Because I Love You (18 page)

I gripped my pant legs, every cell in my body shaking. This was what I’d wanted, wasn’t it? To hear that I wasn’t just another conquest? That he really did care about me? Lord knows I’d come to deeply care about him. And now I had my answer. A sincere, earthshattering, beautiful one. So why was I still so terrified?

I swallowed tears. “Neil, I . . . I care about you too. More than you know. But . . . I can’t. Not when I’m . . .” I bit down on my tongue. Physical pain to keep in the emotional pain.

Neil touched my knees. “I meant what I said before about that not mattering to me. I need you to trust me on this.”

I shook my head and turned away. My voice was barely more than a whisper when I spoke, “I can’t ask you to be a father figure to a baby that isn’t even yours. As soon as it’s born, you’re going to change your mind about me.”

A pause. Then he tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “Would you please stop assuming you know how I think?” His fingertips lingered along my jaw line, and a chill ran down my spine. “Give me another chance to prove that I want to be here for you.”

I looked into his deep-blue eyes. His gaze was intense and unfaltering. A vice gripped my heart. Did I dare to let him in? I reached up and held his wrist, unable to breathe.

“Promise me we’ll move slow?” I asked.

“Promise.” Neil lifted my chin and leaned in, and my palms sweated.

“If you break me, I don’t think I’d ever recover,” I whispered, his lips inches from mine.

“Then it’s a good thing you won’t have to.”

Neil lightly touched his lips to mine, but the kiss still made the hair on my arms rise. He pulled back just enough to look into my eyes, and the concern I found there for my comfort—for
me
—made me feel like I was floating. This was definitely a different Neil than the one I’d kissed years ago. I gripped his wrists tighter and leaned into him, and his mouth found mine again. He kissed me long and deep, sliding his hand to the nape of my neck. My toes curled.

Everything about Neil felt so right—so perfect. The way he held me, the way he smelled, the way he tasted. When he kissed me, missing pieces of myself fell back into place. Carter said he loved me, but with Neil, it radiated from him with every glance, every touch. I should never have denied this.

Wrapping my arms around his neck, I kissed him harder, my body tingling. His other hand touched my lower back and pulled me closer. Neil’s tongue slipped into my mouth. My skin flushed. My legs parted slightly, beckoning him nearer. A soft noise escaped his lips, and Neil’s hands moved to hold my face. Soon, our kisses slowed, and he pulled away.

He rested his forehead against mine. “Man, you are not going to make it easy to go slow.”

“Sorry,” I replied, my pulse still thrashing in my ears. I attempted some humor. “I’m actually kind of surprised you have a go-slow setting.”

He lifted his forehead off mine and smirked. “Look at you, being all snarky.” He stroked my cheek with his thumb. “With you . . . I want to do it right, this time.”

The blue of Neil’s eyes seemed to glow, and his cheeks were flushed. Seeing him like this, after such an intimate moment, made my head spin again.

“What do you say I take you home before your mom starts wondering where you are, and we pick this up later?”

“Yeah, I don’t think I can walk yet.”

He laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and I couldn’t help myself. I flung my arms around his neck, and the kissing started all over again.

It was only 7:00 p.m. when Neil and I climbed into his truck, so instead of taking me straight home, we went out for a bite to eat.

“Mom gave me my adoption papers,” I said before shoving a piece of chicken in my mouth.

“Well, that’s good. At least we know you weren’t kidnapped.”

“Really?”

He smiled.

I shook my head then told him what the papers said and how Jill was going to try to dig up more information on who my birth parents were.

“You know the court probably sealed that information, right? You can’t get it until you’re eighteen,” Neil said.

I frowned. Eighteen? I had to wait ‘til I was
eighteen?
That was two years away. Two years of staring at women in their mid-thirties, wondering if I looked like them, if they could be my mother. Goodbye appetite. I swirled my chicken in the cheese sauce on my plate. I was never going to make it that long.

Neil seemed to understand where my thoughts had gone. “Though, if you want, I can help Jill search for more details. I might not be as skilled as her when it comes to hacking, but I do know how—and Owen’s laptop is already equipped for the task.”

I glanced up at him and dropped my fork. His eyes were so bright, his smile so genuine. For a second, my thoughts returned to our make-out session in Owen’s garage. I stabbed my food, forcing the blush to disappear from my cheeks.

“Wow. I’ll have to remember all it takes to get you flustered is talking about breaking the law.” Neil rubbed the side of his foot against my calf.

“Shut up.” I kicked him in the shin, gently, and he laughed. “Seriously, though, are you sure Owen won’t mind you borrowing his laptop?”

“Nah. He’ll probably think his cousin took it to download more porn.”

I shook my head as he popped the last bite of his burger in his mouth, almost unable to keep myself from bouncing in my seat. Between Neil and Jill, we were bound to find information sooner rather than later, which meant I was one step closer to discovering what my life might’ve been like had I not been adopted. Thank God I’d decided to let the emotions in, to spend time with the people who cared about me, to not become a zombie.

