I waited with a pounding heart for Kit to come back to bed.

I was exhausted and sore. Every time I moved, I was reminded of all the ardent, amazing, delicious sex I’d had with Kit over the past twelve hours. The sex we’d had in college had been incredible. But this…

This was a whole other level. It’d been fucking, dirty and hot. But it had also been making love. Emotional, intense. Beautiful.

My heart felt wrung out. It was going to hurt so, so badly when I’d have to let him go. But I was determined to enjoy the beauty of what we’d become in the meantime.

I sat up when Kit slipped back into the room. He was still stark naked. I took a moment to appreciate his body.

Oh, that body. He was broadly built, athletic and masculine in all the best ways. I especially loved the way his abs sloped into his hips and lower back. The thick veins that snaked up his forearms and popped against the backs of his hands. The rounded muscles in his shoulders, biceps, butt.

He had a really, really nice butt.

A familiar heat came to life between my legs. It made the soreness there sting. But I didn’t care. I’d devoured him last night, but I was still hungry for more. I wondered if the hunger I had for him would ever be satiated. I’d never felt like this before. Not with Luke. Definitely not with the other guys I’d been with over the past year or so.

This hunger was new, and terrifying, and exciting. I had to get a grip on it, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t want to. Not yet.

Not until I had to.

Kit climbed into bed beside me. I noticed he had something tucked underneath his arm. It looked like an old photo album. Something from the eighties, with a simple maroon cover that was embossed in gold along the edges. I could see the pages inside were yellow with age. My parents had albums just like this back home in Atlanta. They kept my baby pictures in them.

My stomach flipped.

“What’s this?” I asked, careful to keep my voice even.

Kit settled the album on his lap. He settled an arm around my shoulders, pulling me close.

“Come here and I’ll show you,” he said.

I burrowed into Kit’s body, reveling in the safety I felt in his arms. His skin was warm. It smelled like him, like spice and lemons. I couldn’t believe this was mine. He was mine, for right now at least.

He pressed a kiss into my hair. Then he opened the album.

The breath left my lungs when my eyes fell on the page. There were three pictures, slightly blurry like all photos from the eighties. Each one was carefully placed under the shiny plastic sleeve. In them, a pretty young woman in a hospital gown was holding a baby. A man with carefully parted hair was standing beside them. The baby was screaming, but the man and woman were smiling, the kind of exhausted, elated smiles I’d often seen on the faces of new parents.

Inscriptions were written in careful, looping cursive underneath each picture. Mummy, Dad, and Christopher, January 10, 1984. Christopher at St. James’s Hospital. Christopher, three hours old.

I swallowed the sudden tightness in my throat. Kit had never talked about his parents with me.

“This is you,” I said.

He nodded, tapping his finger on his mother. “Mum put together an album for each of us after we were born. I keep them in the safe downstairs.”

“Look at you,” I said, trying to smile. “A pain in the ass from the beginning.”

Kit laughed. “I was a colicky baby. Mum said I screamed for the first four months of my life.”

The page cracked as he turned it. There were more pictures of Kit. One of him in a car seat. Another of him wearing a pair of his mom’s totally eighties sunglasses, a bright yellow pacifier in his mouth. His parents were in a few of them. It was so cool seeing Princess Caroline and Prince Edward in these private photos. It was like peeking behind the curtain of their very public lives.

They looked so happy in the pictures. So hands on. It was clear that they had a special connection with Kit. There was one picture of his dad holding him on his hip, the two of them giggling at some private joke. Another of his mom holding him up in the air.

I could not fathom how much Kit must miss her.

My eyes smarted.

“Your mom was gorgeous,” I said.

Kit swallowed. Sniffed. “Wasn’t she? My parents look so bloody young in these pictures to me now. Mum was only twenty-two when she had me.”

“It was the eighties,” I said, shrugging. “She must’ve really had her shit together. At twenty-two, I was living in my parents’ basement, broke as a joke.”

“Yeah. I was living in the library, working on my thesis. I don’t think I saw the sun that year at all.” Kit scoffed. “It was not pretty.”

He kept turning the pages. We laughed at a picture of him naked in a bathtub. He pointed to another. In this one, Kit was in a wagon, dressed up as a tiny clown. He told me how his dad made all their Halloween costumes.

Tears fell from Kit’s eyes onto his cheeks, his jaw, his throat.

“This is why the foundation is so important to me,” he explained. “They were the ones who started it. It’s become my connection to my parents. To the work they did.”

I burrowed my cheek into his chest. “They’d be proud of you.”

“You think?”

“I do.” And I meant it.

With each page that Kit turned, my heart broke a little more. Even though he was crying, he kept talking. Kept laughing through the tears. I understood why he hadn’t talked to me about his parents until now. But I didn’t understand why, all of the sudden, he was opening up like this to me.

