I’ve learned about my daughter’s birth defect and decided to move to Alaska in the last fifteen minutes, and even though he has a right to be upset about both, yelling at me isn’t going to help anything.

  “That’s true. I might not. And then we’ll really have a problem on our hands.” I throw my T-shirt over my head, then whip open the curtain. “This is me compromising, Gideon! This is me selling my apartment in Los Angeles and moving up to Anchorage for the next eighteen years so that we can raise Ella-Orange together.” I cross my arms over my chest. “What compromises are you making?”

  He stands there in the exam room with his hands on his hips, his wild blue eyes furious. “You’re going to move to a city where you know absolutely no one. You’re going to be alone.”

  “What a big surprise!” I fire back. “It’s not like I have anyone anyway!”

  “You have me!” he yells, striding toward me and clamping his hands around my upper arms. “What I wanted to say at the airport…about how I feel…I love you, Addison. I love you. I want to be with you. I want to be a family.”

  I suck in a breath, staring at him, my heart overflowing with so many emotions, it feels like it’ll burst. He loves me. This man, who is so good, so gentle, so protective and kind, loves me.

  “Don’t you see that?” he demands. “Can’t you see that?”

  I want to tell him I love you too! I want to be a family too! But the last loose end between us is where we live and remaining pragmatic feels imperative. So instead I say, “I don’t want to live in Valdez, Gideon. There’s not enough for me there. It’s where my brother died. I don’t want to raise my daughter where her uncle died. If I only stay there for you, I’ll end up hating you for it.”

  “I don’t want to live in Anchorage,” he mutters. “It’s not home.”

  “Nor is Valdez,” I remind him. “You grew up in Tatitlek.”

  “Which had a population of one hundred. Anchorage has over a quarter-million people, Addison!”

  “And Los Angeles has four million. It’s all relative,” I say, shrugging my shoulders and wishing he could understand. “Come with me to Anchorage when I go for Kieran’s hearing in a few weeks? Come and see it through my eyes?”

  He doesn’t exactly look happy, but he finally nods. “I’ll go up there for a weekend, but I’m not going to change my mind. I don’t want to live there.”

  “Fair enough,” I say, telling myself it’s good that I didn’t confess my feelings for him. If he ends up staying in Valdez and I end up living in Anchorage, our lives may eventually diverge. Oh, we’ll have Ella and we’ll always be her parents, but if we don’t end up together—as a couple—I’ll be grateful that I never returned his feelings. “Thanks.”

  He sighs, still looking disgruntled. “Yeah. Okay.”

  “Whether you like it there or not, we’re going to need to be in Anchorage anyway,” I say, “for my appointments this summer and for the procedures Ella-Orange is going to need. She’s going to be in and out of the hospital for the first few years of her life.” My eyes burn as they fill with fresh tears. “Gideon. I’m so sorry I hurt her.”

  “You didn’t!” He pulls me into his arms, rubbing my back gently. “You heard the doctor. She’s going to be okay. We lucked out.”

  “She has a cleft lip and palate.”

  “So did Joaquin Phoenix,” he tells me. “And he’s a movie star. We’ll find a specialist to help her. Besides, in my eyes, she’ll always be beautiful, no matter what. We won’t let her feel less-than. Never.”

  A wave of love for him almost makes me dizzy and I close my eyes as I lean into him. “No, we won’t.”

  “And,” he says, gulping softly, “if there are other things wrong, we’ll find her special teachers. We’ll get her help. We’ll be there for her…every step of the way. We’re her parents.”

  Tears are streaming down my face as he finishes this little speech.

  “We’re her p-parents,” I manage softly.

  His arms around me hold me up, keep me safe, and tell me that my daughter will never know an unloved day of her life. I am so grateful for him, but I temper my love and gratitude with a strong dose of reality. We may end up living separate lives, in separate places, one day, with separate partners. It breaks my heart to think of him with someone else. But it breaks my heart more to think of giving up the sort of lifestyle I want and hating Gideon for it someday.

  “As long as we stick together,” he says, holding me tight, “we’ll be okay.”

