Chapter 28

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Ivy

I gape at him, heart pounding. “What are you saying?”

“You know what I’m saying, lioness,” he says. “I like you. I like Evie. You’re smart and capable and beautiful and so damned strong. And Evie is amazing—she’s bright and as smart as her mama”—he brushes his knuckles over my cheek—“and she has this huge heart that just sucks you in.”

My eyes are stinging. “But you always push my buttons.”

His mouth hitches up. “I’m an Adler, baby. I live to be annoying.”

I laugh and it’s a little watery.

Something he— of freaking course —notices, his hands shifting until he’s cupping my jaw. “Spending time with you is…”

“What?” I ask.

He exhales, worry creeping back into his eyes. “If Evie’s question had you pushing me away…”

My pulse picks up its pace. “Tell me,” I whisper.

He studies me closely then exhales. “I’ve never felt more right, more at home than when I’m with you—not since my mom was alive.”

“Knox. I’m sorry?—”

A finger to my lips again. “It’s not a happy story, lioness, though my early years were. But when I was in middle school, my mom unexpectedly got pregnant—her and my dad were thrilled, and we were excited too, but?—”

My stomach twists.

“Things went wrong, and we lost both of them.”

“Oh, my God. Honey, I?—”

But I can’t find the words and he keeps talking, filling in the rest of it. “It was traumatic for all of us. One second we were painting the nursery and the next we were calling 9-1-1 and watching our mom be loaded in the back of an ambulance. And—” He exhales. “She didn’t come home.”

Shit.

“Then things got worse.”

“How?” I rasp out.

“My dad…he went off the deep end. He just stopped parenting, stopped engaging with us. It was like one day we went from being a happy family of four to the next it just being Ella and me. We felt like orphans. We felt abandoned. And then?—”

“Oh, God,” I whisper. “There’s more?”

His smile is sad and totally not Knox-like. “Unfortunately, yes.”

I take his hand, lace my fingers through his. “Lay it on me.”

A little warmth in his smile—thank God. “The rest of it is typical shit—he remarried, made a new family, forgot about us further, and then it really was just Ells and me.”

“I’m so sorry, Knox.”

“Me too,” he murmurs, running his thumb lightly along the back of my hand.

“Honey—”

“Here’s the thing, lioness,” he says. “It’s the past and it sucks and I can’t lie—I let it tear me to pieces for a long time. For too fucking long. It wasn’t until I saw Lake and Leo find their people that allowing someone in my life in that way even became a consideration. But it wasn’t until Ella fell for Riggs that I began to truly trust it. To want it. And it wasn’t until you that I knew I had to have it.”

My heart lurches in my chest, slamming itself against my rib cage over and over again.

“But I’ve been fighting my past.”

“How?”

He exhales, hand tightening around mine. “How could I dare let myself have it?” he asks. “Everyone always said that I’m the spitting image of my dad, that I’m just like him—so how could I trust myself to make a family if I might freak out and fuck up like he did?”

“You wouldn’t?—”

“How can you know? How can I know?”

I hesitate because there isn’t a way I can give him an answer and know it’s absolutely, one hundred percent the right one. Life is lifey, things change, people change.

Bad things happen, despite the best of intentions.

And it’s like he sees all of that ping-ponging around in my brain, and the look in his eyes?—

Fuck , it hurts.

And it makes me say something I would have thought I needed to be under the pain of death to admit. “All I know is that I trust you.”

The pain clouding the gorgeous blue gaze fades, replaced by?—

Something I can’t look too closely at.

So, I give as good as he gave me.

“Like your dad, my parents weren’t great,” I tell him. “And I spent years being shepherded around family members and in and out of the system. I just wanted a place that was permanent, somewhere there was absolutely no doubt that I belonged.”

“And did you find it?”

My eyes sting. “No,” I say quietly. “I’m still looking for it.”

His hand settles on my nape. “Lioness,” he murmurs. “I?—”

“I have Evie,” I tell him. “I’m not completely pathetic.”

“Hey—”

“It’s a joke,” I say with a shrug. “A lame attempt at one,” I add when he scowls. “My point is that Evie’s always been my person, and even though I didn’t pick a good man for her dad”—well, I didn’t really choose him at all because he…well, he did much worse to me than Hiller ever did—“I think she and I have managed to build a pretty great life.”

“It’s a beautiful life,” he whispers.

Damn. There go my eyes again.

And my heart.

“Yes,” I agree. “It’s a beautiful life. And”—here I pluck up my courage, release my grip of that slippery hillside and take the biggest leap of faith I’ve made in years—“I think we can have something even better.” His face changes and I rush to add, “I don’t know how long it’ll last or if we’ll be something close to forever, but…I know you well enough by now to understand that you’ll never hurt me or Evie, and I’ve never had that before.”

His eyes close. “Fuck,” he whispers.

A sinking feeling in my stomach. “What?”

“Ella gave me a whole pep talk last week about taking the leap and being brave.” He peels back his lids and relief courses through me at the amusement in his eyes. “And here you are just being my fearless lioness.”

I don’t feel brave, and my fear is roiling right beneath the surface, but I can hear the sincerity in his tone, see his belief of his words all throughout his face.

And…somehow they become one of the best things I’ve ever heard.

Right up there with all the naughty, wonderful things he’d told me while we were naked in this bed.

And Evie saying Mama for the first time.

“Why do you call me that?”

“Lioness?”

I nod.

“Because everyone knows that the lionesses are the true heart of the pride—they’re smart, work hard, and run the show.” He winks. “Kind of like someone else I know.”

“Don’t lions nap like twenty-two hours a day?”

His mouth quirks. “I just call that having great time management skills.”

Laughter bubbles up in my chest.

He runs his knuckles over my cheek. “You’re beautiful when you laugh.”

My lungs hitch. “Knox.”

“I like it better when you call me honey.”

“Knox.”

He gives me that unrepentant smile that used to make me want to kiss and kill him in equal measure. Tonight, though, it just makes me want to kiss him.

But there’s a part of me that needs him to know?—

“You’re not your dad.”

His big chest expands and collapses on a breath, then he shifts, coaxing us onto our sides, my back tucked against his front, drawing the blankets over us and settling the animals when they protest.

An arm over my middle.

A strong body behind me.

Warm all around me.

“Yeah, lioness” he says long moments later, when my eyes have grown heavy and sleep is creeping in. “I’m starting to think that I’m not like him at all.”