“’Cause I gotta work all this shit out and I have no f**kin’ clue how to explain to my daughter that she’s got a great mother who’s a good woman she should learn from and emulate and, bein’ a girl, she needs her Mom growin’ up. Therefore, she is not movin’ in with you and me.”

“Can I suggest that giving a little might get you all a lot?”

His brows drew together. “What?”

“Creed, you see your kids four days a month. I get that your work makes that the way you have to go but you’ll have me partnering with you and living with you, so maybe you’ll have more time to be with your kids. If Chelle’s down with restructuring custody, maybe you two can do joint or you can have a day or two a week. If they’ve got a ways to go for school and you’re busy, I’ll be all over getting them to and from school but more time with you may help Kara out. If Chelle gives that to her daughter, it may help her to see her Mom in a different light. And,” I grinned, “I’m awesome and you love me but I’m not her Mom. She’s young, she may not get it for years but I figure she’ll get it eventually that Chelle is really the shit and all that will work itself out. You all just need to power through it. Girls are complicated but, if we have a brain in our heads, which Kara does, we straighten ourselves out in the end.”

His eyes drifted over my head and he stared unfocused into the room a moment before he muttered, “Chelle’d work that out with me.”

I figured Chelle would do just about anything for Creed and her kids but I kept my mouth shut.

He kept musing over my head. “And I’d get to see my kids more.”

“And they’ll get to see you. An all-‘round winner.”

He looked back at me and said softly, “You’re gonna be a good Mom.”

Jesus, I hoped so.

“If we’re lucky, we’ll find out that’s true sooner rather than later.”

His arm snaked out and wrapped around me, pulling me toward him, off my elbow and tucking me under him as he rolled into me. “Doesn’t have to do with luck. We gotta put the effort in,” he told me.

We certainly were doing that.

“As you know, I’m all in on that plan,” I shared.

He smiled down at me.

I lifted a hand and ran a finger down his jaw as I said quietly, “Don’t know where you’re at with it. I told you Chelle told me all about it. I’m just going to say for the record, she’s right. She deliberately trapped you into marriage and knew through your time together she didn’t have your love.”

“Can’t trap a man who agrees.”

I shook my head. “Oh yeah, you can.”

“Sylvie –”

I cut him off to ask, “Did you tell her you love her?”

I watched his jaw get hard before he forced out his, “No.”

“Not ever?”

He drew in breath then admitted, “Found other words that implied it but didn’t say it.”

“Then you didn’t lie.”

“She didn’t hold me at gunpoint at the altar,” Creed pointed out.

“Babe,” my hand slid down to the side of his neck and curled around, “you’re Creed. You’ve always been Creed. She fell in love with you and did it hard, so even drifting after losing me, my guess is, you were Creed with her too. And the Tucker Creed I know would never knock up a woman and not do right by her. My guess again, she knew that and played on it. People do shit when they love someone. It wasn’t cool but it was understandable. That said, you gotta let that go. You both played your part in that doomed marriage. If you let it go, maybe she can let it go too. You’d be doing her a favor and I think if you two worked that shit out, your kids would feel that ease between you and it would work out for them too.”

Creed stared down at me and asked, “Jesus, baby, when’d you get so f**kin’ smart?”

I grinned up at him. “See, when I was six, I met this worldly eleven year old who was wise and took care of me and taught me everything he knew.”

As I spoke, I watched Creed’s eyes flash, his face harden with intensity and I felt his body tense against mine.

When I was done talking, he said softly, “Fuckin’ love you, Sylvie.”

I kept grinning. “Fuckin’ love you too, Tucker Creed.”

Then I lifted my head, touched my mouth to his and only moved back an inch before I said quietly, “Thank you for giving me a great birthday.”

I watched his face get soft and I fell back to the pillows just in time for his hand to come up, his finger touched my new (totally beautiful) pendant then it slid under it and twisted the chain gently before he replied, “You’re welcome, beautiful.”

My grin got bigger but it didn’t last long.

This was because Creed dropped his head and kissed me.

Therefore, my birthday started great (notwithstanding the shitty dream) because of Creed.

And it ended great too.

Because of Creed.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Come Back to Me

A hot summer night in Kentucky, sixteen years earlier, Sylvie is eighteen…

I sat on the pier in the moonlight, staring at the water.

I couldn’t find Creed.

I’d spent hours at the pier the day before, waiting, waiting forever. The Snickers were ruined. My skin was burned.

Creed didn’t show.

I went to his house. He wasn’t there. His truck wasn’t there.

I went back to the lake, waited and waited and nothing.

I was worried.

Creed would never leave me.

Never, never, ever.

Something was wrong.

I called him but he didn’t answer. I called him again and he didn’t answer. And again. And again.

When it got late and he didn’t show, I went back to his house. I broke in the window and lay in his bed, waiting. I hoped he’d come home but I also couldn’t go to my house.

I told Daddy I was leaving. I told him I wasn’t coming back. He was really angry then he got all calm and tried to talk to me. I told him I wasn’t going to change my mind and he let me go. He even said I could keep my car.

It was kind of strange how easily he let me go. I mean, it wasn’t pleasant but it wasn’t as hard as I imagined it would be.

So when he let me go, I went but I told him I wasn’t coming back and I couldn’t. I couldn’t go back. I had a life to begin with Creed and I had a life I hated that had to end.