  I hug him back, leaning into his strength as his words circle through my head, but a sense of foreboding keeps me from saying anything else, because forasmuch as there is love between us, we have no solid plan to be together.

  Chapter 12

  Addison

  We were able to coordinate my twenty-six-week appointment with Kieran Flanders’ hearing in Anchorage, and Gideon suggested that we stay at the Hotel Captain Cook but left the booking up to me.

  “Two rooms or one?” I ask him as he rubs my feet one evening after dinner.

  True fact: as you get more pregnant, your feet become more and more like Hobbit feet.

  “That’s up to you,” he answers, looking up at me from where he sits on the coffee table with my newly ginormous foot in his lap. When I growl softly, he suppresses a grin, knowing full and well he’s forcing me to make a choice.

  He loves me, and I know it.

  I love him, and he doesn’t know it.

  Since returning from Los Angeles, I’ve kept my hotel room, though I’ve ended up sleeping over at his place more than once, and he’s no stranger to my room at the Best Western either. But aside from some handholding and the heaven of spooning against him as we fall asleep, we haven’t moved our physical relationship forward any further.

  I know he’s waiting for a sign from me, but I’m hesitant to give it.

  Of course I want to have sex with him again. I daydream about it. I nightdream about it. I’m always thinking about it. But if we do, if we are intimate again on that level, I will tell him I love him. I won’t be able to keep it inside anymore. And I can’t help feeling that such a declaration will muddy waters that are already murky as hell. Though he’s willing to join me in Anchorage for a visit, he’s shown no interest in relocating there. And our return to Valdez after visiting LA has only strengthened my resolve to get settled elsewhere before Ella arrives. I will never feel at home in the place where my brother died frozen and alone, surrounded by death and despair. I need a fresh start. And it can’t be in Valdez.

  But in the end and against my better judgment, I decide that separate rooms simply isn’t what I want. If I’m going to experience Anchorage for the first time, I want to spend every moment with the man I love. With Gideon.

  I end up booking one room.

  “Checking in?” asks the desk clerk.

  “Yes,” I say. “DeWitt.”

  “Uh-huh. Yes. Here we are. I have you staying for three nights in a one-bedroom Crow’s Nest suite?”

  “One-bedroom, huh?” asks Gideon, who chuckles softly beside me.

  “That’s right,” I say to the desk clerk, turning slightly to face Gideon. “There’s a pullout sofa in the living room if you misbehave.”

  That only makes him laugh harder, and he’s adorable, so I can’t help but giggle too.

  As we head to the elevator bank, I feel nervous, which is totally ridiculous when I consider the weekend Ella was conceived. My feelings about that day, which were so conflicted at first, have mellowed over the months since January. Yes, it still feels bad that I was enjoying myself while my brother was dying. But if that day hadn’t happened, Ella-Orange wouldn’t be growing inside of me. I wouldn’t have had a chance to get to know Gideon better and to fall in love with him. Out of a day over which I felt so much guilt, something beautiful has grown. And maybe, I’m starting to think, it’s okay to not regret it.

  “Don’t be nervous,” Gideon says, pushing the button for the seventeenth floor and reading my mind with apparent ease. “Boundaries are in place. Nothing will happen unless you want it to, Addy.”

  I take a deep breath and let it go slowly, staring at the brass doors in front of me. I turn slightly to look at my profile. My reflection is still startling to me sometimes, but it’s incredibly sexy that Gideon did this to me. Just the thought makes my knees weak. Fucking hell, but I want him inside me again.

  “How about…no boundaries…just for this weekend? How about…what happens in Anchorage stays in Anchorage?” I suggest, wondering if we could make an exception and spend this weekend as a couple, even if we don’t have our future together completely sorted out.

  “Can we do that?” he asks. “Share a bed here and then go back to separate rooms on Monday?”

  “I stay in your room plenty,” I remind him.

  When I glance at him over my shoulder, his eyes speak volumes—Not in the way I want you to—but he just sighs, raising an eyebrow and waiting for me to answer his questions.

  “I don’t know,” I answer honestly.

