House of Payne: Steele (34 page)

Giving her everything she wanted, she thought, despairing. Except for the one thing she needed. “You’re not listening to me.”

“Luke said he had a talk with you,” he said bizarrely, changing directions so fast it should have given her whiplash. “He told you I went back to Louisiana before the fashion show, and why.”

It had been something about Steele getting his shit together, and seeing how he’d idealized the life he’d had before he was wounded. But it basically boiled down to one thing. “Apolline.”

She felt him sigh. “Yeah, okay. I went back because of Apolline, but also because I had a lot of other shit that needed to get sorted. When that mortar went off and turned half my face into hamburger, it also did a real number on my head. It’s taken all this time to get that mess unscrambled. You know what that’s like better than most—you just keep thinking if you can go home again, everything will be all right. It’s not rational, that thought. It’s denial, a rejection of how everything’s changed, especially
you
, and that denial takes deep root in places you don’t even know are there until you trip over those roots and fall flat on your fucking face.”

That much she understood, all too well.

“Even after I’d recovered physically, some of that crazy denial was hanging around in my head. I still believed that the life I’d been forced to leave behind was more… I don’t know. Perfect, I guess. Better than what I had now, anyway, or would ever have again.”

The hurt that squeezed her chest was so, so cold. “I know. You made that clear.” Unbearably so.

His arms tightened, as if he could somehow protect her from the hurt thrumming through every part of her. “I didn’t know I had it all turned around in my head, Essie. I had to see it to believe it. I went back to see what it was that I’d once had, and what I thought was still there. I had to see what I thought I was missing.” He shook his head, a quick motion filled with self-directed impatience. “I made sure I took in everything, from the house Apolline and I shared, to her parents who helped raise me, and even Apolline herself. I took my time, drank it all in… and I felt absolutely nothing.”

That made her frown against his neck before she brought her face up to search his expression. “What do you mean, nothing?”

“I mean total indifference. You can also file my response under Don’t Give A Shit. Come to find out, I didn’t need a damn thing from my old life—I haven’t for a long time. All I felt was stupid for thinking all that ancient history was what I needed to be happy. I wasted fucking
years
aching for a life I’d lost, missing people who didn’t give a shit about me when it mattered the most. Worse than that, I put you through hell because of it. So yeah, I felt like a total dumbass for keeping my eye on the past, instead of looking at you right here in the present.”

“What is it that you see when you see me?” Then she jerked her head to one side, an unconscious move to avoid another blow. “Wait. Don’t answer that. I’m not perfect, so I don’t want to know what you see. I’m just curious if Apolline seemed as perfect as you remembered her?”

“Essie, look at me. Look at me.” He got her chin in a firm hold and brought her unwilling gaze back to his. “I never once compared the two of you, so don’t put that on me. The fact is, you’re incomparable to any woman in this whole fucking world, and that includes Apolline. Besides, you can believe me when I say that woman can’t hold a goddamn candle to you. You glow from the inside out. You’re beautiful, so much so it kind of pisses me off, since your brand of beauty attracts every guy with a functioning dick. But when I look into your eyes and see your goodness, your sweetness, your endless courage and strength, I’m so stunned by you I can’t even breathe.”

Her heart fluttered wildly in her chest. “There are so many things wrong with that statement, I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Everything I said was accurate, but it still doesn’t answer your question.” Smiling, he pressed his lips to her brow as if he thought her response was ridiculous—which it kind of was—before he went on. “I never compared you and my ex because I can’t even wrap my mind around such a thing. Even when I had her up on a pedestal that she didn’t deserve, I was still able to figure out that much.”

“Really.” She couldn’t help but frown dubiously, which earned her a hard squeeze.

“Yeah,
really
. The boy I once was needed a pretty little storybook princess, and on the surface that’s what Apolline was—blonde and delicate and gracious, as long as life was going her way. And her parents made sure life always went her way. That’s why I never saw the ugliness that lurked under the princess façade until something happened that her parents couldn’t fix.”

“They should all be ashamed of themselves.”

“I think they are, deep down, the Toussards especially,” he added, surprising her. “I could tell by the way they couldn’t quite look me in the eye, and the strain in their smiles. But they never copped to their shitty behavior straight out, and that’s weak. What’s weaker is that when we were left alone to talk and finally put the past behind us, Apolline tried hitting on me.”

It was sickening, how her pulse jerked to a stop. “Did you…”

“No, I sure as fuck did
not
,” came the offended reply. “Even if I didn’t have you back home waiting for me to get my head out of my ass, I still wouldn’t have been tempted by that spoiled little bitch. Not only because she showed her true colors and abandoned me when I was wounded, but because she’s married.”

“Married?”

“Yeah. Apolline remarried almost three years ago, Es. She has a two-year old kid and a nice, settled life in the ‘burbs. The man she married seems to be a decent guy who works his ass off hawking used cars to put a damn roof over her head, so she had no fucking right to make some skank play for me like that. Woman has zero concept of loyalty.”

He sounded so disgusted she couldn’t help but relax a fraction. “So… she doesn’t still own your heart?”

“She never owned it. She
killed
my heart.”

“No,” Essie shook her head. “Your heart just got so horribly broken it gave up on trying to do anything beyond beating. It kept you alive, but that was it. And really, what kind of a life is that?”

“An empty one.” He pushed her hair back from her face before he palmed her jaw, his thumb caressing her cheek. “But at the time, emptiness was what I needed. I even got used to it, so much that when you came into my life I didn’t want to let it go.”

“Emptiness doesn’t hurt, and I get that. But it also doesn’t bring you joy.”

