, fingertips dipping below her bottoms, sinking into her plush ass as I hold her tight to me, like I’m afraid she might get away.
I won’t let her.
“And these fucking legs,” I breathe out, running my hands over them, a rough slide that has me pressing closer as Rosie throws her head back, exposing her long neck. My lips fall to the flushed skin there, tasting her, and fuck , it’s not fucking enough. My mouth slides up the columns of her throat, nipping at her chin, until I finally get to kiss that dimple right there. “Not sure where you get off thinking they don’t go straight to heaven. I sure as hell don’t see anything but heaven when I look at you.”
“Adam,” she whimpers, writhing below me, fingers plowing through my hair.
“Not fucking average at all.” I drag my nose along her cheekbone, settling my mouth above hers. “I never wanna hear that word again. Got it?”
She nods, a frantic jerk of her head, wide eyes ready to give up any semblance of control. “Got it.”
“Good girl.”
I run my hand up her throat, fingers itching to lock it in place, keep her right there. Instead, I grip her jaw, giving her a slightly less demanding version of me, gentle. As gentle as I can be right now with her below me, running that tongue across her pink lips, getting ready.
“Gotta tell ya, trouble, this isn’t exactly what I had planned to earn that first kiss.” I trap her lower lip beneath my thumb, my gaze tracking its drag across a mouth I can’t wait to claim. “I’m gonna steal it anyway.”
Our gazes collide, and through all the manic hunger, something inside me softens at the hope swimming in her eyes, the trust.
Her lips part, I dip my head, and a tiny voice calls out through the video monitor sitting five feet to my right.
“Mamaaa !”
CHAPTER 13
2-FOR-1 SPECIAL
ADAM
I can’t remember a time anyone has looked at me the way Rosie does.
Courtney did, once upon a time, but it’s almost impossible to look back on our early years together and imagine that it was ever real, even back when we were seventeen and she looked at me like I hung the stars.
But with Rosie…I’m not the stars, lighting bits of her sky. I’m the rising sun on the clearest day, touching every inch of her world, lighting the bleakest, darkest parts where she hasn’t seen light in far too long. She looks at me like I’m everything good and bright. She looks at me like she’s…grateful. Grateful to be here with me. Grateful for the patience, for the understanding, for every kindness and every smile.
It’s nearly painful how heavy the weight of her stare is.
Because I know, even on our best days, the way Courtney used to look at me could never compare, and it makes me feel a little…empty. It feels like wasted years and dashed dreams. Like bitter winters that outstayed their welcome, a spring that took far too long to come.
It’s painful because for everything Rosie’s given me, no matter how small or how hesitantly, I haven’t done her the same. She gets the pieces that come easily, the ones that don’t hurt, and I keep all the others in my fist, grasping them tight against my chest, afraid of what she’ll do with them.
And that’s the thing. When I met Courtney, I had everything I dreamed of. An incredible family who loved me endlessly, a promising career as a goalie in the NHL on the horizon. I was happy and carefree. Courtney had my bright spots, and they weren’t enough. I let her steal everything good and bright and happy, one tiny handful at a time. My confidence, my trust, my faith in happy endings.
I don’t think it’s wrong to make someone your whole world, but I know the one time I’ve done it, it was my greatest mistake.
I know now that Courtney wasn’t the world meant for me, but that doesn’t make it easier to consider starting a new one with someone else, someone who has the power to break you all over again. I want to jump in headfirst. Fuck, I tell myself I’m already doing it, that I’ve never fallen so fast, started dreaming of a future with someone I barely know. But the reality is like rope tied around my ankles, letting me shuffle down the road I want to go, but each small step burns into my skin, urging me to slow down, to just…wait. Just in case.
I survived the first time, but will I survive a second?
The look in Rosie’s eyes as she watches me splash around the pool with her son in my arms tells me there’s nothing to survive. That she won’t be the one to break me. The fissures in my chest whisper…but what if?
Connor wiggles in my grasp, reaching toward the steps. I know exactly where this is going; we’ve been doing it for the last forty minutes. I swim us to the edge and he scrambles up the steps. He rounds the patio on quick feet, stopping to take Bear’s face in his little hands. “Hi, big dog,” he says before pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Mama,” Connor coos, patting her knee. “Mama!”