Hayden had a person to go back to.
I’d had no one.
He’d died. I’d lived.
It should have been the other way around. But I still wanted Iris.
“You deserve to be happy.”
I shrugged. Maybe logically, I knew that. Maybe logically, I wanted that. But also mixed in with that logic was the fact that I knew if Hayden hadn’t thrown himself in front of that fucking IED then I would have died, and he would have lived.
Maybe he would have had the bum back I’d spent a long fucking time in physical therapy working through, but he would have still been alive.
And even having all of that running through my brain, knowing that the better man didn’t live, I also knew that I wasn’t going to be able to walk away from Iris. She was . . . special. Which, I got, sounded cliché and sappy and so damned stupid for just knowing her for three days.
But I’d seen the Christmas explosion.
I’d seen the passion for her career.
I’d felt the way she’d curled into me, smelled the scent of her shampoo when she fell asleep on my chest, had my heart squeeze and expand and constrict with hope and fear when she trusted me enough to fall asleep.
Because she felt it, too.
One conversation, one kiss, and there seemed to be an invisible connection between the two of us.
I glanced up and watched her again, smiling at her gestures, wanting to know what she was saying to Brooke, even though it was probably more of her mooning over the fictional Kace-based hero, and so I probably didn’t want to know after all.
As though she felt me staring, her eyes came up and she smiled.
At me.
Broken me. Unworthy me.
And I knew that even though I wasn’t nearly what she deserved, I also didn’t possess the strength to let her go.
I worked the next night. Iris came in to say a quick, “Hi,” and brought dinner, which we ate together at her stool, her sitting atop it, me crowding into her, taking the chance to be close, to smell her, to soak up her smiles.
But all too soon we finished eating and she had to head home, since she had an early morning at her kitchen the next day.
I nodded at Kace, told him I’d be back in fifteen, and because everything was quiet, took the opportunity to walk Iris home.
“What are you baking tomorrow?” I asked, lacing our fingers together, stomach pleasantly full of the chicken pot pie she’d brought me for dinner.
It was a hell of a lot better than the wings and fries I normally inhaled while on shift, mainly because I wasn’t choking down raw celery in an attempt to be healthy.
Buttery crust, well-cooked veg, juicy and tender chicken.
Yeah, it wasn’t hard eating Iris’s food.
She leaned her head on my arm as we walked, and I realized her pause in answering came from her doing some mental math. “Two hundred and thirty-seven pies. All mini-sized—eighty apple with my special, secret recipe sugar-dusted lattice tops, one-hundred chocolate custard, all decorated with silver and gold for a corporate New Year’s party, along with an additional fifty mini-cheesecakes topped with mixed berry compote for the non-chocolate lovers, three pumpkin, three cherry, and one pecan.” A beat. “Not going to ask?”
I glanced down at her, smiling. “I was checking your math.”
“Hmph,” she said, then lifted her head from my shoulder so she could reach into her purse and pull out her keys. “The last seven are for you.” A shrug. “Well, for you, Kace, and Brooke.”
My eyes narrowed at the thought of Kace getting her pies.
And yes, I knew I was feeling possessive, knew it was ridiculous, but she already had the fictional Kace to drool over. Why did the asshole need her pies, too? Brooke, I got. She was sweet, deserved something sweet in return.
Iris smacked me lightly. “So scowly,” she murmured, rising on tiptoe to slant her lips across mine. “Because I mentioned Kace?”
I growled. “Don’t say his name.”
She grinned. “He’s married.”
I grunted.
“And madly in love with Brooke.”
Another grunt.
“Brooke, who promised me an advanced copy of her book if I traded her a pie.”
More grunting.
“Who also said that she wouldn’t share said pie with Kace.”
That made me smile.
Iris laughed. “God, Brent, I’m so happy I met you.”
I touched her cheek. “You can’t know how lucky I am that you left your purse behind.” She sucked in her breath and I bent my head, taking her lips and kissing her like I’d been desperate to do from the first moment she’d shown up in Bobby’s the previous week. Just a few nights and my soul had been indelibly marked.
That should have been terrifying.
And yet, I wasn’t feeling the least bit scared, especially when she leaned in and whispered in my ear, “FYI, you get the most pies, because you’re the best,” and then nipped my earlobe.
Goose bumps lifting on my skin.
My cock going hard.
But it wasn’t until she said, “They’re for you. And they’ll be the best ones, I promise,” that I felt my heart roll over in my chest.
“Darlin’,” I said roughly, wrapping my arms around her and tugging her close, knowing that even though only a few days had passed between us, even though I was definitely scowly, even though I was feeling possessive and didn’t want to share any part of her with the rest of the world, that I was all in.
But she wasn’t mine yet.
I wanted her to be mine, wanted her to have me in return, even if it was stupid, even if the trade wasn’t remotely fair . . . I wanted her in my life.
If my mom was still alive, she’d have told me off for jumping into something so quickly.
If my dad was still alive, he would have told me that my jumping into something with a good woman like my mom had been, like Iris was, would be the smartest thing I’d ever done.
Impossible to please them both, even if we were on opposite sides of the grave.
But I still knew which one was going to be smiling down at me, telling me I’d made the smart choice.
And that parent would be my dad.
Then begrudgingly, my mom.
Because . . . Iris and her pies. Iris and her sweet smile. Iris and her passion for Christmas, the hurt in her eyes when she told me of the betrayal of her ex, her friends.
Because Iris was special and deserved to be with someone who recognized exactly how wonderful that special was.
Which probably didn’t make sense.
Or maybe it was all the big feelings filling me to bursting that had my mind going in ever-increasing circles. Those circles moving in one direction, growing larger and larger to encompass everything wonderful about the woman in front of me—the need to watch out for her, to care for her as she deserved, to prove I was worthy to make myself at home inside her soul, to promise that I’d make a safe space inside my soul for her in return, that had me doing some blurting of my own. “Do you want to go on a date with me?”
She frowned, head tilting to the side. “I thought . . . I kind of thought that’s what we were already doing?”
It wasn’t no.
It also wasn’t yes.
“I want to take you out to a nice restaurant. To dress up and hold your hand over dinner, to tempt you into dessert, then to drive you home and kiss you on this doorstep,” I said, cupping both of her cheeks. “I want you to have a nice night, to do this right. Because I’m into you, darlin’, and I don’t think I want to let you go.”