Juniper Hill (The Edens #2)(41)

The rest of my day was spent cleaning alone with Knox’s words to keep me company. It wasn’t a best day. But it wasn’t a worst either. The weight of the day sat heavy on my shoulders as I trudged to my car and drove to the daycare center.

I walked into the nursery, desperately wanting to hold my son, but as I scanned the room, I saw no Jill. And no Drake.

“Um, hi. Where’s Drake?” I asked the woman changing a baby. It was the same girl from this morning, young like Jill, with strawberry-blond hair.

“Oh, he’s not here.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Jill had to run a quick errand and she took him along.”

“Excuse me?” What. The. Fuck.

“She just lives next door.” The woman pointed to the wall.

“She’ll be back in a minute.”

“Okay,” I clipped and plucked his diaper bag from his hook. Then I waited, arms crossed over my chest, foot tapping on the floor as I counted the seconds ticking by on the wall clock.

Three minutes and forty-one seconds later, the back door opened and Jill came inside with Drake on her hip. Her smile faltered for a moment when she spotted me.

I crossed the room and took Drake out of her arms. “Hey, baby.”

He started crying, like he did every day, and reached for Jill.

Like she had done to me this morning, I twisted and pulled him out of her reach when she tried to touch his hand.

“I’d prefer it if Drake wasn’t taken out of this building.” I walked him to his car seat and put him in, working the straps as fast as my fingers would move.

“Oh, okay,” Jill said. “I didn’t think it would be a problem.

We were just next door.”

I didn’t trust myself to speak another word, so as Drake fussed, I clicked his buckle, looped the diaper bag over my shoulder and walked out the door.

The moment his seat was clicked into its base and I slid behind the wheel, my phone rang.

I checked the number and hit decline. One hundred fifty-five calls in the two months I’d lived in Quincy. Since I didn’t have to worry about daycare calling and there wasn’t anyone I wanted to talk to anyway, I shut the damn thing off.

Drake’s crying stopped by the time we hit the highway.

And that’s when mine started.

I was so tired. Mentally. Physically. But mostly, I was tired of being alone.

All my life, the women in my family had been at the mercy of the men who kept them. My mother. My grandmother. My sister. I’d broken that cycle by coming to Montana.

If I let Knox or anyone help, wasn’t that like taking a huge step backward? What happened when I depended on him?

Except I couldn’t keep going like this. I needed . . . help.

Admitting that, even to myself, made me just cry harder.

The tears fell in a steady stream as I turned onto Juniper Hill, winding my way down the lane. The lights were on at Knox’s house, casting a golden glow into the night. His truck was in the garage.

I parked and took out Drake, planning on going upstairs and making myself a dry and depressing peanut butter sandwich for dinner. But my feet carried me across the gravel to Knox’s front door.

He opened it before I could knock. His gaze tracked a tear as it dripped down my cheek.

“I want to not feel so alone. I want my kid to smile when I pick him up from daycare. I want Drake to have a normal life, and I feel like this is so far away from one, I can’t even see which direction to start walking. I want you to kiss me again. I want to never eat a peanut butter sandwich again. I want—”

Knox silenced me with his lips, banding one strong arm around my shoulders while the other lifted Drake’s car seat from my hand. His tongue dragged across my lower lip as his soft mouth pressed into mine.

Before I was ready for it to end, he pulled his lips from mine, but his arm stayed tight, pulling me to his chest.

“There’s one want granted. What else do you want?”

I leaned into him and told him the terrifying truth. “You.”





CHAPTER TWELVE

KNOX

Memphis laughed as I strolled into the hotel room she was cleaning. “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

“I’m on a break.”

“Uh-huh,” she deadpanned. “You had a break fifteen minutes ago.”

“Twenty.” I handed her the latte I’d just picked up from Lyla’s.

“What’s this?”

“A latte.”

She stared at the paper coffee cup like I’d brought her a brick of gold, not a drink my sister had refused to let me buy.

Memphis sipped from the black plastic lid, and that look of sheer joy on her face . . .

For that look, for a laugh, I’d bring her a coffee every day.

“Thank you.”

“It’s just a coffee, honey.”

Her eyes softened. “Not to me.”

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

I stepped closer, fitting my hand to her jaw. “Like you need to be kissed.”

A smile lit up her face as she stood on her toes. She was too short to reach my lips so I bent and sealed my mouth over hers, my tongue sweeping across her lower lip.

She gasped, her hand with the coffee stretching for the TV