Safe. He had said he would always keep her and her daughter safe.
Which was why, at long last, in those fragile minutes between night and day, believing in him as she’d never let herself believe anyone else, she began to speak.
“I never knew my father. Just the men who came in and out of my mother’s life.”
She could tell by the way his muscles tightened slightly against hers that he had just come fully awake. Maybe she should have been frightened. Maybe this was the one risk she shouldn’t take—to trust him with a story that only she knew, that could die with her and her alone.
But somewhere along the way, she’d realized she could live with taking that risk. What she couldn’t live without was love.
“Some were nice. Some were scary. Some wanted things from me that I didn’t want to give.” His hand tightened over her chest and she tried to calm him by saying, “I was small. And fast. And I knew how to stay hidden when I had to. I also knew I needed to get out before I was ever found.”
Her name was on his lips. She knew it would be so easy to turn into him, to let him kiss away her ugly memories. And she would. But not yet.
Not until she’d bared herself to him. Fully. Completely.
And not until she’d risked everything for him so that he could do the same for her.
“His name was Bryan. I thought I’d seen it all, thought I was so smart when it came to picking a boyfriend, a man to finally give my virginity to. He had a good job working with computers. He wasn’t creepy or scary. He was nice. He didn’t treat me like I was stupid, or worthless because of where I came from.” She sighed, remembering how naïve she’d been. “I didn’t get pregnant on purpose. I don’t know what happened. Maybe the condom broke. But when I went to tell him, I knew I couldn’t do it. Not because I didn’t want to trap him into having to stay with me.” She swallowed hard. “I didn’t tell him because I couldn’t trap myself.”
She didn’t realize she was crying until she tasted the tears on her cheek, nor did she realize Graham had turned her in his arms so that he could kiss them away, one by one.
“There had to be more. I knew there was more.”
The sunlight had come up just enough in the room by then that when she lifted her eyes to his, he would see everything she felt for him. And she wanted him to.
“I love you. And I’m not saying that to trap you into staying with me for any longer than you want to.”
Now, he was the one brushing the hair back from her forehead as he said, “Marry me.”
She sucked in a shaky breath, knowing the only reason she could keep the slightest bit steady was because he was holding her. There was nothing she wanted more in the world than to belong to this man.
Nothing, except for him to trust her with his pain, so that she could help him the way he’d helped her a thousand times over.
“Yes,” had to come first, because she couldn’t bear to keep him guessing if she wanted to share his forever. There was nothing she wanted more.
The kiss they shared after she accepted his proposal was sweet, and could so easily have turned into something even sweeter, but she hadn’t been afraid to come to San Francisco with five hundred dollars in her pocket and a baby growing inside of her...and she wouldn’t be afraid now.
“I don’t want your money.”
“I know.” And he did, knew that he could lose every last one of his billion dollars and she would remain at his side without so much as blinking an eye.
“I don’t even want you to be less domineering or bossy,” she said with a little smile that had his mouth curving up too as he stared down at her. “All I’ve ever wanted is a family.”
“I want to be Leah’s father. Legally.”
She reached up and touched his face, the sunlight starting to stream over them now like a spotlight, knowing he’d understood her perfectly, but had deliberately tried to deflect her request.
“We’re both yours. Always. I want you to be my husband and Leah’s father.” He was closing the distance to kiss her again when she said, “But we also want a grandmother. A grandfather. We want uncles. And aunts.”
He stilled above her, his eyes shuttering, but she was young and strong.
And not the least bit afraid of a fight with the powerful man levered above her.
“It was my job to protect my sister.” Each word of the emotional confession she hoped he’d finally feel safe making with her was raw. And filled with unbearable pain. “Leanora was the baby of the family. She used to tell me I was her hero, and I believed she was right, that I was invincible, that there was nothing that could touch me. Or her.” He was looking right at Jo but she knew it wasn’t her he was seeing. “I was busy screwing some woman whose name I can’t even remember when the call came in. I didn’t get it until the next morning, didn’t know that they’d found her with some punk, both of them overdosed. His heart was still beating. But hers—”
This time she was the one wiping away his tears, putting her arms around him, soothing him with words that meant nothing, and everything, all at once.
She was surprised when his hand moved to her stomach. “She was pregnant. I was the only one in my family that she’d told. I told her I thought it was a good idea that they weren’t going to get married. I told her I would take care of her. I read every book on pregnancy, on being a single parent. I promised her I’d be there for her when she told the rest of our family. I thought she knew we loved her, and that she didn’t need to keep her pregnancy a secret. I thought I was still her hero, the one she could depend on for anything.”
This time, when his eyes met Jo’s he saw the woman he loved with everything he had, with every last piece of his heart.
“She never told me about the drugs. And I never guessed. Because I didn’t want to guess, I didn’t want to see it. I should have seen it.”
Jo wasn’t going to pretend she didn’t know the story—at least up until the part where it turned out his sister had been pregnant—or that she hadn’t read about it on the Internet once she’d realized who he was.
But all this time she’d thought it was grief that had hardened him. Finally, she realized it wasn’t just grief that tore him apart every hour of every day.
It was blame. For himself.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
His head was on her chest and she was holding him just as steadily as he’d held her moments before.