Chapter Thirty
“No, you know what? I’m an attorney, precise language is one of my skills. I like you, yeah, but I also love you. I love you, I want you to stay, and I want you to be mine forever.”
There. That was better. The truth was out. And he couldn’t seem to stop himself from continuing.
“I owe you a massive apology. It wasn’t fair of me to try to change you. And it’s not even that I don’t like the way you look. I do. You’re so expressive and beautiful and creative. The way you put things together is so impressive. You amaze me all the time, walking around like a work of art. And you’ve made me look at things in a whole new way. Made me rethink a lot of assumptions, introduced me to a whole other world. You’re incredible.”
“Then why—”
“Because I’m an idiot.”
The giggle that came out of her was worth the self-deprecating remark and Vance knew he deserved a hell of a lot worse. He had been a stuffed-shirt, self-absorbed, craven piece of shit. A good daddy wasn’t any of those things, and Lil deserved the best of everything.
“Um, okay?” she said, laughing again. “But I don’t understand what that has to do with the way I dress.”
“It’s… Hey, Lil? Could I ask you for something? You can say no if you don’t want to.”
She raised one of her arched black brows. “You can try.”
“Can we sit and I’ll tell you? I’d love it if you’d curl up in my lap but I get that’s a lot to ask for right now. But this is like spill-my-guts time and holding you would make me braver.”
* * *
Had anyone ever given her a nicer compliment? She might not be the biggest or the strongest or the smartest, but if she could make a man like Vance feel braver that had to count for something.
So she offered him her hand and when he took it, led him over to a black velvet chaise against one of the walls of the nursery.
Vance collapsed like a pile of bricks, huffing out a huge sigh of relief and then patting his thigh. He didn’t have to ask her twice, she’d been missing cuddles from her daddy so badly over the past couple weeks she would’ve done almost anything to be back in his arms again.
She didn’t usually loop her arms around his neck, preferring to be more cradled than sitting up, but if she wanted to support Vance, let him know she was there for him, this seemed a better way to go. Didn’t hurt that she got to rub her nose in his beard and smell that fancy stuff he put in his straw-colored hair.
Part of her wanted to tell him he didn’t have to do this. She really did believe that he wanted her back and that he didn’t want her to change. Why would she want to hurt the person she loved?
Except that even though it had hurt so badly, she was glad she’d told Vance about Damien, shared that fragile part of herself. He’d held that vulnerable piece of her like it was so fucking precious and delicate like a dried rose, and he was so loyal and protective he’d never use it against her. And heaven help anyone else who tried to, because her papa bear would rip them to shreds.
If she could give him that same gift in return, she wanted to.
Vance sighed again, but it sounded more like resigned exhale to work up courage than relief. She tightened her grip around him, carded her fingers through his soft blond hair, hoping he knew she was there for anything he wanted or needed to say.
“I grew up in New Haven. Not one of the nice parts.”
She hadn’t spent much time there, but she knew aside from Yale’s campus, a lot of New Haven wasn’t nice. But…
“We didn’t have much money and I ran with a rough crowd. All I ever wanted as a kid was to look like the people wandering around the Yale campus. I mean, I hated them too, but mostly I was jealous. I wanted to be one of them so bad and I was so angry that I wouldn’t ever fit in with them. They had all this money, went to school and lived in these beautiful buildings, had such bright futures. It felt like they hadeverything.”
He shook his head and Lilith didn’t know what to say. She’d assumed he’d grown up the same way he lived now, with all his money and his nice things, his fancy job. Apparently she’d been very wrong.
“That’s why I know about plants, by the way. We couldn’t afford to get a lot of fresh produce at the grocery store if they even had any since the things in my neighborhood were more like convenience stores. So we had a garden out back of our triple decker. Tomatoes, pole beans, eggplant, radishes. Stuff that didn’t take up a lot of space and was denser than leafy greens for the calories. I helped my mom.”
That tracked. She loved that Vance had a vegetable garden in his backyard and she hadn’t given a thought as to why. Lots of people did.
“I was kind of a hooligan but a smart one and I had a great middle school teacher who told me if I could stop fucking around, I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up. She was the first person who didn’t laugh or give me shit when I said I wanted to go to Yale Law school. She helped me get into a prep school and then college and then yeah, I fucking went to Yale Law. Still felt like that fuck-up though. Like someone would figure out I wasn’t one of them and I’d get tossed out on my ass at any second. Still feel like that sometimes.”
Lilith had given up trying to fit in a long time ago and had become pretty adept at not giving a fuck what other people thought, but she remembered that feeling of desperately wanting to be like everyone else. Who didn’t want to be accepted?
“I spent a lot of time and when I finally had some, money, trying to fit in, trying to look like the people I envied, trying to talk like them and act like them, do the things they do. I’ve been pretty successful.”
“Sure had me fooled,” she muttered into his neck.