“A house would be nice,” I admitted.
Dean pressed a kiss to my head. “Then, we’re buying a fucking house.”
I laughed, and he smiled as he watched me.
This man had two personalities. He was the rock star and the family man. When he had to be Dean Finlay, drummer for Slacker Demon, he acted the part. Entertained the crowds. I had watched him in amazement from backstage while they toured this past winter and spring. Then, the moment the cameras were off him and the fans were no longer around, he was Dean, a father, grandfather, and now husband.
I loved both. Because both were mine. The rocker who would look for me while he was onstage, then wink at me, and the man who held me at night while I fell asleep.
“The day I walked into that office and saw you standing there with your messy bun, looking like a sexy librarian, I had no fucking clue the gift fate had handed me. The fact that I almost canceled that appointment haunts me. I might never have found you, learned about Cam,” he said to me, tucking a curl behind my ear.
“I believe I’d have tried to contact you again one day. Once I knew the right way to do it. You’re not an easy man to get in touch with,” I replied.
He knew how I had tried to get in touch with him when I was homeless and pregnant. I’d told him all of it. But that didn’t make the time he had lost with Cam any easier. I wished more than anything that he’d had that time with Cam, but then would we be here now? I had been a child myself. Time and hardships hadn’t yet molded me into the woman I was now.
We were lucky. Our paths could have crossed sooner or never again.
Life hadn’t always been good to me, but in this moment, I wasn’t sure it could get better. It was as if the universe was making up for lost time.
Dean took my hand and threaded his fingers through mine.
He said nothing more about the years he hadn’t known about Cam. We’d talked through that already.
Our story wasn’t an easy one. It hadn’t begun with romance. It had begun with lies and lust.
But along the way, through the twists and turns, it had turned into something beautiful.