“LET ME GET this straight. You adopted a day-old kitten?” Riley repeated on the other end of the phone. “Without talking to me about it first?”
“Yes. For Lola.” I was lying in bed, with Max on one side of me, Lola on the other, and a sleeping kitten curled up on my chest. I couldn’t stop petting the little thing, dragging a single finger gently over the sleek line of her nose, across her head, and all the way down her back. She was perfect, her fur all soft and shiny. They’d told me she probably wouldn’t open her eyes for about a week, and that they’d be blue when she did. All kittens have blue eyes, apparently. But they would almost certainly change colors when she got older, sometime around six months or so.
“You adopted a kitten for my dog.”
“Yes. And I didn’t ask you about it first because you’ve been telling me it’s all right for me to make decisions on my own. So I did. I adopted a kitten for Lola. Max is kind of enthralled by her, too, but Lola has staked her claim. This is her baby.” The surprising thing was that Lola was allowing me to help her take care of the kitten. Not only that, but she was actually curled up next to me, similar to the way she curled up with Riley but with her enormous, cone-covered head resting on my chest so she could stare at the kitten. Maybe she sensed that we were going to have to be a team on this one.
He probably hadn’t exactly meant making decisions like adding another member to the family, let alone an entirely new species, but I didn’t want to point that part out. He could come to that conclusion on his own if he was going to.
Riley let out a sigh. “I have told you that. Absolutely. And I’ve been thrilled that you’ve started to listen and figure out what you want your life to be like in Portland.”
“But adopting a kitten is different than reading to school kids?” Of course it was, and I didn’t need Riley to spell it out for me. Because if I went to the school libraries and read to the kids, that didn’t have to have any sort of effect on Riley’s life, and certainly not the lives of his dogs.
But this was bringing another life into his home. This was adding to his family without his consent. I should never have done it, at least not without talking to Riley first.
Nevertheless, I had done it, and now I had to face the consequences. Just like Lola had eaten Riley’s sock even though she’d known she shouldn’t, and she’d had to have surgery because of her poor decision.
Every action in life had a consequence; we just didn’t always know what those consequences might be until it was too late to change our minds.
“It’s different, yeah,” he said. “But I’m not exactly saying it’s bad.”
“Aren’t you?”
To me, it sure seemed like that was precisely what he was saying. But then again, I always expected the worst. No matter how many times he assured me I belonged in his life, I kept waiting on the next reason Riley would undoubtedly get rid of me. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d convinced myself this might be a more-than-adequate reason for him to do just that.
I hoped I was wrong. Because I didn’t want to think about my life without Riley in it. No matter how many times I’d tried to guard myself against it, I feared I was falling in love with him.
Which was the last thing I needed.
Because if I allowed myself to love him, something would happen to take him away from me. I didn’t know what, but something.
If I allowed myself to love Riley, to truly love him, I’d lose him.
The same with Max and Lola and this kitten, too, now that I thought about it. I was coming to love his dogs just as much as I loved him, and Lola’s brush with death ought to be proof enough of what was sure to come if I allowed myself to continue getting comfortable in my new life.
But I feared it was too late to go back. Too late to protect my heart.
I was already too far gone with all of them.
“Why does my dog need a kitten?” he asked in lieu of answering my question.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask Lola?”
“And how exactly do you suggest I do that?”
This wasn’t going well. I sighed, praying for patience and the right way to explain things so Riley would understand and accept my decision.
“They put the kitten in the kennel with Lola at the vet’s office because she was going nuts,” I said. “The kitten kept crying, a pitiful little mewling sound, and she kept trying to get to the baby, and they didn’t want her to hurt herself or rip out her stitches. She calmed down as soon as the kitten was in the kennel with her.”
“So you adopted a kitten for my dog because my dog’s a psychotic spoiled brat who thinks she needs to eat socks just because she’s bored since I’m gone and she wanted to test you?”
I scowled because that about summed it up. “Something like that.”
To my surprise, Riley burst out laughing. “Great. So she completely ignores the boundaries you’ve set for her, and you reward her with a baby of her very own. So what are we naming her? Or is it a boy?”
We were naming her? That meant we were keeping her. Didn’t it?
It had to.
I couldn’t contain my smile, even though he couldn’t see it through the phone. “I think it’s a girl. The vet thinks so, too. But her fur’s kind of long down there, so we aren’t positive.”
“She could be secretly hiding the family jewels, hmm?”
I shrugged. “Or not.”
“Or maybe she’s got some magic voodoo pixie dust down there that she used to put a spell on my wife and my dog. That sounds like a more likely explanation.”
“Pretty sure I’m the only one in this house with magic voodoo pixie dust between my legs.” As soon as I’d said it, I wished I’d taken a moment to think before speaking. That was not a sort of thing I’d ever said before.
I blushed harder than I had since our honeymoon in Mexico. At least he couldn’t see me.
