Only this time, he’d stayed while I’d changed Evan into his pajamas, brought me hot tea when I’d refused to leave Evan’s side, and then paced my house for hours as if he were searching for a purpose when I knew he could already feel his purpose echoing from the floors.
Footsteps shuffled behind me, quiet and subdued, before the man knelt next to me. Fingers ran the length of my hair, massaging into my neck, as his nose pressed into the locks as he inhaled.
I shivered with the whisper at my ear, “You need to get some rest. You’re exhausted.”
I glanced back at him, gazing into the depths of those caring, kind eyes that glinted and shone in the muted light that glowed from the lamp on Evan’s nightstand. My mouth trembled, my lips soaked with the silent tears I could no longer hold back.
As if I was purging every negative thing from the day and casting up a million prayers of gratefulness at the same time. “I don’t know how to leave him after a day like today.”
We’d been assured he was fine.
Still, I felt chained to my son’s side. Unable to move.
Kale wrapped his strong arms around me, pulling my back to his chest. I could feel the thrum, thrum, thrum of his magnificent heart. The sound reverberating and seeping into me.
“Let me take care of you. Let me take care of him,” he murmured.
Shifting, he pushed to his feet, bringing me with him, sweeping me from the floor and cradling me in his arms.
I held on, sinking into the staunchest kind of security, and pressed my face up under his chin, feeling the warmth and the life. Inhaling the woodsy, masculine scent.
“I’ve got you,” he said for what had to be the hundredth time that day.
And I trusted that he did.
He carried me out of Evan’s room, through the house, and into my bedroom.
A room he’d never seen.
I could feel it when his sight landed on my massive bed, the heft of the breath that pressed from his lungs.
He moved through my room and set me down on one side. He didn’t say anything, just quietly worked through the buttons of my dress. Though this time it was different. This time, it was with care and deference.
He slowly lifted it over my head. Cool air skated my skin. His gaze swept over me, but there was no smirk. No tease.
He moved to my dresser and pulled open the top right door, as if he already knew what he was looking for. Silently, he moved back through the space, his hands winding the silky soft pink nightgown over my head, gliding it over my body where it barely landed at the top of my thighs.
Everything felt so intimate.
Our breaths and his touch and his care.
“Kale.”
I didn’t know what I was asking for.
He cupped the side of my face and ran his thumb along the hollow beneath my eye. “I know.”
He kissed my forehead once, twice, and then lifted my covers. “Get in, sweet girl.”
I sank back into the comfort.
Not just of my bed.
But the feeling that swam through my spirit. The promise that everything was going to be all right. He pulled the covers over me, and his fingertips danced across my cheek. “Sleep well, Hope.”
Exhausted, I slumped into the welcome of my pillow, my body relaxing beneath the blankets, only a fluttered breath before I was asleep.
I jolted awake to the silence. To the thick darkness of my room.
I reached over, switching on the lamp on my nightstand. I blinked, adjusting to the shadows before I pushed off the covers and slid from my bed.
Barefoot, I padded across the wooden floors. Drawn. Silently moving through the living room and back down the hall.
At Evan’s door, I paused.
Kale lay on the hard floor next to the bed, a pillow from the couch under his head and a tiny throw barely covering his torso, still in his shirt and jeans.
His arm was slung up onto Evan’s bed, his palm resting across my son’s heart.
And that feeling—that affection that compounded and churned and swelled—it burst.
I’d known this man was more.
Now I knew he was everything.
I tiptoed over to the side of Evan’s bed and gently ran my hand over my son’s forehead.
He sighed from the depths of his sleep.
Content and safe and perfect.
And Kale’s hand that was on Evan’s heart? I gathered it in mine and threaded my fingers through his. Those eyes popped open, twilight on the sea.
He looked up at me before he climbed to his towering height.
He followed me without a word.
Without a sound.
The only voice the energy that rumbled beneath our feet.
21
Kale
Silently, I followed behind her. Our footsteps subdued as we waded through the tension that climbed into the atmosphere, amplifying the closer we got to her room.