“I promised myself if I ever got the chance, I would dance with you again,” he whispered. “I didn’t dance with you enough.”
What the fuck was he doing? He was holding her like she was something precious, like he’d missed her with his body and his soul. He started to move like there was music in his head. “There’s no music.”
“Yes, there is,” he insisted. “I can hear it. That song that was playing the night we got married. I wanted to go up to the room.”
He’d been horny as hell. He’d wanted to get to the honeymoon part, but they’d walked through the casino and past the postage stamp dance floor. It had been a sad thing, but she’d heard a song she’d loved. “The Twilight song? You hate that song.”
He’d groaned and whined, but he’d danced with her. He’d swayed with her through the whole song and teased her about glitter-bomb vampires, but it hadn’t mattered. Because he’d kissed her and told her he loved her and would for more than a thousand years.
In that moment, the world had been laid out in front of them. Theirs for the taking. A whole future for them.
She laid her head on his shoulder as emotion flowed through her. She’d wanted that life she’d been promised in that moment when they’d danced and the rest of the world had fallen away.
“I stop every time I hear it and I think of you,” he said.
“I thought you were mad at me.” She brought her head up and looked into those gorgeous eyes of his. This was absolutely not where she’d expected to be when she’d woken up this morning. Hell, it wasn’t what she’d expected two minutes ago.
“I don’t want to be mad. This feels so much better.” His hand started to smooth up her back, and he stared at her the way he always did right before he fell on her lips like a starving man. Like he could kiss her forever and still not be satisfied.
“Mama?”
She jumped away from Beck like he was a hot stove she’d touched. Her baby boy was standing in the doorway exactly where his father had stood moments before. She couldn’t help but notice they had similar expressions on their faces. “Are you all right?”
Her son was staring up at Beck somberly. “Is he really my dad?”
Her heart clenched. “Yes. He’s your dad and he’s Uncle Ezra’s brother.”
Roman frowned. “Where’s he been? Because we’ve been in trouble and he wasn’t around.”
“What?” Those words coming out of Roman’s mouth shocked her.
“Mom, I’m not dumb,” Roman said quietly. “We’re not normal. We live in a fortress, and I can barely get Uncle Ezra to stop for gelato after school. Everyone in my class goes places and sees things. We don’t ever go on trips. Everyone goes on trips. You don’t date. And you have a bunch of passports with different names for us and guns hidden in your closet.”
Now she felt sick to her stomach. “Those are in a safe.”
Roman shrugged. “And the combination is my birthday.”
“Are you sure he’s six?” Beck was watching Roman with impressed eyes.
She kind of wished she’d had a chance to grab the stuff in that safe. She also kind of wished Roman hadn’t stopped Beck from kissing her. And she was equally grateful that he had. She and Beck didn’t work. It was only gratitude that made her so willing to take comfort from him. “Yes, but you should understand he’s pretty much got a genius-level IQ, and he’s not afraid to use it.”
Was that very intelligence what had caused Roman to not ask her about Beck? They’d had one conversation about who his father was. She’d told her son that she’d loved his father very much, but that sometimes love wasn’t enough. At first she’d thought he didn’t ask because he had plenty of male authority in his life. Now she wondered if he’d figured out it hurt her to talk about Beck.
“I don’t know that he gets that from me.” Beck had a little smile on his face. It was the satisfied smile he got when things went his way. He was using that smile on Roman.
“My mom is really smart,” Roman replied, a bit on the defensive side.
Beck sobered. “She is. She’s the smartest woman I know. She’s kept you safe for years. You see your mom and I got split up. I couldn’t find her and then some things happened in the world, and for a couple of years it was really hard to travel. Then I looked for her but I still couldn’t find her.”
“She didn’t want us to be found,” Roman countered. “If she didn’t want you to find us, there must have been a reason. Uncle Ezra didn’t want you to find us either.”
“That’s not true.” If she was going to be honest with Beck, she had to do the same with her son. Now that Beck was here, she knew she had to facilitate his relationship with Roman. “Your uncle asked me to reach out to him a couple of days ago. I think he’s felt that way for a very long time. Did he fall asleep?”
Roman nodded. “He was snoring.”
Beck chuckled. “He always did that. I had to share a room with him for years. Earplugs are the only way to go.” He got down to one knee and was suddenly serious. “Roman, your mom was in danger, and she ran because at the time she didn’t trust me to protect her. She didn’t trust me because I was very mean to her. I had problems with anger, and I took them out on your mom.”
“Did you hit her?” Roman asked, his
