My heart ached. There was something long-term in his words that I was sure he didn’t even realize. But from the bottom of my heart, I appreciated it anyway. I scrunched up my nose. “You’re kind of the best. You know that?”
“Nah, I’m not. Maybe to you and Tess, but that’s about it.”
“I’ll take it.” Putting my seatbelt on, I frowned. “By the way, I’m sorry about my Aunt Lynn asking you about – ”
“Don’t,” Lukas said. “I’m not going to hold it against someone who doesn’t know that about me. And I’m sure it was a pretty reasonable thing to ask considering I hit it off with Hank.”
“Hank?”
Lukas turned to me with a grin bit between his lips. “He asked me to call him that. Cracked me the hell up.”
I burst out laughing myself. “‘Hank’ though? Why?”
“He said it’s manly.”
“Oh God. That’s fucking adorable,” I groaned as we pulled out of the driveway. I waited for us to get back onto the road before taking Lukas’s hand but he read my mind and took mine.
And for the next ten minutes of the ride, we were quiet, our hands doing all the talking as he squeezed it or stroked my thigh. I cursed the car for being so spacious because all I wanted was to sidle up to him.
“Sleepy?” Lukas asked as I hugged his arm against my chest.
“Kind of.”
“You can go to sleep. You don’t have to keep me company,” he grinned out at the road.
Yes. I took his permission and I ran with it but as I got sleepy against the warmth and hardness of his arm, my mind wandered. The Bailey’s Aunt Lynn had poured into my coffee felt like nothing before but now it was buzzing in my head, getting my tongue a little loose. I wanted to ask something, to confirm a suspicion I had at the diner. And though I held it in for awhile, it eventually came out.
“Is the reason you don’t want kids because you’re scared to repeat… what happened?” I asked quietly, breaking the peaceful silence we’d had running for almost twenty minutes now. Even in my sleepy tipsiness, I expected Lukas to get rigid, at least a little angry with me for asking. But he didn’t so much as flinch and when he answered his tone was calm and even.
“No. I know I’d be a great father.”
“Then why don’t you want kids?”
He was quiet for a second, the only sound coming from the low hum of our tires on the road.
“Because I’d feel guilty. Wyatt wouldn’t forgive me,” he said, his voice tight. “He’d hate me for raising another kid right when I failed him so fucking badly.”
I squeezed his arm tight against my chest because his words crushed me. “Lukas,” I whispered.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sleepy and tipsy so I hope this comes out right but that’s just… not true. It’s not true at all, Lukas. Wyatt knew that everything you did was for him. He knew the life you gave him was worlds better than what your parents could’ve ever provided. You were a kid yourself back then, and you still did amazingly,” I whispered, staring out at the dark road, in sheer awe of Lukas as I thought about it again. “You were twenty years old and raising children. You were only twenty-five when you moved them to a new home for a better life. And you know Wyatt appreciated everything you sacrificed for him and Tess. He was only
sixteen and he knew you could recognize that you were barely that much older than him when you sued for custody.” I didn’t look up at Lukas, but I moved my cheek to kiss his arm. A tear fell from the corner of my eye onto his sleeve. I wiped at it before turning my eyes back to the road. “Wherever Wyatt is now, he’s at peace. And from your stories, from the way you described him I know that he can’t be anything but happy when he thinks about you. You gave him everything you had and he made sure to let you know that. He would never be mad at you for anything. I know it.”
I wasn’t sure why I was so confident but I was, and I felt adamant about letting Lukas know before I fell asleep and lost my words. For awhile, he said nothing. The hum of the tires continued to put me to sleep. But just before I drifted off, I felt him press his lips against the top of my head, giving me a kiss before whispering three words. Not the ones I ached for, but they were still so good.
“Thank you, baby.”
Simple but sweet, and the perfect lullaby to send me drifting off into slumber.
27
LIA
In the morning, I woke up to the sound of bumping and thumping in the hallway. Sitting up in bed, I noticed the other side empty and my shower running in the bathroom. With a little smile, I got up and snuck in, peeling the shower curtain back a bit so I could start my morning with easily the best view I could think of.
“Lord,” I whispered as I gazed at the water trickling down the slanted cuts of muscle in Lukas’s back. I got a good, hard look at his ass before he turned with his good, hard dick in his palm, his fingers wrapped around his shaft and jerking.