“Here. In my arms?” He gives me a boyish, excited grin.
I can’t help an answering smile. “You’re a tease.”
“I mean it.” And he does look serious again.
What is he doing to my heart? This is happening way too fast.
Or maybe it’s all happening inside my mind.
“What are you doing for Christmas?” he asks.
“Staying here.”
“Not meeting your family?” He seems puzzled by that.
“Mom just moved to New York with her new husband. Dad is traveling around the world with his new girlfriend.”
He licks his lips. “Spend Christmas with me this year?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
And I mean it. I rub circles on his chest. “Will you tell me about yourself? About your brother?”
He sighs, settles better against the pillows, tightens his arms around me. “Matt and me, we grew up in a small place right outside Jefferson city, Wardsville. Ever heard of it?” When I shake my head, he smiles. “Yeah, few people have. Dad was a truck driver, and he liked living there. Later we moved to the outskirts of Saint Louis.”
“Was a truck driver?”
“Yeah. He passed last year. Stroke.”
I swallow hard. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Mom was pretty crushed, though. My brother relied a lot on her to watch over the kids, and now… I don’t know how he’s doing.”
“Why are you so concerned about him?”
“Matt lost his wife Emma to cancer recently. He has two young kids. And he needs me, he needs anything that can anchor him—and these fucking charges, the fucking rumors took that from him. He kept hanging up on me when I called and tried to talk to him. Now he won’t even pick up the damn phone.” He grunts. “Not sure why the hell I’m telling you all this. Haven’t said any of this to anyone.”
Exactly what I was thinking about myself. I wonder what it means.
I rub my face against his smooth, muscled chest. “Maybe you needed to get it off your chest.”
He grabs his phone from the nightstand, shows me a picture. There’s a dark-haired guy whose face looks a lot like Kaden’s, standing with a slight woman. They’re holding two babies, and there’s a tall guy with a fearsome Mohawk beside her.
“So that’s Matt?”
“And Emma, and the kids.”
“And the Mohawk guy?”
“Emma’s adopted brother, Zane Madden. He’s a tattoo artist. He did Matt’s tattoos, and mine.”
I smile at the pic. They all look so happy. So sad to know the girl is gone. “Your brother… how did he find out about the charges this girl filed against you?”
“He was visiting me. He’d finally decided to come see me, and the owner of the shop I’d been working at then, who’d just fired me over this, by the way, told him all about it.”
I wince in sympathy. So easy to repeat things you hear without knowing the full truth.
And here I am, trusting Kaden to tell me the truth. Am I that naïve?