I didn’t say anything back, too worried she’d ask me questions about the case with Alex, and how I’d have to avoid answering them until I could figure out how to update her on it all without freaking her out.
Standing in just a pair of basketball shorts, with Naomi only wearing a t-shirt, I held her close, listening to the sounds of the space around us.
It wasn’t freezing cold, but it also wasn’t warm, so soon enough, she shivered and burrowed into me. That’s when another part of me woke up.
Shifting so that the fronts of our bodies were pressed against each other, I cupped her neck and used my thumbs to tilt her face back.
“Do you know what you mean to me?”
The moon had shifted slightly in the time that we’d been out here, meaning I had more light to see her face with when she frowned.
I didn’t care that the question had come out of the blue. I needed her to know that I’d do anything for her and Shanti.
“What’s brought this on, honey?”
Rubbing the slight cleft in her chin with my thumb, I pressed her further. “Answer the question, Naomi. Do you know what you mean to me? What you and Shanti both mean to me?”
Her eyebrows pulled together slightly as she frowned. “Of course. Well, at least, I think I do. You always look after us and give us your attention, even if other things need it. To me, that means we mean a lot to you.”
Of course it would. As someone who hadn’t had that from anyone aside from her brother growing up, Naomi would know better than anyone that when someone gave you their undivided attention, regardless of other shit going on around them, it meant they actually cared.
But she didn’t have it quite right.
“No.” Her head jerked slightly at my answer. “You don’t mean a lot, you mean the world to me. Seeing both of you happy, healthy, and safe is my priority. If you ever need anything, all you have to do is tell me, and it’s yours. If you want my time, you have it. If you need a kidney, you’ve got it.” Her lips pressed together tightly.
“You know, I was thinking about my parents the other day. Mi-mi has a photo of Dad holding Mom and me, and from what I can remember, she always had his undivided attention. If one of them had died and the other had survived that fire, they would have gone through life empty.
“That’s not to say they didn’t love me,” I added quickly as she opened her mouth, “but they were like two magnets with each other. On its own, a magnet has power, but it’s useless unless there’s another magnet or metal for it to attach to. That was their relationship, and that’s how I feel about you.”
Her arms tightened around me. “When I was little, you were this awesome guy who played basketball. As I got older and started to notice boys, I was kind of disappointed because none of them had that extra something that you had, but I figured every little girl has a crush on someone older, it didn’t mean much.”
“There’s also a right and wrong when it comes to age differences, Nome. With two years between us, if I’d started looking at you in that way before you hit, say, seventeen or eighteen, I’d have felt like a dirty pervert.”
She chuckled and shook her head. “If you say so. Anyway, when I saw you for the first time in Piersville, you’d changed from the boy on a pedestal who was a kick-ass basketball player, to Carter Lane, the hottest guy I’d ever seen. I was still feeling overwhelmed with Shanti, even though she was over a year old the first time I saw you, so I’d been looking after her for a while. I guess I was just grateful that I had someone other than Heidi who I had a history with in Piersville.”
“I wanted to take it slowly so that you were in the right place for us to be together.”
She gently scratched her nails on the back of my head in the way that I’d come to love, making my eyes close as the sensations shot through me.
“And you stuck to that. I think that for us, it was the right move to make. No matter what I told myself, I wasn’t ready for any other changes to my life, and I don’t think Shanti was either. Our timing was perfect for us.”
Tightening my hold on her, I picked her up so that her head was level with mine. “I love you, Naomi Kelly.”
Instead of repeating the words back, she pursed her lips and looked to the side. “I am pretty lovable.”
She had no idea. Her parents never deserved to have even a hint of her beauty in their lives.