“Good thing for both of us I’m perfectly content to remain under your spell for as long as you want to keep me there, hmm? Be sure you sprinkle some of that magic pixie dust on your pussy before I get home in a couple of nights. I want to find out how it tastes.”
Yeah, pretty sure I looked like a boiled lobster right about now. Someone squeaked, but I wasn’t sure if it was me or the kitten.
“Are you blushing?” He sounded both amused and turned on. “Please tell me you’re blushing.”
“Like crazy.”
“Promise you’ll blush like that for me again as soon as I get home?”
“I can make no guarantees.”
“No? Good thing I can. Because as soon as I get rid of your panties and lick your pussy, you’ll be pink all over. Just the way I like you. Actually, I like you any way I can get you, but naked and sweaty and flushed all over is one of my favorite ways.”
“Just don’t toss those panties anywhere Lola can eat them, okay? I don’t want to have to explain my lingerie choices to the vet when he takes them out of her guts.”
Riley burst out laughing. “I doubt he’d be able to tell much about them in that condition. You should be safe from nosy veterinarians.”
I loved how easily we could go from serious to sexy and flirtatious and then skip straight to silly. For as worked up as I got over things, always worrying about how he’d react, the truth was we were a good fit for one another.
Such a good fit that I was starting to relax a bit within our marriage. I was gradually beginning to feel comfortable—something I hadn’t allowed myself in any relationship for almost as long as I could remember.
I hadn’t felt comfortable anywhere since I’d lived with Jack and Donna.
This realization ought to terrify me.
Because as soon as I allowed myself to settle in, to think that everything was going to work out, that was when my life as I knew it would shatter into a thousand shards.
But for some inexplicable reason, I wasn’t afraid this time.
I wasn’t trying to guard myself against the inevitable hurt. To protect my heart from whatever pain was bound to find me.
With Riley, I felt comfortable and safe and free.
I felt loved.
No, he’d never said the words, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure how I’d react if he ever did. Was I capable of letting someone love me without freaking out? And maybe more importantly, could I allow myself to love someone else in return?
They were good questions, and I wasn’t sure I had the answers. I might not even want to know the answers, because they might scare the crap out of me and send me into a tailspin. Maybe it was better if we just kept our relationship as it was. We were good together, Riley and me. We could be a team. We were good friends who were married and had sex. Lots of hot sex.
That was enough.
Wasn’t it?
“So what are you going to name your pussy, hmm?” he asked, dragging me out of my ruminations.
“I’m not going to name that!”
He laughed long and hard, a rich, rumbling laugh that settled in my chest somewhere in the general vicinity of my heart. He laughed so hard that it made me laugh, too, which disturbed the kitten’s nap, since she’d been sleeping curled up on my chest. She let out a tiny squeak of protest, and both Max and Lola leaned over me, pressing their noses close to the kitten to make sure she was all right, but Lola’s cone got in the way and she had to back off some. She growled at Max when he licked her baby, but he didn’t let her posturing stop him. I scratched her ears to calm her down, and soon they all settled against me again.
“Fine,” Riley said once he’d regained control of himself. “Leave it to me to name your pussy, but you should name your kitten.”
I rolled my eyes, not that he could see it. “So I can keep her?”
“As long as you let me call your pussy Heaven.”
“You’re insane.”
“Only because I wanna be in Heaven right now. I miss your pussy so much it’s making me crazy.”
“You can’t talk like that in front of the baby.”
“Promise that kitten doesn’t have a clue what pussy I’m talking about.”
“What about Phoebe?” I asked, stroking a line up her nose and over the top of her velvet-soft head.
“What about Phoebe?” he replied. “And what does Phoebe have to do with me licking your pussy until you come all over my tongue?”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“Only because I’m horny and I miss you, baby doll.”
“I want to name the kitten Phoebe.”
“You can name the kitten whatever you want. And you’re hot as hell. Thinking about you and a baby is insanely sexy. A human baby, not just your kitten. My baby. Our baby.”
I froze, my finger pausing mid-stroke over the kitten’s silky head.
“I want to make a baby with you, Mackenzie,” he said, and his voice had gone all deep and serious, no longer playful and sexy. But it was still hot. Serious and hot.
So hot I needed a fan, but instead I had an enormous mastiff plastered to each side of me and a tiny fuzzball of a kitten right in the center of my chest, and the room felt so stifling I almost couldn’t breathe.
“You still with me?” he asked because I was still so flustered I hadn’t been able to come up with a response.
“Why do you want to make a baby with me?” I spluttered. “I’m not put-together enough to be a mother. I don’t know how to be a mom. I never had a mother to teach me and I—”
“My parents weren’t very good at being parents, either, but I came out all right. And you came out more than all right. You’re the most amazing woman I know, baby doll.”
“I’m not amazing. I’m a mess.”
“You’re my mess. I like you just the way you are. But you’re not a mess. You’re perfect.”
