Thrown Down (Made in Jersey #2)(9)

When, not if. She’d really been stripped of all her faith in him. “I can just be a friend.” He would have said anything in that moment to avoid seeing River cry. Anything. And it was too soon to let her know he wasn’t going any damn where. As soon as he’d left the church this morning, he’d called his employer and given notice.

“A friend,” River repeated, her brow furrowing. “I want to say no, but…I can’t imagine never knowing her. I hate being the one standing between you and the best part of my life.”

“I know that, doll,” he managed through his tightening throat. “I know.”

She rolled her lips inward, wetting them. “I just need to think about it.”

His fingers shook with the need to tuck a stray blonde hair back into her ponytail, so he shoved them into his jeans. “All right. You know where I’m staying.”

Blue eyes went wide. “The motel?”

“There’s only one in town,” Vaughn returned softly, loathing the haunted quality of her voice. “I’m not in our room, though.”

“Our room.” She sounded distant, her attention on something invisible over his shoulder. “I went back there once, when I was pregnant with Marcy. It sort of…I don’t know. I felt you in the room. I assumed you would just know about the baby after I’d been there. Isn’t that dumb?”

An invisible rope tried to rip his heart out through his mouth. Especially when River seemed to realize what she’d said out loud, both of her cheeks flaming bright pink.

“No,” he said hoarsely. “No, that wasn’t dumb. You’ve never done anything dumb in your life, except getting hooked up with me.”

She gave him that reproving look he remembered so well. The one that had always flipped his self-loathing on its head because at least River saw his worth. But it must have been muscle memory or reflex, since it faded from her features just as quickly as it appeared. “I…” She visibly shook herself, moving around to the car’s driver side and opening the door. “I have a picture. Of Marcy. That’ll have to be enough for now.”

Pulse pounding in his ears, Vaughn watched through the windshield as she lifted the console compartment and took something out. When she climbed back out of the car, Vaughn had moved without realizing it to meet her.

And when River placed the photograph in Vaughn’s hand, the ground shifted beneath his feet.

…

Don’t cry. God, whatever you do, don’t cry.

This couldn’t be the monumental moment she wanted it to be. Maybe if Vaughn had come back to Hook when she was pregnant, or when Marcy had been an infant, River could have allowed this moment, this presenting of a child’s image to her father for the first time, to mean something important. But it was far too late now. She’d wept her tears and pined for Vaughn’s return. She’d seen the bottom of despair, and it was a painful, lonesome place.

But, God, Vaughn made it hard not to react with her entire shipwrecked soul. His eyebrows went up, breath hitching once before coming out in a huge rush, fluttering the edges of the picture, in which Marcy was dressed like a pumpkin for Halloween. He shook his head, like maybe until that moment, he hadn’t really believed they’d created a tiny human being together.

Vaughn let the picture fall to his thigh, the opposite hand coming up to drag down his open mouth. “Ah, doll. She looks just like you.” He tried to clear his throat, but it was obvious from his voice he hadn’t succeeded. His boots scuffed on the black pavement as he paced away and returned. “Christ, River. We had a baby?”

His words sent her back to the day she’d gone into labor, the way she’d gotten through the ordeal by imagining him there, substantial and reassuring. Real. “Yes.” She had to look away from the gravity in his eyes before it sucked her in. “We made a baby.” In her periphery, River saw Vaughn lift the photograph again. She knew every detail he took in. Knew that while Marcy took after her, she’d inherited Vaughn’s devilish smile. “You can hang on to that. I have to go back—”

Vaughn entered her personal space without warning, bringing River’s back up against the car, dropping her pulse into a tumultuous downbeat. His bottomless brown eyes ran over her face, intense, so intense. Which she might have been able to resist, if it weren’t for the vulnerability lurking in their depths. “What was it like?” His attention drifted down to the space between them, that regard burning her alive. “Did you…have an easy time, Riv?”

His tortured tone pinned her to the car, rendered her feet incapable of carrying her away. “She was a C-section.” A need to ease the pressure in her throat had River trying for levity. “I have an ugly scar now. I’m not your flawless class president anymore.”

Vaughn crowded closer. So close she could feel his breath pelting her lips. Had his hand just grazed her hip? “Let me see it.”

River’s head was too busy spinning to make sense of his request. He’s touching me. He’s touching me. “See what?”

She almost moaned when his knuckle traced down her belly. “Show me the scar.” They met eyes when his hand slowly flattened on her stomach, his thumb applying just a bare amount of pressure, but it might as well have been a full body rub the way her senses went crazy, and crazier still when his upper lip grazed hers. “It’s too late for me to be there for you. It’s so f*cking late, doll. But I need to see what you went through. I need to pretend for just a second that I was a part of it.”