Julia laughs, wiping away tears.

She’s glowing. Eating, too—she’s almost finished with her bowl of bread pudding and dessert, a fact my eagle-eyed father doesn’t miss.

He quietly refills her bowl. She thanks him with a smile.

I don’t have answers to my questions. I guess in a way I never will. Life will play out the way it plays out.

But I do know I want this baby. I want a family.

I want Julia. I’m definitely hurting all three of us—her, the baby, me—by not letting her in.

I’m so fucking tired of denying myself. I’m gonna take what I want. Finally.

But first, I have to tell her the truth. I owe her that much.

I just hope she doesn’t run after hearing it.

My heart is pounding on the drive home.

I’m also half hard. I keep catching whiffs of Julia’s perfume. And the top she’s wearing doesn’t hide the fact that her nipples get hard every time I look at her. Like she’s just as aroused by my attention as I am by hers.

One of the five hundred things I adore about her. She doesn’t lie, and neither does her body. She’s honest to a fault. Even when the truth is messy. Inconvenient.

I have so much to learn from her.

My hand shakes a little as I put the truck in park in my driveway. The sound of the engine shifts and so does the mood inside the car.

I look at Julia.

She looks at me.

“Julia.”

That’s it. That’s all I say. Her name.

But it’s enough to let her know what I’m about to say.

She reaches for my hand. Tangles her fingers in mine.

“Tell your inner villain not to worry,” she says. “I’m not going to fix you. I’m definitely not going to save you. But I am going to listen.”

The world tells us that men aren’t supposed to have feelings. If we do, we damn well better not show them.

But I feel more like a man than I have in years when I look at Julia and pry open my chest, blood and guts and truth spilling out between us.

“Three years ago, I walked out on my wife. She was a good girl, and she loved me, and I broke her heart and destroyed her life.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Greyson

I wait for Julia to recoil in horror.

Will her exit be dramatic, I wonder? Will she call me out and slap me across the face and slam the door on her way out? Or will her disgust be of a more quiet variety, where she silently judges me, slowly begins to loathe me as she stops answering my calls?

I wait.

But Julia just looks at me. Her fingers moving gently through mine.

In her eyes—

I don’t see loathing.

I see sympathy.

Makes the throb inside my chest and ears lessen. Just the tiniest bit.

Just enough to encourage me to keep going.