“Hungry?” he asks, nodding at my hands.
With anybody else, I’d think this was a sly dig about my weight, but Forrest’s smirk is anything but combative. His eyes are a predator’s, focused and aimed at me, but kindness swells behind them as he meets my gaze.
It’s a carnal sort of kindness, as though he’s telling me he’d kill anybody who tried to hurt or touch me.
“Yes,” I say. “But it’s not that. I was just thinking about the future, our future. Our children.”
“You still want that, don’t you, Fiona?” he snarls.
“Yes,” I tell him. “Badly. Very badly.”
“Good,” he sighs, voice tinged with relief. “And don’t worry about the other score. Our delicious meal of cold, sludgy snails will be here soon.”
I giggle. “Oh, I can’t wait.”
He leans forward, laying his forearms on the table. The fabric around his biceps tightens and squeezes, as though it’s trying not to burst apart at the seams under his body’s pressure.
“Why did you start to write?” he asks.
“I guess my dad leaving had a lot to do with it,” I murmur.
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” I say, nodding. “Kelly, my sister, she’s actually the one who pointed that out to me. Dad walked out on us when we were ten years old. He just disappeared one day, leaving a note behind, basically telling my mom he never wanted to be a dad.”
“Fucking despicable,” Forrest snarls. “A man abandoning his family is unacceptable. He should be goddamned ashamed of himself.”
I nod, biting my lip, something primal lighting up inside of me at his words.
He’ll never abandon our family.
He’ll never walk out and leave a pathetic note behind.
“I started writing stories about where he went,” I say. “They were all make-believe, obviously. I had no idea where he was. But I imagined he’d become a spy or a knight in some far-off magical land. I lost myself in writing, and Kelly encouraged me. She read my stories aloud, using different voices for all the characters. I became addicted to it, I guess. Even if I’ve never finished a full-length project.”
“You will,” he tells me firmly.
“Thank you, Forrest,” I murmur.
“Did you ever found out where your dad went?”
“Yeah,” I say. “He went to Canada to live with this woman he’d been talking to online. When I was seventeen, I learned he’d died of lung cancer. He was always a smoker, and clearly, he never stopped. The woman contacted us and told us. She thought we should know.”
“I’m sorry,” Forrest says, a growl in his voice. “Whatever he was, he was still your father. That must’ve hurt.”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “But in a way … It’s too awful to say.”
“It was a relief,” he says, eyes searing into me as if capturing the candlelight. “Because at least you knew where he was now. At least you didn’t have to wonder anymore.”
“Is that terrible?” I ask.
“It’s human,” Forrest says. “It’s how you felt, how you feel. You don’t have to be ashamed of that.”
He reaches over and dabs at my cheek, wiping away a tear I didn’t even know was there.
I grab his hand, squeeze onto it hard, feeling his knuckles and his warmth. His cologne, or maybe just his natural muskiness, wash over me, surround me.
“Sorry for depressing us at dinner,” I murmur.
“You don’t have to apologize to me,” he growls.
“What about you?” I ask. “Did you ever learn what happened to your parents?”
“They OD’d within a year of each other,” Forrest says. “My uncle died when I was in my teens. I’ve been alone for the past twenty-some years.”
As the words rise on my lips, I hear Kelly in my mind, warning me to be careful, to take this slow, and not overextend myself. She’s screaming in my mind that I have to remember how this man lured me here—her word, which I hate.
But there’s real pain in the cracking of his voice, withheld until he could tell somebody about it until he could tell me about it.
“You’re not alone anymore,” I murmur, even as my instincts try to make me avert my gaze, to bite my lip, to do anything to still my words. “And you never will be again.”
He walks around the table and kneels down next to me.
For a crazy second, I think he’s going to take a ring from his silver jacket pocket.
For an even crazier moment, I almost scream, Yes, yes, of course, I’ll marry you.
How’s that for taking it slow?
But he slides his hands around my hips and pulls me into an embrace. I collapse against him, wrapping my arms around his rock hard shoulders, clawing onto the muscled terrain of his back.
He presses his lips against my cheek, hot and captivating, and then smooths them around until our lips meet in a conflagration of want and need. I moan through the kiss, digging my fingernails into his suit jacket, trying to get to the solid skin beneath.