  “At some point,” he says, “we’re going to need to make an actual choice, Addy. We’ll either decide that we want to be together romantically—as a couple—in addition to being parents… or we’ll decide that we are going to be amazing, kickass co-parents who lead separate personal lives.”

  “How does that look?” I ask him, even as the “separate personal lives” part squeezes my heart painfully.

  The brass doors open, and I step into the hallway, turning left toward our room, while Gideon walks behind me with the luggage.

  “The first option or the second?” he asks.

  “The first.”

  “Well, I have a home in Valdez, and you’re welcome to move in with me.”

  “And you’re just as welcome to move to Anchorage with me,” I counter.

  We walk down the hotel corridor in miserable silence because we’re deadlocked and we both know it.

  “I guess we better consider option two,” I say. “Separate personal lives. How does that look?”

  “Well…I guess I stay in Valdez. I can work weekends there but commute to Anchorage during the week to look after Ella-Orange. I’d have her all day while you worked. You’d have her alone on the weekends. We’d share the big stuff, like her birthday. And…” His voice tapers off as I stop in front of our hotel room, turning to look at him. He tries to smile at me, but it doesn’t look genuine at all. “And hopefully we’d each find someone who loves us, who wants what we want, who lives where we live, and who can find space in their heart for Ella. I don’t want to be alone forever, and I’m sure you don’t want to be either. If we can’t be together, I hope we can each be happy with someone else.”

  He reaches forward, gently brushing a lock of hair behind my ear. I look into his beautiful blue eyes, wishing that something—anything—about what he’s describing felt right or good. But it doesn’t. It sounds…terrible.

  “Hey,” he says, running his knuckles along my cheek. “We don’t have to decide today.”

  “I don’t…”

  I don’t want you to be with someone else, and I don’t want to be with anyone but you.

  I reach for his hand, sliding it to my lips and kissing it tenderly. I close my eyes, brushing my skin against his, my whole body humming with longing.

  He cups my cheeks. “Addy.”

  I open my eyes. “Please.”

  I don’t even know what I’m asking for. For relief? For comfort? For love? For something temporary in lieu of a forever he can’t seem to offer me right now?

  “Okay,” he relents, nodding his head, his eyes searching mine. “What happens in Anchorage, stays in Anchorage. No boundaries. Just for this weekend.”

  I blink at him, my heart speeding up with the implications of his words, every cell in my body pulsing with sudden and overwhelming need.

  “Just for this weekend,” he says again, his eyes darkening. “Be mine.”

  My face is tilted up to his, and he lowers his head with devastating precision, his lips landing flush on mine for the first time in weeks. And “damn” and “fuck” and every other curse word that ever was explodes in my head because I have been falling in love with him for months now, and everything—the way he feels, the way I feel, the sweet, sharp anticipation of knowing what’s about to happen between us—is heightened like it’s never been lifted before.

  With the key card still in my hand and my lips still fused to his, I manage to swipe it in front of the reader and push down on the lever-style handle, walking backward into the room. Gideon moves with me, his fingers at the buttons of my shirt the second the door slams shut behind us, while mine grapple at the hem of his T-shirt, skimming it up and over his shredded chest.

  He laughs, the sound low and rumbly, as my fingernails graze his skin. My silk blouse, now unbuttoned, skims down my arms and falls with a whisper to the floor at the same time he reaches behind his neck to yank his T-shirt over his head. His fingers are on the clasp of my bra, opening it with a twist of his thumb and index finger to unbind my breasts. I let my fingers graze slowly down his chest, looking up into his eyes and letting gravity take care of the straps. They slide down my arms, and when I lift my fingers from his skin, my bra falls to the floor.

  Naked from the waist up, our chests rising and falling rapidly from the force of our breathing, he stares at my slick, bruised lips for a second with his otherworldly eyes, before raising them to mine.

  “Slow down,” he murmurs.

  “You slow down.”

  “We’ve got all weekend.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “Are you stalling?”

  He shakes his head, but his eyes flick to my bump for a second before catching mine again. “No.”