“Kit.” I looked up at him. “Don’t get me wrong, I am loving every minute of this. But you don’t talk about your parents, ever. Not with me. Not with the press.”

Kit’s eyes searched mine. They were piercingly blue in the strident morning light. His gaze was warm. Wet. Flooded with tears and pain and relief. It was a total transformation from the Ice Prince who’d appeared in his sister’s office a few weeks ago.

“You’re right,” he said, wiping away a tear with the flat of his palm. “I don’t talk about them. But I want to talk about them with you.”

My vision blurred. “Why?”

Kit took a deep breath. Let it out. “You asked me what we’re doing here. And the honest answer, Em, is that I don’t know. But this”—he pointed to a picture of him with his parents—“this is what I wish we were doing. Emily, this is what I dream of doing with you.”

“This, as in—”

“Starting a family. I want to be with you, love. Really, honestly be with you.”

A tear slid down my face. Kit reached over, wiped it away with his thumb.

For a split second I wondered if I was still asleep, and this was all a dream. A wonderful, incredible dream. Because the Kit I’d known didn’t do this kind of thing. He didn’t feel, much less confess to feeling such enormous things for me.

But this Kit was different. He was open. Honest.

Was this the real Kit, the one I could trust? Or was he the fake fiancée, playing a part?

Could I trust myself to know the difference?

“Kit, I—”

“I don’t need an answer right now. You can tell me to go fuck myself if you’d like—if you’re not feeling what I’m feeling. I know it’s fast. But for so long, I thought I’d never have a family again. The women I’d been with…I couldn’t picture sharing my life with them. Then you came along. Suddenly, the world cracked open. I can picture myself with you, Em. I can picture this happening for us,” he said, tapping again on the photo.

It hit me like a giant wave, the longing for that to actually happen for us. But hadn’t I already learned that it wasn’t possible for someone like me to have all that? Hadn’t I already learned that a thriving career and a thriving personal life were two mutually exclusive concepts?

“But my career,” I said. “Kit, I can’t give up my business. Things are really starting to happen for us. I’ve worked so hard to get here…”

He looked at me. “I’m not asking you to. I want you to keep doing what you love. I want to support you in any way I can. We’ll try to figure out how to make a relationship work in the meantime. Maybe it will work. Maybe it won’t. But I want to try. I think it’s worth a shot. I mean, haven’t we made it work so far?”

I scoffed. “It’s been three weeks, Kit.”

“So? If we can make it three weeks, maybe we can make it longer than that.” He brushed the hair out of my face. “Please, Em. Try with me.”

Taking a breath, I searched Kit’s eyes. I’d made the mistake before of wanting this with Luke. He’d also promised to support my ambitions. And then he’d fallen down on me.

But Kit was not Luke. In fact, he was the opposite of my ex in all the best ways. I’d learned some hard lessons about work and about life. But I’d also learned that Kit was trustworthy, and kind. He came through on his promises in a way Luke never had.

Maybe the lesson I’d actually learned was that I couldn’t have a career and a relationship with Luke. Maybe—just maybe—I could have both if I was with the right guy.

If I was with a guy like Kit.

My heart was pounding as the answer formed inside my head, my heart. Excitement spread through me, slowly at first. Then faster as I came to realize that it could actually happen.

As I realized that all my dreams, not just the dreams I had for EP Designs, could come true. And they’d come true with Kit.

“Okay,” I said, letting out the breath I’d taken. “Let’s try.”

Kit’s whole face lit up. He dropped the album and put his hands on my cheeks, leaning down for a kiss. I tasted the salt of his tears. The urgency of his relief.

“Thank you.” He kissed me. “Thank you.” He kissed me again, leaning his forehead against mine. “Thank you, Emily.”

I nudged my nose against his. This felt so freaking good. So right. I just prayed I wasn’t setting myself up for heartbreak again. For betrayal.

I just prayed I wasn’t being an idiot by trusting Kit like this.

“So,” Kit said. “What shall we do now that you’re my real girlfriend?”

I blinked, biting back a smile. That sounded nice, hearing Kit call me his girlfriend. His real, honest-to-goodness girlfriend.

I slid my hand under the duvet and reached for him. “I have some ideas.”

“I like these ideas,” Kit said.

I grinned. “Good,” I replied, swirling my thumb over the head of his cock. “I like to make you feel good, Kit.”

Kit sucked in a breath. His eyes went hazy. “I’m about to make you feel even better, love.”

Taking my hand in his, he ducked down and took my nipple in his mouth.

My eyes fluttered shut.

I was so happy.

So stupid happy with this man.