She looked a little embarrassed. “I don’t know what else to say. I don’t know how to talk to you anymore.”
“Well, for starters, you can meet my eye when we speak. Since I’ve been here, I can count the number of times you have made eye contact with me.”
Her blue eyes shot up to meet mine. “There, happy?”
Their brilliance had me faltering. In the afternoon light, her blue-gray eyes seemed bluer than gray. The sunshine danced in her irises, showcasing their true beauty.
I cleared my throat. “Yeah.”
I fiddled with the napkin on my plate.
“So, tell me about you, Dan. I haven’t seen you in years, and I am sure there is lots I missed out on. Hell, you have a whole human now,” I tried to make a joke, but she just offered me a tight-lipped smile. Okay, I needed to steer this conversation in a different direction. “Do you still have that plan to go backpacking around Europe?”
She licked her lips. “I would love to but right now is not the best time for me to be traveling, I have a lot of responsibilities here at the ranch, and Axel still needs me. It would be selfish of me to take the trip.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” I answered. “If it’s something that feeds your soul it would never be selfish. In fact, it would be something that would benefit those around you.”
She shook her head. “Maybe one day but just not in the near future. What about you? You always wanted to leave Riverroad. Was it all you dreamed of and more?”
I shrugged. “For a time, it had been.” Lies. That’s what it had been just one big lie. I had lived and pretended to enjoy it because I was too stubborn to face my truth.
Her eyebrows scrunched together. “What do you mean?”
“Sometimes home is best, you know? LA served its purpose for me.” Opening my eyes and pointing me to the one place I should have been all along—with you.
“And what purpose was that?”
I didn’t know how to answer her without spilling out my guts about everything that had gone on in that wretched place. I wasn’t ready to talk about Tati and sure as hell didn’t want to dampen our conversation. I knew eventually I would have to talk about Tatiana but for now I would table that issue.
“Is Paris still on the bucket list?” Hopefully, she would allow for my deflection. She did.
“It is. Hopefully one day, maybe when Axel is a little older and I am able to leave him behind for long periods of time.”
There was sadness in the way she said it. I wanted to ask her more but Maddison and Marcus decided it was the perfect time to make their entrance.
“Hello, my lovely employees,” Maddison said in a sing-song voice, “guess who is the size of a planet and kicking their mother left, right, and center.”
“Come now, baby, just a few more weeks.” Marcus came up behind her and kissed her temple. “Then you can pop the sucker out.”
“My vagina is going to stretch and get flabby, isn’t it?” Maddison looked up at her husband with a pouty face. “You won’t want to hit this ass anymore.”
Marcus smirked. “Never happen, baby. I am still going to be hitting that ass in sixty years. You best believe that.”
“You better be,” Maddison whined.
Danny and I blinked at each other before we burst out laughing at the married couple.
I would be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me that also ached for what they had. I had been close but, like most things in my life, I was close but I was never close enough.