  “Wait a second.” My hands land on my belly. “Oh, my God. You are. You’re stalling. Is it because I’m pregnant? Do you not want to—”

  “Stop it,” he says. “You’re sexy as fuck to me, Addy, and you know it.”

  “Then what?” I ask him.

  “My daughter’s in there!” he cries, gesturing to my stomach.

  I look down at my swollen belly and can’t help but note his erection, which is pushing and pulsing against the fly of his jeans, thick and needy, despite the dubious “presence” of his daughter.

  I glance back up at him, trying desperately not to smile, because he’s so adorable.

  “She’s the size of a big bunch of kale,” he says, running a hand through his hair and scowling. “I mean…will she…you know…know?”

  “Know what?” I ask, trying not to laugh because this is so ridiculous. “You think she knows when we’re watching Survivor or eating ice cream or when I’m peeing?” I tilt my head to the side, unable to keep my smile back. “Gideon. Are you serious?”

  “I fucking want you so bad, Addy, but…”

  I step closer to him so that my belly is flush to his abdomen. “She’s asleep.”

  “How do you know?”

  I put my hands on his shoulders. “Close your eyes.” He does, and I step even closer so that my belly is pressed into him. “Concentrate.”

  “Addy,” he groans when my lips touch down on his right collarbone, tracing it lightly with the skim of my skin against his.

  “Do you feel anything?”

  “Fuck, yes, I do.”

  My laughter is soft but satisfied. “Against your stomach. Do you feel her?”

  “Oh.” He breathes in deeply as I trace the left edge of bone, sucking the skin to make a tiny, heart-shaped hickey on his shoulder. “No.”

  “No,” I whisper, nuzzling his throat. “She’s sleeping. She fell asleep on the car ride here.”

  “How long will she—?”

  I put my finger over my lips. “I don’t know, but let’s make the most of it.”

  He looks slightly more comfortable. Either that or the fact that he’s been celibate since January is winning out over his sense of fatherly decorum.

  “Are you sure she won’t…feel it?”

  “Your cock?” I ask, teasing him. “Do you need an anatomy lesson? How would that even be possible? No. She won’t. But she might sense that her mama is happy.”

  His eyes dart from my stomach to my face. “Are you happy?”

  “I will be,” I say, moving back just enough to flick open the button of jeans. I smile at him, because this moment, for all that it’s the strangest make-out session I’ve ever experienced, it’s one hundred percent us: me, Gideon, and Ella-Orange. It’s us. And only we can be us. “I am.”

  “You are?”

  I nod, pulling down his zipper. “I am.”

  “Do I make you happy?”

  My fingers still. My eyes lock with his.

  “You do.”

  “I love you,” he says, his blue devastating because I’ve never, in all my life, experienced such naked and complete honesty in someone else’s eyes. Because this moment is perfect, and I’ve had too few perfect moments in my life.

  “I love you too,” I tell him, the words soft but organic. I mean them with every beat of my throbbing heart. He is the second person I have ever loved, but it’s true, and it’s good, and he deserves to know.

  His face freezes, then twitches. “Did you just say you loved me?”

  I nod as his lips tilt up in a smile.

  “Wait. You do? Say it again,” he says, his smile lifting his cheekbones and making his eyes sparkle. “Tell me you love me.”

  I take a deep breath. “I love you.”

  “You love me.” He reaches for my hands. “Say it again.”

  “Fuck me first,” I tell him, ruining the dirty sexiness of the words by giggling at his happiness. At our happiness. I roll my eyes because I have no idea when I became this cheesy. “Fine. I love you.”

  In an instant, I’m in his arms, with his lips covering mine. He groans into my mouth as his tongue glides forward to meet mine. The rasp of his stubble scrapes my cheeks and chin, but I welcome the burn. I welcome him.

  “I—I didn’t expect this.” He cups my cheeks and looks down at me. “You love me.”

  “I’m pretty sure,” I say, with a little smile and a little shrug. “I don’t have a ton of experience in the matter.” Biting my bottom lip before letting it go, I level with him. “Here’s the truth: I’ve never felt like this about anyone. I’m sure. I love you, Gideon.”