Written with You (The Regret Duet #2)(5)

She shook her head.

No words.

No explanation.

No way for me to beat back the hurricane brewing in her eyes.

“Daddy!” Rosalee yelled from downstairs. “Where’s Hadley? It’s time for cake.”

Shit. I dropped my forehead to Hadley’s. “I hate to say this, but there’s sugar involved. She’s going to be kicking that door down like the FBI in a matter of minutes. What do you want to do here? I can go stall her and buy you some time to collect yourself? Or I can make up an excuse if you want to leave? I could also drag Trent out back and beat him like a rug. It wouldn’t be our first or last brawl. You say the word—whatever I can do, I’ll make it happen.”

It was a joke. Sort of anyway. But she gave me nothing. Not even the hint of the smile that always caused my lips to curl as well.

Giving up on me altogether, Rosalee shouted, “Hadley!”

I sighed before calling back. “I’m coming, baby. Go wait outside.”

“Is Hadley with you?” she asked on another yell from downstairs.

“Yes. Go wait with Jenn.”

“Why is she in your room?”

“She…uh, had to use the bathroom. Go back outside!”

“Number one or number two?”

“Go!” I boomed, my voice echoing on the walls of my bedroom.

For such a serious situation, talking about number one or number two was awkward at best, but that was Rosalee. And I’d never been so grateful for her lack of etiquette as when I felt Hadley’s shoulder shake and a soft giggle escape.

Tipping my chin down, I caught her gaze. The pressure in my chest eased at the sight of her ghost of a smile.

“You know, if we wait up here any longer, you’re going to have to tell her number two, right?”

Her smile stretched, and I breathed a sigh of relief when the color began to return to her face. Unable to stop myself—or, at the very least, unwilling to try to stop myself—I dipped low, pressing my lips over hers.

She didn’t kiss me back. Instead, she rested her forehead on my chin, effectively hiding her face from my view.

“Caven,” she breathed, the two syllables merging into one.

“Tell me what’s going on. Whatever it is, I’ll take care of it.” I kissed her forehead. It was too close to resist.

She sucked in a deep breath. “I’m going to stay for a piece of cake and long enough to open her present. Then I think I need to go.”

“Okay.” I ignored the disappointment that rained over me. “Just a heads-up, I’m not sure that I can sneak away to your place tonight after all. Trent was talking about spending the night earlier and—”

“No, I get it. Family first. Maybe another time.”

“Maybe?” I teased. Anything to lighten the suffocating weight hanging in the air between us for reasons I didn’t understand. “I did not face a horde of zombies to recover the last condoms in existence to hear you say maybe.”

She laughed, soft and sweet.

But there was something about it.

Maybe it was the way it slid into a pregnant silence.

Or the way she leaned into me, her breasts pillowing between us, her hands going to the back of my neck and holding me tight, as if she could absorb me.

Or maybe it was just the unexplainable string that tied us together being plucked by karma.

But whatever it was, the lull that followed that laughter was utterly heartbreaking.

“Hadley?”

“I love her,” she told my neck. “I love her more than anything in the world. Please tell me you know that. No matter what happened in the past. Please tell me you know how much I love her now. I only want the absolute best for her. No matter what that entails.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

She was leaving.

That was the heartbreak I’d heard.

Whatever had happened with Trent. Whatever had been said on that deck. She was leaving.

Again.

I took a sudden step away from her, peeling her arms from around my neck. “What’s going on?”

She blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what the fuck is happening right now?”

“N-nothing. I was going to eat cake and then leave.”

“And when are you going to come back?”

More blinking from her.

More mounting frustration from me.

Her eyebrows furrowed. “Wednesday? Unless…you need to switch the date for some reason. I’m pretty free whenever. Just tell me when to be here and I’m here.”

That was when the alarm bells started ringing in my head.

As I stared at her with her long, red hair cascading over her exposed collar bone and her plump lips parted, all but begging for my mouth to press against them, that alarm became a blaring siren. And it screamed a warning just before a tidal wave slammed into me so hard and so fast that it stole the oxygen from my lungs.

For the first time since she’d reappeared over three months earlier, I didn’t want Hadley to leave.

I could bullshit myself and say that was all about my baby girl losing someone she cared about, but the relief singing in my veins told a different story.

That panic.

That anger.

That desperation when I’d thought she was saying goodbye.