Angela smiles at us, as though she can’t stop the shape her lips take, as though she can’t deny the starry warmth cascading over this moment.
“You two look like the real deal,” she says. “If I didn’t know you, I would think you two have been together for years. I’d never have guessed it’s only been a few days. How the heck is that possible?”
“Don’t ask me to explain it,” I say warmly, stealing a precious glance at my woman. She smiles radiantly up at me. “It just is, Angela. I’m so, so sorry that we went behind your back. I wanted to tell you right away—”
“But then I left town and you didn’t want to do it over the phone,” she says.
I nod. “Exactly. And the truth is—”
“You were scared I’d go crazy and make you stop.”
I chuckle. “Damn. It’s like you’re reading my mind.”
“I need to say something.” Angela leans forward, staring hard at me. “Dad, you need to listen to this, listen closely.”
She’s never looked more like my daughter. She has a SEAL look of determination in her eyes.
“If you ever hurt Tessa, you’ll lose both of us,” she says passionately. “Tessa is my best friend and she means the world to me. My instincts are telling me that this is the real deal. Looking at the two of you, it’s kind of hard to deny that. But maybe my instincts are wrong.”
I nod solemnly, taking my daughter’s words seriously.
“I swear, Angela,” I tell her. “I’d die – I’d kill – before I risked what Tess and I have.”
“Good.” Angela nods. “Then I think you should reach for the freaking stars with what you have. Even if it’s the biggest shock I’ve had in my entire life – and that includes getting picked up for a TV advertisement – I don’t want to stand in the way of your happiness.”
“Do you mean it, Angie?” Tess cries, rising to her feet and walking over to my daughter, to her best friend.
“Yes,” Angela says, standing.
“It doesn’t change anything between us?”
“Oh, Tess,” she says, tears quivering in her voice. “Nothing could change what we have. Come here.”
They embrace each other tightly, their emotions rising to the surface. I watch them with pure hot joy leaping around my chest, relief like I’ve never felt washing through me.
It’s even more potent than the relief I felt when I was overseas and came out of a nasty gunfight alive, even more, potent than staring death in the face and winning life instead.
And that’s what this is.
I thought the rest of my life would be a kind of slow death, putting my all into my business and being there for Angela… but never living in love, never experiencing what so many people take for granted.
Now I have more than most people could ever dream of.
I have the woman of my dreams and my daughter’s blessing.
I smile. I don’t smirk. I smile like the happiest luckiest bastard alive.
Because that’s what I am.
And I won’t ever forget it.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tessa
“Why are you smiling like that?” I ask mom as she flips the pancakes.
She shrugs, causing her billowing kaftan to swirl around her. Morning sunlight shafts into the kitchen, coming to rest on the new hardwood flooring Trent installed a few days ago, working away with his T-shirt soaked with sweat, outlining the muscles that will never stop making me crazy for him.
“I’m not allowed to smile now, hmm?”
“I feel like you’re planning something,” I say.
“I’m not planning anything.”
“Who is, then?”
She shrugs again, with that same enigmatic smile on her face.
I giggle, laughing in a carefree way that has become my new regular these past few days.
Ever since Angie said she was on board with me and Trent, my worries have started to drift away like sand through my fingertips. I don’t find myself sinking into holes of anxiety, breathless as I try to climb out.
I can just be.
It’s the best feeling in the world.
If I was scared Angie didn’t mean what she said, I was soon proven wrong. We’re closer now than ever before.
The five of us – Mom and Liam, Trent and me, and Angie – even had dinner together a few nights ago. It was wonderful, laughter quivering in the air, with smiles and jokes and happiness.
“What sort of answer is a shrug, Mom?”
She shrugs over and over, doing it with turbo speed until I’m left with no choice but to break out into frenzied giggles.
There’s something so wonderful about seeing her like this, carefree and playful like she was when I was a kid. In the really bad days during her illness, a sad part of me started to believe I may never get to experience this side of her again.
I know I’m not going to get any more answers out of her this morning, but my mind can’t help but skip to crazy places, to Trent-touched places.
He was weird last night. I don’t know how to describe it exactly.
On the surface, everything was the same, and yet beneath his every gesture, buried within his every word, I sensed there was a double meaning that was just beyond my reach. I sensed that there was something he wanted to say.
Or maybe I’m just wishing, hoping—
My thoughts are cut short by the doorbell.
“I think you should get it,” Mom says. “I’m busy with the pancakes.”
I look closely at her, trying to gauge the mischief in her eyes, trying to see if I should be worried or relieved.
She shrugs again – of course, she does – and I walk from the kitchen toward the front door.
The door is new, the paint no longer chipped, replaced by my man just like the kitchen floor was. I’m hardly going to say no when he offers to do jobs around the house. It makes mom’s life easier and I get to see him all sweaty, his muscles showing through his shirt.
It’s
