I chuckle. “I’ll remember that for later.”
Rolling off me, she busses a kiss to my cheek and goes to the bathroom, and I use a tissue on the nightstand to clean up.
Hopping on one foot, she puts on her panties and tugs a tank top over her head. She lies next to me, her head resting on her hand, one leg thrown over mine. She’s on my left side, and I don’t need to say anything. If she would have done it on my right, my hip would have locked up and I would have needed to ask her to move. My injuries will always affect me, but until Devyn and I made love the first time, I hadn’t thought of how limited I would be in bed.
“Did I hurt you?” she asks, playing with the sparse hair on my chest.
“I think that’s supposed to be my line.”
“You didn’t.”
I exhale. “Good. You didn’t either.”
She copies me, blows out a breath, her eyes lit up with laughter. “Good.”
Chuckling, I say, “Keep it up, and I’m going to think you’re too good to be true.” I say it like I’m joking, but I couldn’t mean it more.
Her lips hovering over mine, she says, “When you love someone, you’ll do anything for them. You know that. I haven’t been married, or in a serious relationship for that matter, but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand it. I don’t feel inferior because your wife should be here instead of me. She’s not here, and that was her choice. Her loss is my gain, and I’m not going to feel second best knowing you tried for a baby in this bed.”
I bite back a string of expletives. “I should never have told you that.”
“Why? When you’re married, it’s what you do. Maybe if it would have worked, she wouldn’t have left.” She rubs her thumb over my cheek, nips at my lips with her teeth. I slick my fingers over her back, down her spine, and smile under her mouth as she shivers. Devyn’s so cool, so stoic under pressure, I never know how she’s feeling unless she deliberately shows me.
“Then I’m glad it didn’t.”
She lifts her head, searches my eyes in the city’s lights glowing through the windows. “Do you mean that?”
“I can’t compare you two, Devyn. I won’t. What I had with her is completely different, the life I had with her I could never duplicate with you even if I wanted to because you are two completely different women. We can’t live in the past, nor can we predict the future. Asking me if I prefer her over you is like me asking you if you would have preferred never to have met me. Maybe you would have met someone who isn’t injured, who shares your love of journalism, who would trek all over the world with you writing the next award-winning piece.”
“I would never share a by-line,” she whispers, teasing, but I’m not in the mood to be teased.
“You know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” she says, resting her cheek on my chest. “Will you ever move back here?”
“To the penthouse?” Like work, like the accident, I’ve pushed away what I would do with this place, and I never thought about my clothes hanging in the closet, the artwork she didn’t want, the gifts she didn’t bring with her. I let Renata clean out this place because I didn’t care what she took and what she left behind.
“No. To Cedar Hill.”
“Beau wants me to, says he’s tired of working alone. He wants me to go out to the site, decide what to do with it. When I go to the office tomorrow, he’ll keep me busy. I bet he’s organizing several meetings right now to take advantage of me being here. But I like living in Old Harbor, I like the peacefulness of it, the water and the isolation. My doctor said if I moved somewhere warmer my bones wouldn’t give me so much trouble, but I like it here.” I move my hand down to her ass, and I play with the edge of her panties.
“I want you to know Talia and I aren’t moving out of state. Before I fell in love with you, I said something about getting away from Stevie, but I won’t leave you.”
“I think you’d have a tough time with your sister now,” I say, but I’m relieved I don’t have to ask her to stay. I would never—if she thought moving to someplace like New York to get away from Stevie was what she had to do, I would never ask her to sacrifice her safety for me. I need to start believing what she tells me. It’s my job to keep her and Talia safe if she’s going to stay in Minnesota.
She lifts her head. “You’re right. Before we left Beau’s, I told her to be careful. I didn’t know much about him before, when I lived here, I mean. I knew he was a partier, and I doubt that changed while we lived in Portland. I want her to live her life as much as she can on her own, make her own choices, feel in control because when she was on Sweet, she had zero control over her own body, over her own life. I want her to have that back. I wanted to tell her to get to know him first, but I couldn’t say that to her face, not when I’m here with you now barely a week to the day since we met.”
“I told him earlier this afternoon when he called to tell me you were in Cedar Hill. He was already expressing an interest, and I thought it fair he knows because you’re right. He still plays hard, and I wanted him to understand what he was getting into if he pursued her. I hope you’re not mad at me for it.”
“No.” She kisses my lips. “It makes me feel better about the way he was flirting with her today. Thank you.”
I roll her onto her back, nudge her thighs open, and pushing aside the material of her panties, find her slit. “Make love to me, Devyn,” I say before crushing my mouth to hers and pushing my fingers inside her.
She tangles her fingers in my hair. “I always have been.”