“At the time I didn’t look at it that way. I’d loved Apolline since I was a child, so I didn’t know there could be anything better than that as an adult. I was sure I wasn’t missing anything. But now I see how jacked up that thinking was, and I have you to thank for it.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You brought me back to life, sweetness. Somehow, you put life back into a heart that I thought was gone for good. When I’m with you, I feel so much it’s almost painful. But it’s a beautiful pain that goes all the way to my soul, and I never want that feeling to go away. I want to feel it every second of my life because feeling it means I’m with you, and there’s no place in this world I’d rather be.”

She closed her eyes as a surge of hope crashed through her, and it was almost strong enough to wipe out the lingering doubt. Almost. “If you ever need to be with someone else—”

“I won’t.”

She tried again. “The thing is, I’m not perfect.”

“Neither am I.”

“I’ll
never
be perfect. I’ll never measure up to anything close to perfect, and I don’t want to ever have to feel like I should apologize for that. I’m me. Scars and all, I’m me. I’m not much, but I’m the only me I’ve got, and I’m not sorry about the person I am.”

“Essie.” He squeezed his eyes shut in a kind of wince, and his indrawn breath echoed with pain. “Damn my fucking carelessness for planting that seed of ugly in you, when all I’ve ever wanted was to give you beauty.” His eyes opened to lock onto hers, their depths so dark with turmoil it made her pulse stutter. “Hear me, baby, please. The person you are is the person I want to be with, more than anyone else in this world, and I gotta hope you feel the same way about me. You say you’re not perfect, and I know that, but I also know you’re perfect for me. I’ve told you I’m not perfect either, but give me a chance to try to be perfect for
you
. I swear I’ll never give you a reason to regret it.”

She wanted to. With everything inside her, she wanted to. Could that be enough to build a relationship on? He wasn’t the type of man who did forever, especially when he couldn’t feel love. While he’d backtracked on almost everything else he’d said earlier, he hadn’t amended the statement that he could never love her. That was something that couldn’t be forced from him, or anyone. If she had his love, she’d take that chance, absolutely. If she had his love, freely given and without her having to drag it out of him, she wouldn’t need anything else. She’d have her rainbow, her golden ticket, her lightning strike.

But he hadn’t amended the statement that he couldn’t love her.

With that in mind, she smiled a smile that hurt so much it made her eyes sting, and pulled gently pulled away. “I’ve always seen you as perfect. I don’t need to be convinced.”

His hands tightened, fighting the distance. “Essie—”

“It’s been more than five minutes, Steele. The test suggested three to five minutes, so if you don’t mind I’d like to get this over with so I can move on with my life.”

He held her a second longer, as if he had issues with her moving on anywhere, before he dropped his arms. “You gonna be okay?”

He wanted a guarantee she wasn’t going to have some kind of emotional breakdown. She didn’t blame him. She wanted one, too. “I know I’ve lived through worse, so… yeah. I’ll be okay.”

The hell of it was, she was right.

This time around she didn’t drag her feet. The test was a done deal, so she didn’t see any point in prolonging it further. Together they moved to the powder room, and since there was only room for her, Steele braced himself in the open doorway while she grabbed up the test, already knowing what it would say. Because lightning never struck. Not for her.

Only…

“Essie?”

She stared at it.

It didn’t make sense.

“Essie.”

Impossible things didn’t make sense.

She grabbed up the discarded box, rotating it to the illustrations on the back, before holding up the stick for comparison. Okay, she told herself while her hands began to shake. She just had to be calm and read through it again. Slowly.

Okay.

One line meant no pregnancy.

Two lines meant a pregnancy.

Two lines.

“Essie, damn it, say something.”

“Two lines,” she whispered wonderingly, a warm, giddy flush overtaking her from the bottoms of her feet to the top of her head. In a daze she turned to show him both the box and the strip. “Two lines. Lightning struck.”

A wildfire lit in his eyes before he took the items from her, held them up to the light and went still. A dizzying happiness whirled through her, filling her up so completely she had to sit down for fear of falling, so she pushed past him to collapse on the couch they’d just vacated. She hated being a cliché, and being a delicate, fainting pregnant lady was about as cliché as they came.

Oh, wow.

A pregnant lady.

She was a
pregnant
lady.

Yes
.

A bubble of laughter burst from her, and she hugged her arms around herself while the sound of sheer joy rang around the cavernous room. Somehow, in a matter of days—hell, a matter of moments—her world had gone from bleak to black to unbelievably brilliant, to the point she couldn’t wrap her mind around it. That road that had been her desolate life was now wide open and vibrant, filled with an insane amount of possibilities. A boy or a girl, it didn’t matter. If she was lucky and all went as it should, her horizons were filled with cribs and baby clothes, diapers and regular check-ups, preschool and play-dates and bedtime stories, packed lunches and after-school recitals and dentist appointments and screwed-up science-fair projects, and all the craziness and worries in between. Things she never thought she would have in her world were now within reach. She had to be dreaming.

If it was a dream, she never wanted to wake up.

“Through condoms and scarring… Jesus.” Sounding breathless, Steele dumped the strip and its box in the sink before coming to her, dropping to his knees to settle between hers and pulling her against him. “Hot
damn
. My boys can seriously fucking swim.”

“This is the best day of my life.” She couldn’t seem to stop laughing, even as a warm flood of wetness spilled down her cheeks. “I don’t even know what to do, I’m so stunned. I never dared to dream of this day, so I don’t even know what the next step is.”

“A doctor’s visit to get things started off on the right foot. Do you have a doctor here in Chicago?”

“No.”

“You’re going to have one by the end of the day.” He leaned back just enough to grab his phone and start thumbing through his phonebook.