The Last Letter(79)

I laughed. “You ready for this afternoon?”

“Yeah,” she said with an enthusiastic nod. “How about you?”

“Nervous, humbled, happy, in sheer awe of the level of responsibility that comes with tiny humans.”

She looked up at me with tired but happy eyes. “Says every new father ever.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Me, either. Guess we’ll figure it out together. Hard to believe this was our home, I’m so used to living in the cabin now.”

“Think you’ll return once it’s safe for Maisie?”

“I honestly don’t know. I really like living at the cabin and having that privacy, that line between home and work. Living here, I was always at work.” She rubbed her forehead with her fingers and then tightened her ponytail.

“You okay? I mean, don’t smack me for male stupidity, but you look a little tired.”

She turned around, sitting on the window seat. “That’s because I am tired. Maybe it’s because Maisie only has scans this month, so my brain can take a little break from the normal insanity, and everything else just catches up.”

“What can I do?”

“You’re adopting my kids today so my daughter doesn’t die. I think that fulfills every requirement you could ever dream up.”

“I’m not just doing it for Ryan,” I started, but stopped when the door to the residence opened and Hailey raced in, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright.

“Conner Williamson just asked me out!” she exclaimed.

“No way!” Ella jumped up.

“Right? I’ve only been crushing on him since when? The ninth grade?” She spun in the middle of the floor, her arms outstretched. “Conner Williamson asked me out!”

Ella laughed. “I’m so happy for you!”

Hailey ran over and hugged her. “This is it! I just know it! He’s going to fall madly in love with me, and we’re going to get married and have babies and it’s going to be perfect!”

“Yeah, it is!” Ella agreed.

I saw something twist in her face, like her joy had somehow morphed into a panic-laced sorrow.

“Is it okay if I take off an hour early tomorrow?” she asked, pulling back with her hands on Ella’s shoulders.

“Totally!” Ella forced a smile, and I might have believed it if I hadn’t seen her slip.

“Thanks!” Hailey squeezed Ella again and danced away, spinning for good measure near the door and leaving.

“Ella,” I said softly, stepping in front of her so she couldn’t run away.

“What?” She shrugged and tried her damnedest to fake a smile, but her bottom lip trembled.

“What’s going on? And don’t say nothing.” I gently took her shoulders in my hands.

She shrugged. “I’m fine.”

“Ella, in five hours we’re about to share children. And yeah, I get it. I’m not really their dad, just the insurance provider, but don’t you think we have to be able to be honest with each other? The good, the bad, the exhausted.”

“She’s so excited.” Her voice was a whisper.

“Yes.”

“And I can’t remember what that feels like anymore. To get that excited. To be asked out on a date. I mean, it’s been seven years. Seven, Beckett.” She clasped my biceps, her nails no doubt leaving half-moons in my skin. “I’m pretty sure my virginity has regrown, that’s how long it’s been.”

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s how that works…”

“And I love my life. I love Colt and Maisie and this business. I’m proud of my choices, you know? I’m proud of them!” Her voice pitched upward.

“As you should be.”

“And everything with Maisie. That’s all I think about lately. I mean, it’s July, right? So it’s been nine months since she was diagnosed. Nine months. And I will do anything to make sure she lives—”

“Like let me adopt her,” I interjected, thinking it would help.

“Exactly! Like find the sexiest, most infuriating, addictive man I’ve ever set eyes on and then shove him not into the friend zone, but the brother’s friend zone, and then catapult him into the daddy zone, where, get this—he’s still untouchable.”

A rush of heat slammed through my body. I’d done so well keeping my hands to myself since our almost-disaster on the couch. I’d run six miles a day, taken cold showers, swam in the lake, you name it, all with the intention of keeping my hands off Ella, and with one tirade, she had me teetering on the edge of self-control. It had been almost a year since I’d had sex, and my body was reminding me in a very hard, very painful way that the only woman I wanted was standing in front of me, complaining that I was in the friend zone.

“Okay, stop. You didn’t shove me into the friend zone; I put myself there. And the daddy zone, too. That’s on me. Not on you.”

“Then you’re stupid!” she yelled, her eyes alight with the cutest indignation. “I mean, the friend zone, not the dad stuff.”

“You’re so cute.”

Her eyes narrowed.

Oh damn, wrong choice of words.

“Cute? I’m cute? No, that’s the issue. I haven’t had my hair cut in a year, do you know how that feels? It’s not the hair—I’m not that vain—it’s the time, Beckett. The time it takes to invest in yourself as a woman, and I’m not a woman anymore. I abandoned my makeup, my Sunday-night candle baths, I haven’t slept a full night since Maisie’s diagnosis, and I’ve been stuck wearing pants for a month because I haven’t shaved my legs.”