Twenty-One

Kye

Bowie’s truck being gone surprised me when I arrived back at the house. I hadn’t expected him to give up time with Genesis.

He’d been fucking annoyed last night, and I felt guilty for enjoying it. I didn’t want Genesis hurt. That was the only reason I wasn’t grinning like a fool from the scowling Bowie did last night and this morning over breakfast. He was quiet and withdrawn. I knew Genesis saw it, too, and she seemed nervous. It was one of the reasons I’d offered to run to the store. I’d wanted them to have some alone time.

When I walked inside the house, the living room was quiet. I took the bags to the kitchen and put the cold things away before going to find where she and Jagger had gone. Stopping at the door to my bedroom, I saw Jagger sleeping in his bed with the baby monitor thing beside him on the table. Genesis had been so excited about the things Maddie had sent over with Six this morning.

I closed the door to the room, then made my way back to the master bedroom. The sound of the shower made me stop. If Genesis was in there, then I didn’t need to go any further. While the idea of seeing her naked body standing under the spray of water sounded like a level of heaven that I’d give my soul to experience, she’d be furious with me. I started to turn around and leave when I noticed there were no signs of Bowie.

The duffel bag he’d brought with him was missing. It had been at the foot of the bed this morning when I glanced down the hallway to see the door open. The laptop that had been on the side table was gone. I studied the room for anything of his and found nothing. Turning my attention back to the open bathroom door, I heard the water shut off.

Had he left already? Wasn’t he supposed to stay for another two nights?

I’d had to buy more fake meat for the bastard, and the brand of almond butter he’d requested was fucking hard to find. I’d had to ask for help at the store.

Genesis emerged from the bathroom with her hair twisted up in a towel and another towel wrapped around her body. There was the video screen that came with the baby monitor in her hand, and she was looking down at it, checking on Jagger. A soft smile touched her lips before her eyes lifted and locked on me. She jumped, startled, then scrambled with her one free hand to keep her towel from falling off.

“KYE!” she cried, then let out a breath. “You scared me.”

Her red-rimmed eyes looked swollen from crying. The fucker had upset her, then left. My hands fisted at my sides as I looked at her. She might not let me kill him, but I was going to hurt him.

“What did he do?” I asked through clenched teeth. Fury pumped through my veins. He might be engaged to her, but I’d be damned if he thought he could make her cry. “Talk, Baby Doll, or I’ll hurt him worse than I’m currently planning on.”

She took a step toward me while setting the monitor on the dresser. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “He’s hurt enough. He doesn’t need you to physically assault him too.”

I didn’t agree. “You’ve been crying. His shit is gone. He’s gone. Why?”

Her shoulders drooped, and I tore my eyes off the drop of water running from her neck to her cleavage. Getting a damn hard-on wasn’t what I needed to be doing. I had a man to go hunt down.

“He asked me to choose. You and Jagger or him,” she said, then lifted her bare, damp shoulders. “And when I chose the two of you, he called off the wedding and took the ring.”

That was not what I’d been expecting to hear. My gaze swung to her left hand … her bare left hand. Fuck, that felt good. The heavy weight that had been making it hard to take deep breaths was instantly gone. Looking back up at her face and seeing the clear pain there, however, reminded me that this had hurt her. She had wanted to marry him.

“What exactly did he say?” I asked, trying to wrap my head around the fact that he’d just released his hold on her and she wasn’t getting married anymore.

“He wanted me to go stay at a hotel at first. While he was here. Spend time with just him. It was a test, apparently, and I failed it. Then, he wanted you to get one of your strippers to come stay here instead of me, which I adamantly refused. His last demand was that you call your mom to come and take care of Jagger.” She paused and pressed her lips together. “I couldn’t do it. I don’t want someone else to take care of him.”

I didn’t either. Goddamn him. He’d been cruel.

“Come here,” I said to her, holding out my arm.

She sniffled and hurried to me. I wrapped my arms around her and held her against me. She wasn’t sobbing, but I could hear the sniffles. When she cried, it killed me. I hated it. Even though I was ready to thank whatever gods there were that she wasn’t marrying Bowie.

“He didn’t deserve you,” I said as she clung to me.

I didn’t deserve her either. I wasn’t sure anyone did. Except maybe Jagger.

“He deserves someone who can put him first. Who adores him the way my mom adores my dad. In my head, that’s what I thought we were, but I realized”—she sniffled—“that it was me being selfish. I knew Bowie would treat me the way Dad treats Mom. But he didn’t give me butterflies. He never did.”

Relief wasn’t a good way to describe what I was feeling. The surge of joy that rushed through me was something I didn’t have a word for.

“Butterflies?” I asked, wanting that clarified. I wanted to make sure I was understanding her correctly.

She nodded against my chest. The towel in her hair was in my way. I couldn’t smell her this way. I reached up and pulled it off, then tossed it aside.

“Butterflies,” she repeated. “Mom said that she still gets butterflies when Dad walks in a room. I never got those with Bowie. He was just comfortable. Safe.”

She didn’t finish, but I knew what she was thinking. He was things that I wasn’t. Did she measure the guys she dated up to me? Was I the guy she made sure they were nothing like? Fuck, that hit me in the gut.

“Don’t ever settle without the butterflies,” I told her. “You are worthy of a man who makes you feel all the things.”

She let out a short, humorless laugh. “Yeah, well, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

I ran my hand over her damp hair. She had no fucking clue how perfect she was. No idea how the man who gave her butterflies would be the luckiest bastard on the face of the planet.

“It’ll happen,” I assured her. “You’re only twenty. I’m not ready to give you up for a very long time. And even then, I’m going to end up in therapy when I do.” I was serious too.

The brutal truth was, I wanted her. She gave me fucking butterflies. When she walked into a room, I got so damn happy that my entire world lit up. I was pretty sure Jagger felt the same way. Like father, like son.

“Maybe,” she whispered, then pulled back, her hands going to her towel to keep it together. “Jagger has been asleep awhile. I need to get dressed before he wakes up.”

I wrapped one of her wet locks around my finger. “I’ll take care of little man. You take your time.”

She smiled. “Honestly, I need to hold him. He’ll make me feel much better.”

Watching her with him was my favorite thing to do.

His new birth certificate was in a drawer in my bedroom, tucked away, and had been there for a few days. Levi had gotten it expedited through his connections. I hadn’t wanted to expedite it, and I wasn’t ready to tell Genesis I had it. The thought of giving my son away was more difficult than I’d ever imagined it would be. I tried to tell myself that it was just because I knew it was going to be hard on Genesis. I couldn’t stand the idea of her being upset over letting him go. But I had to face the facts. It was me who didn’t want to let him go. I wanted to keep him. Just like I wanted to keep her.