“Buc—”
I barely got the words out when I slipped on an icy patch of the parking lot, falling face-first on the black asphalt.
“Shit!”
I immediately felt awful. I took pride in not swearing around my little girl. Now, not only had I done that, I had shouted it loudly enough that anyone in the vicinity would hear me.
“You OK?” a nearby woman said.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I said, even though I was anything but. Could I just hit the reset button on, say, the last thirty hours? Could I just go back in time to two days ago, cancel the job, and just…I don’t know, be content with whatever happened that wasn’t this shit?
“You’re bleeding,” the woman said.
“I’m fine, it’s just—”
Charlotte was crying. God, things were spiraling out of control. That pizza, ice cream, and wine were getting broken out a whole lot sooner than anticipated.
“You sure? I can—”
“I’ll take over from here.”
That voice.
I looked up. The man who had been near Bucky was now coming to me. But it wasn’t any man.
It was him.
My heart leaped into my throat. The other woman nodded awkwardly, said she was available if needed, but then walked away anyway. Liam looked down at me, hands in his pockets, and sighed. He offered me a hand up. I stared at it like it was somehow poisoned but eventually accepted it.
It was much warmer than I anticipated—almost like he’d just gotten out of his car. But I’d just seen him petting Bucky…?
“Where is your car?” Liam said.
I was too stunned to move. For one, touching him again had sent all sorts of warm feelings through my body—the nervous kind. But for another…Liam was here? He was helping me? He wasn’t screaming angry, cussing me out for no obvious reason?
I looked past him at Bucky. That boy did not look the least bit concerned about Liam. In fact, I dared to say he looked as happy as he would when he saw me.
“The…the dog…the dog is…my car.”
“What?”
Oh, Jesus, I’m such a hot mess I just called my dog my car.
“The SUV. With Bucky. The dog you were just petting. That’s, um, that’s my car.”
I felt like a teenager. I was flush red with embarrassment. No one else in this lot was probably paying attention to us, but I felt like I had the weight of the world on me. At least Charlotte had stopped crying. In fact, out of the corner of my eye, I could see her watching us with great interest. Rarely did I see her this attuned.
Does she know?
“Let’s get your groceries loaded in. Grab Charlotte.”
Grab Charlotte. He said that like a father would. Like…
I did as commanded and opened the trunk with my key. Liam took the cart over and placed everything inside, making sure that nothing would topple over. I put Charlotte in her car seat, placing a blanket over her. I went back around the SUV and stood before Liam, who was closing the trunk door.
“He…he usually doesn’t like men.”
“Wait, it’s a boy?” he said in shock.
What does he mean?
“I thought Charlotte was a girl’s name.”
“Oh, no, Jesus, no, I mean, the dog.”
Speak like a normal person would, Kelly. Come on now.
“Ah. What’s his name?”
“Bucky. I dropped to the ground and smashed my fucking face because I was worried he was going to bite your hand off.”
He snorted. And then he…smiled?
“You know, it’s not very becoming of a woman like you to swear. I don’t like it when my women swear.”
Why did that produce such a strong reaction on my end? On the one hand, this was certainly far less tense than yesterday. For starters, we were actually smiling at each other.
But on the other…that seemed rather bold, did it not?
“Good thing I’m not your woman.”
“For now.”
I gulped. The tension was back. The tension I’d felt on the bed, the tension I’d felt two years ago…were we just destined to do this little dance of erotic fire every time we saw each other? Were we always going to be so attracted to each other that whenever something like this came up, we couldn’t help but keep our hands off each other?
Or at least our words off each other.
“The child is a girl,” I said, hoping that changing the subject would make this far less awkward. Instead, I suspected that the abrupt nature of the change made it even worse. “Like I said before, her name is Charlotte.”
“First time I’ve seen her.”
Liam had always had a dominating presence to him. He’d always been the kind of guy that made eye contact with you and did not break away until he wanted to, not until social norms dictated it. Even in arguments—especially in arguments—he had a way of just locking you in.
But at that moment, his eyes were anywhere but on me. They were on Charlotte—or at least, her seat. From here, we could only see the outline of her car seat, occasionally her arms flailing in the air. We could see more of Bucky than we could Charlotte right now.
But he’d seen her. He’d seen her when I fell face first. He’d seen all of her.
What kind of an impact did that have? To see his own daughter for the first time ever. To see the result of that one-night stand—the beautiful, perfect result, even if the circumstances around her creation were anything but perfect.
I didn’t want to say I envied him, because the very thought of missing a full year of Charlotte’s development seemed downright depressing. But there was a certain gift of seeing someone so special for the first time ever, and I’d had that when I gave birth to her. Now, finally, her father was getting that.
He
