Lead Me Home (Fight for Me #3)(114)

He blinked through the dim lights of the room. “I thought . . . I thought for all these years that I couldn’t be trusted. That I didn’t deserve to be.”

He gathered up my arm and pressed the underside of my wrist to his lips.

A sound hitched in his throat. A guttural cry that I felt move all the way through the center of me.

“I’m always gonna miss her, Nikki. I will miss her every day of my life. I thought that made me a lost soul. That I had no home. But you . . .”

He eased off the chair and moved so he was completely hovering over me, taking both sides of my face in his hands.

He squeezed me tightly. As if he were begging me to hear.

“You, Nikki . . . you are my home. You’ve been leading me there all along, calling me there, and I was too blind to see that was where I belonged. Too afraid to accept it. Too afraid to believe in it. Too afraid to trust in myself.”

His throat bobbed when he swallowed, and he edged back to standing. He set one of those tattooed hands over his heart.

“I’m a simple, man, Nikki. If I were Kale, I’d have planned some big thing. Wooed you. Impressed the hell out of you,” he said, mouth tweaking into something that resembled a grin before it fell flat again.

“But I’m not . . . I’m just here . . . this lost soul who finally found his home, begging her to open the door and let him in.”

Tears rushed to my eyes, and a ball of emotion rolled through my chest.

Pressing and pulling and pleading.

“The door has always been open, Ollie. Always. You just had to make the choice to walk in.”

“Only if you let me stay forever.”

I hated the reservations that scrambled to be heard. That wall that wanted to rise up and protect my heart that he’d broken again and again. But they shouted at me not to be a fool.

“What about Sydney, Ollie? The fact that you can’t look at me without seeing her? Without thinking of her? I don’t want to be the girl standing in her shadow.”

He was back to hovering over my hospital bed, this time his nose so close to brushing mine. “How could you stand in the shadows when you are the brightest thing in the room?”

His lips brushed against mine in the softest kiss.

“Sunshine,” he murmured like praise. “You are light and life. My life. My everything. Let me be yours.”

Tears streaked free, and I lifted my chin, our mouths meeting as I whispered, “I’ve always been yours.”

Our foreheads met, and we shared our breaths.

That energy rippled and danced.

Climbing into the atmosphere.

Colors and light.

Chemistry.

He kissed me again as one of his hands slid down my face, cupping my jaw, my chin, gliding to my heart. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

Nerves tumbled. “What’s that?”

His hand kept moving, slipping over my hip until he moved it over my stomach. His hand resting between us. “We’re gonna have a baby.”





40





Ollie





“Ollie, I’m not crippled.” She swatted at my shoulder.

Playfully.

I had her swept up in my arms, holding her as the elevator clanged for the third floor of my building.

I nuzzled my nose along her jaw, inhaling deep, my lips a soft brush against her cheek. “How about you just let me hold you for a while, yeah?”

Her arms were looped around my neck, and she buried her face in my beard. “If you insist, big boy.”

I squeezed her as the elevator jostled to a stop at the top floor, cages sliding open to the hall. “Plan on holding you forever, sweet girl.”

She giggled.

God.

Was it possible I got this? Her giggles and her smiles and all her days?

I wanted them. Fuck, I wanted them so bad that I held her a little tighter against me as I carried her down the hall.

“That might get awkward, you know?”

“What, you don’t think people would approve of me carrying you to work?”

She was chewing on her bottom lip as she looked up at me, a flush on her cheeks that screamed of so much life. “People might get weird ideas about us.”

Us.

I grinned. “Let them get all the ideas they want.”

I angled to the side so I could fumble with the lock on the front door. I was still carrying her when we got inside.

It was late when she’d been discharged from the hospital this evening.

Her attending doctor had told her the exact thing Kale had told me.

The most important thing she needed was rest. To give her body time to recuperate from the trauma. I took her straight to my bedroom.

Strike that.

Our room.

I laid her on the bed, and she giggled again, just as I was crawling right up with her, unable to leave any distance between us.

Needing her near.

I propped myself on my elbow, making sure to keep my weight off her, and ran my fingers through her hair. “How are you able to keep smiling after everything you just went through?”

It wasn’t an accusation.

It was awe.

Pure. Fucking. Awe.

This girl.

Goodness and light.

With a shaky hand, she reached out and ran her fingers through my beard before she let them drift up, moving across my cheeks, my eyebrows, my nose.