Page 90 of Reckless Love

“Can I tell him?” Stephen asks me.

“I don’t know what you’re going to tell him, but sure.”

“A long, long time ago, your mom and I used to date. Whenever she’d finish one of her books, she was usually extra nice to me.”

I purse my lips to hold in a laugh, and I give my head a little shake before meeting Stephen’s playful gaze. His comment reminds me of the times I read moments from books out loud, and he went all in on bringing those scenes to life. Each time I remember something, I become surer I was an idiot to want anything else more than what I had with him and that part of me knew what I had, which is why I kept going back. That realization isn’t enough, though, because I wasn’t very good at showing him, or, god, telling him. Did I ever tell him?

“How was she extra nice?” Landon asks, taking another bite and not appearing to get the undercurrent of this conversation at all, which is a relief.

“She’d give me special treats,” Stephen says, and I swat his leg under the table.

“Like a frosted cookie?” Landon asks.

“Sometimes there was frosting involved,” Stephen says.

“Okay,” I say, passing Landon more of the korma. “You need to get your strength up if you’re going back to school soon. More rice too?”

Stephen squeezes my thigh under the table while he continues to eat, and I wrap my hand around his large bicep, leaning into his shoulder. My heart thrums with happiness.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” he murmurs against my ear.

And I don’t know if he means the inside jokes, the food, the closeness, or something else, but “nice” doesn’t cover what being in this house with him, with Landon, feels like. Being here with him is home.

But since I’m not ready to say that yet—even if I should—I look up at him with my chin on his arm, and I agree. “It’s the best.”

While I’m putting Landon to bed, I ask him about his return to school, and he’s adamant that he wants Stephen to drive us. He’s convinced that he’s safest in a car if Stephen is at the wheel. That certainty is great for right now when Stephen can drive us, but when I start having to be the primary driver again, I’m hoping it’s not an anxious struggle for both of us.

For the first night since I left the hospital, I don’t fall asleep while putting Landon down. That power nap in the afternoon must have given me the energy I need to go the distance tonight.

When I leave the room, I find the apartment empty. I peer out the front window to see Stephen’s car is still in the driveway, which means he must have gone to his own apartment. He probably figured, since I haven’t been able to make it past Landon’s bedtime, that he was safe to disappear to his own space.

With a little bit of trepidation, like I might be doing something wrong, I inch through the hallway that divides the two apartments, and when I hear a female voice filtering through Stephen’s closed apartment door, I freeze.

My heart kicks and then races in my chest, and my palms break out in a sweat. He doesn’t have a girlfriend, does he? Oh, god. What if he’s just been nice to me because of the car accident, and he has no intention of us going any further than that? He hasn’t said, and now that I think of it, I haven’t exactly told him my intentions either. I just assumed we were on the same page.

I divorce Raul. We get to be together.

Maybe I should leave the hallway, but I’ve never been that kind of person. As much as I hate to admit it, I get my meddling nature from my mother. With my ear pressed to the door, I try to figure out who’s speaking.

“You’re accusing me of being deceptive?” she says. “You’re literally shacked up in our parents’ apartment with someone else’s wife. Has she even filed for divorce yet, or is she just going to use you and discard you when someone wealthier shows up again?”

That’s his sister throwing shitty shade in my direction. Oh no she does not. I knock on the door loudly, and then I open it, not even waiting for an invitation.

“Oh,” I say with extra brightness. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Stephen shoots me a look that tells me he can read me like a book. “No?” he says drily. “Listening in the hallway got a little old, did it?”

“She was listening?” Vanessa sputters. “I didn’t… Shit. I didn’t mean… I’m just mad at my brother.”

“I heard you talking about things you don’t know anything about,” I say, batting my eyes at her. “You were so young when Stephen left, I can totally understand why you’d have misread all that.”

Vanessa gives me an assessing look, and then she turns to Stephen again. “Whatever your friends are telling you, they’re wrong.”

“This discussion isn’t over,” Stephen says, his tone icy.

“If the cameras are faulty that night, that’s got nothing to do with me.”

“I guess we’ll see,” he says.