Going Down Easy (Boys of the Big Easy #1)(15)

Then she’d refused to think about the fact that it really might be a regular weekend thing for him. She’d also tried very hard to keep from wondering about who he might be taking up those same stairs with him on the weekends she wasn’t in town. She’d told herself it didn’t matter.

“I didn’t intend to go back to Trahan’s after that first weekend,” she told him honestly. That was why it wasn’t supposed to matter who else saw the upstairs rooms of Trahan’s.

“But you couldn’t stay away,” he said, reiterating her earlier admission.

She nodded. “Yeah.” Clearly, he liked that idea and wasn’t about to let her forget it. “And every time was supposed to be the last time. But it was . . . a break. A vacation. A chance to just be a woman who only had to think about what she wanted and not worry about things like bedtimes and four food groups and swearing and drinking and if the people I was spending time with would be good or bad influences on my daughter.” She took a breath. “It was too tempting to keep doing all of it when I was here. The food, the music, the sex,” she said, because there was no sense in pretending that hadn’t been a huge part of it. “When I was here, Stella was taken care of, and I could just be me.” She leaned in. “And that’s something you need to know—I love her. Dearly. But I also love time without her. A lot.” She watched him for his reaction to that.

“All parents feel that way sometimes,” Gabe said. “I get that. And I’m not saying that the kids need to come along on every date or anything.”

“I don’t want her to come along on any dates,” Addison said stubbornly. “And I definitely don’t want Cooper to come along on any dates.”

Gabe frowned at her. “Why the hell not?”

“Because I have one too many five-year-olds as it is,” she said, feeling her frustration growing. “Look, I know that sounds terrible, but the thing is, Gabe, Stella is way more than I had intended to have at this point in my life. Or maybe ever. Being a mom is hard, and frankly, I have no desire to double that. I don’t want another kid.”

There, she’d said it. She knew it sounded bad, but she couldn’t care about that. She needed Gabe to not want to get Cooper and her together. So if she needed to be a little bitchy about this whole thing, that was for the best. She was sure Cooper was a great kid, but . . . No, actually, she had no idea if Cooper was a great kid. He might be a hellion. But even if he was the sweetest child in the history of the world, it didn’t matter. He was a kid. And kids needed things. A lot of things.

She was raising Stella to be very independent, and thankfully her daughter was blessed with a naturally autonomous spirit. She’d been potty trained by one, was dressing herself by age three, and now, at age five, she was able to bathe with only supervision, get her own snacks, and read her favorite simple books. She’d be in kindergarten in the fall, and Addison was excited about the new challenges and stimulation for her always-on-the-go girl, but she also knew that the school routine would add more to her calendar. There would be certain times Stella had to be certain places. There would be fund-raising bake sales. There would be parent-teacher meetings and PTO meetings and God knew what other meetings. And Addison would be at them all. Because that’s what a good mom did. But she certainly didn’t want to be going to two sets of parent-teacher meetings and doctors’ appointments and recitals and . . . She stopped and took a breath as her heart rate quickened with even the idea of the added stress.

And really, getting involved with Gabe would be tripling the people who needed her, not just doubling. Gabe would need things, too. And while he was, obviously, a capable, successful adult, it wasn’t like she could just never consider his schedule or what he wanted for dinner.

She wasn’t selfish. Well, okay, maybe she was a little selfish. But dammit, being a mom was hard. She’d had plans that had been sidetracked by becoming a mom. She was so glad to have had Stella. She’d learned a lot about herself. Good and bad. And she’d never considered ending the pregnancy or putting the baby up for adoption. She’d made the choice to have sex with the most irresponsible man on the planet, and now being a single mom to Stella was the consequence of that. Addison believed in dealing with the consequences of her choices. So she was now a mom. And she was good at it. She worked at it. She took it seriously. But she hadn’t chosen it.

She’d never pictured her life with a child at any point prior to the at-home pregnancy test turning out positive. So she kind of thought she could be forgiven for not always knowing exactly what she was doing and for not always being thrilled with the way Stella impacted her decisions and routines.

Gabe was staring at her, and Addison braced herself for him to say, “I don’t want a woman with that attitude anywhere near my kid.” That was what she wanted him to say. But once he said the words, it would be the official end between them, and dammit, there was a chunk of her heart that didn’t want that.

Just like there was a chunk of her heart that wished she never had to make broccoli again in her life. But that chunk was always overridden by the chunk of her brain that said she had to because it was what a responsible mother would do.

“Doing it all alone must be hard,” Gabe finally said.

She frowned slightly. “Well, yeah. As you know.”

“I was fishing there for just how alone you are,” he admitted, sitting forward in his chair again. “As in, how involved is Stella’s dad.”