Soon, I’d have something to tell my own child about where he or she came from, and maybe, just maybe, we wouldn’t be part of one family—but two.

chapter eighteen

Persuading Mom to let me spend the weekend at Jill’s was freakishly tough, especially after I ran off yesterday when I was supposed to be grounded. But once I convinced her that I couldn’t stay cooped up in the house, waiting to pop like an oversized water balloon, she finally conceded. As long as that was the only place I went, and Jill’s parents knew I was going to be there.

Mom dropped me off at Jill’s condo in downtown River Springs around noon, waited until Jill dialed her mom to ensure she knew I was staying, then left us alone to have fun. A few seconds longer, and I would’ve pushed Mom out the door. Literally.

Jill grabbed my bag and barreled up the stairs to the single—albeit, large—room on the top floor. The light-green walls of her bedroom were covered with
Marvel
,
Star Trek
,
Dr. Who,
and
Sherlock
posters, as well as science charts, like the periodic table and a drawing of a DNA strand. It was so totally Jill.

“Sorry it’s not quite what you’re used to,” Jill said. “My room’s pretty much an attic.”

“I think it’s great. It’s like a mini-apartment.”

She smiled and dropped my duffel near the end of her twin bed. Which, naturally, was covered by an
Iron Man
comforter. She skipped across the carpet to a desk near a single window.

“Okay, so, my mom’s closing the store tonight, but my dad’ll be off duty around five. And he’s a cop. So, if we’re going to do this, we should probably get started now.” Jill cracked her knuckles before typing a few passphrases on a series of unlock screens.

Somehow, the fact that she had to even hack into her
computer didn’t surprise me.

I pulled my adoption paperwork from my bag and handed it to her. “This is all I have.”

She tied her black hair into a ponytail at the nape of her neck and then took the papers from me. Quickly, she scanned them then laid them on the desk next to a notepad with indecipherable scribbling. Black and green screens popped up on the monitor, and she began typing—what I guessed were—lines of code. I couldn’t keep up.

“This is gonna make me dizzy.”

Her fingers froze. “Oh, sorry. I forgot you’re new to this.” She pointed to a set of double doors opposite her bed. “There’s a folding chair in there. Grab it while I pull up what I found while you were having sexy time with Neil.”

I cringed. “Oh, please don’t call it that.”

She grinned and started typing again. “Hey, I saw you eye hump him when we drove up to Owen’s house.”

My face hot, I hurried to the closet and yanked the chair out from behind her clothes. Responding to that comment was bound to dig an even deeper hole, and I wasn’t going to admit she was right. I
did
pretty much drool all over myself during my make-out session with Neil.

For the next few hours, Jill broke through firewall after firewall with code after code, but her repetitive swear words told me we were getting no closer to discovering any information. Whatever third party server the adoption agency used had security that was locked “tighter than NASA’s.”

“Not that I’ve attempted to break into their systems,” Jill said with shifty eyes.

At 5:15, Jill’s dad walked through the front door, and the scent of Chinese food wafted up the stairs.

“Jillian, come down and eat!” he shouted. His footsteps followed him past the staircase, deeper into the condo.

Jill hid the thousands of windows she had open on her laptop—okay, that was an exaggeration—and turned to me with a frown. “Sorry I couldn’t get more. But at least we know where to start next time. We’ll crack it eventually and figure out who was working at the agency the night you were born.”

I nodded, unable to keep the frown off my face. “Well, thanks for trying. I didn’t realize it was going to be so hard.”

“Me either. Kind of weird that the agency’s so difficult.”

I followed Jill downstairs and into a small dine-in kitchen at the back of the condo. She introduced me to her dad—who apologized for not getting enough food—and the three of us sat at a round, four-person table in a corner where Jill’s parents had hung baby pictures on the walls. I shared Jill’s cashew chicken as her dad asked me about my interests and family. When I got to the part about my dad dying two years ago, he frowned.

“Yeah, I remember that accident. I was working that night. Took us a long time to catch the drunk driver who forced your dad’s car into the tree. I’m sorry we weren’t able to save him.”

I stopped chewing. I
knew
I’d seen Mr. Anderson before—at my dad’s funeral. I hadn’t put two and two together, though I should have. He was the only Native American on our police force. Not to mention, his last name was Anderson. I fingered the locket around my neck.

“Dad, seriously, you’re bringing the house down,” Jill said.

Mr. Anderson’s cheeks reddened slightly. I would’ve laughed had we not been talking about my dad moments before. Being reminded of his funeral, of watching his closed casket lowered into the ground. I really missed him. He always knew how to make me smile through my tears. Lord knew I could’ve used some of his humor the last few weeks.

Jill squeezed my hand, and I joined the conversation, pushing Dad from my mind. The rest of the evening was absorbed by video games, and after a quick trip to the Mini Mart—where we said hi to Neil and filled two bags full of junk food and caffeine-free sodas—we stayed up until 3:00 a.m. watching
Star Trek
and laughing until our sugar comas took over.