Perfect was about as far from the truth as I could imagine. “Your dog almost died on my watch. What if that had been a child? Our child?”
“My dog would have almost died on my watch just as easily as she did on yours. That had nothing to do with you not taking good care of her, and it doesn’t mean you won’t be a good mother.”
“But I don’t know how to be a mother.”
“And I don’t know how to be a father. Neither of us had very good examples when it comes to parenting. But we both had perfect examples of how not to do it.”
“But what if we screw up?”
“We’re bound to screw up. Every parent screws up. It’s a miracle anyone could grow up to be the kind of sweet, compassionate, amazing person that you are. But you’re proof that even bad parents can create awesome kids who grow up to be awesomer adults. And I don’t think we’d be bad parents, anyway, you and me.”
“You don’t?” I could hear the hint of hope starting to peek through in my tone. Because, now that I thought about it, I liked the idea of having a baby with Riley. He was so good with his dogs, and he’d been a natural the day I’d taken him to read to the kids at the school library. Well, he’d been a natural once he’d gotten past his nerves, which had taken a bit longer than I’d expected. But still. He’d be a good father.
“I don’t,” he said emphatically. “I think we’d be good parents.”
“Why?”
“Because we won’t want our kid to go through what we went through. Because we want to be better. Because we certainly can’t be any worse.”
I laughed because he was right about that one.
“Because we love each other and we’ll love our baby so much she can’t help but know it,” he said, sounding sober and serious all of a sudden instead of playful.
I froze, my finger in mid-stroke over the stretch of head between the kitten’s ears.
“I love you, Mackenzie,” he said into the painful silence. “And I think you love me.”
Hot tears stung my eyes, and I had to blink them back.
No one had ever told me they loved me before.
No one.
I hadn’t realized just how desperate I was for someone to love me until I heard the words, but at the same time, those words terrified me. Because somewhere, deep down in my very core, I knew no one would ever love me. I’d always known it.
They couldn’t possibly.
Because I was unlovable.
How else could my birth parents have chosen drugs over me? What else would explain why none of my foster parents had ever elected to adopt me, to keep me, not even Jack and Donna?
No one ever chose me.
Not even Riley. He’d settled for me when his former fiancée had chosen someone else over him, and I’d been willing and available, not to mention frantic.
So no matter how desperately I wanted to believe Riley’s words, I couldn’t allow myself to do it.
He was right that I did love him. I loved Riley more than I ever should have permitted myself to love him, which was scary enough on its own. But I couldn’t let myself fall into the trap of believing he loved me.
There were only so many holes a person’s heart could withstand before filling up with quicksand. Or with lead. Mine was a patchwork quilt of broken promises and unfulfilled dreams.
“Hey,” Riley said softly. “I just freaked you out, didn’t I? I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted you to know how I feel about you.”
“I’m not freaked out,” I said.
“You’re a bad liar.”
I forced a laugh.
“Look,” he said. “I get it. Love is a scary thing. Especially for people like us, who’ve never truly been loved before. It’s terrifying.”
“I’m not afraid of love.”
“No, you’re not. Not when it comes to loving someone else. You give love to everyone and everything you come across. You even love the things you’re scared of, like my dogs. It pours out of you in everything you do, like you’re a sieve. Maybe if you would let me love you, I could plug a few of those holes so you could keep some of it for yourself every now and then.”
Tears streamed down my face, wetting my hair and the pillow beneath my head, but I couldn’t stop them, not even when Max whined and licked my cheeks.
“You’re crying, aren’t you?” Riley asked.
“Maybe.” My choked sob proved I was, though, whether I wanted to admit it or not.
“I wish I was there with you so I could dry your tears. So I could hold you until you believed me.”
“I do believe you.”
“No, you don’t. But that’s okay. You’ll believe me someday. And maybe then you’ll be ready to admit you love me, too.”
He seemed so confident of that. And of me and my ability to love him.
I didn’t know if I was capable of giving my heart to anyone. I did love him, but I desperately wanted not to. Because loving him would make it that much easier for him to hurt me.
How could someone who’d had a family life as almost nonexistent as my own be so certain about something as obscure and fathomless as love? But Riley was sure of it.
“So, your kitten is Phoebe?” he said, deftly changing the subject without forcing me into telling him that I loved him.
I cleared my throat, choking back the remainder of my tears. “I think so.”
“Max, Lola, and Phoebe. Seems like quite the trio.”
“They’re both fascinated by her.”
“Just like I’m fascinated by you. I can’t wait to get home and meet her.”
“Riley?” I said, stroking Phoebe’s coat with a single finger.
“Hmm?”
“Do you really want to have a baby? With me?”
“So much I can hardly stand it.”
“Do you think Max and Lola will be all right with it? They won’t get jealous?”
“Something tells me Lola would be thrilled to have another baby to protect. She’s sweet, but she’s fierce. She won’t let anyone mess with her babies.”
Something told me he was right.