Page 60 of Love Me Gently

So she had listened. At least to some of the things I said. “Yeah. We share weeks. You should know I get them back Sunday after church.”

“I shouldn’t be here when they get back then.”

She should be here with them, every day, for the rest of our lives together, but I was desperately trying to keep that from unfurling into anything larger.

“Marie and I talked. She knows what’s going on, and she’s okay with the girls coming back. You’re a friend in town visiting. That’s all they need to know.”

She stabbed at her egg whites and then pushed a slice of bacon around. “You told her about me?”

“Not too many specifics of why you’re here, but some. She’ll keep it quiet.” After all, I got all the friends in the divorce, which again made me an ass and Marie a saint. She could leave town and start over, but she stayed to give the girls stability. “She’s a good woman, and I screwed her over. But she’s okay with trying this, letting you be here with the girls. You’ll like them, Trina. They’re sweet. They have school in the morning and usually go to my parents’ afterward on the weeks I have them while I’m working. Well, Ella’s sweet. June’s on the race to give me as many gray hairs as possible.”

For the briefest moments, I swore her lip curled, but she tucked her chin closer to her chest and it was gone.

“I really hate it when you call me that.”

“I don’t know what else to call you. And I won’t call you Katrina, no matter how many times you snap at me too.”

“I don’t snap,” she said, and her head lifted, eyes rounded, and the color washed from her cheeks. “Sorry, that was rude…”

“Stop.” She clamped her mouth closed. “There’s nothing to apologize for, so don’t do it. In this house, you are free to say anything you feel like saying,however, you feel like saying it, but do not ask me to call you the name he did. That, I can’t do.”

Tears pooled in her eyes, and she looked away, shaking her head. It’d been a guess until then that it was Jonathan who forced her to go by Katrina, whichwasher birth name, but she’d never once used it. Said it was too stuffy and too classy for a small-town Southern girl.

“Do you hate the name or the reminder of who she was?”

She shook her head and for the first time, chomped down on her bacon. “You probably need to get to work, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” I was dying to do anything but that. Dying to ask her what changed. Why she was in my kitchen, not appearing completely hollow. Dying to know if she wanted to go back to Jonathan.

But those answers had to come on her time.

“Is your mom coming over today?”

“She can, if you want that.”

She shrugged, but somehow managed to finish the entire piece of bacon while she didn’t answer. “I think…maybe…? Maybe it’d be nice not to be alone today?”

The day would come when she wouldn’t turn everything into a question. I’d make sure of it.

“Then she’ll be here.”

The edges of Trina’s lips twitched. “Thanks, Cole.”

God, I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to brush my thumbs over her cheeks and wrap her in my arms. I wanted to hold her tight and fight her demons for her, and I wanted to do it all, all at once and all the time.

“You’re welcome.”

It took effort to hold myself back, finish my breakfast and load my dishes. By the time I was done and had filled my to-go mug with more coffee, Trina was still picking at her own plate. But she hadn’t moved, and she hadn’t run away, and she’d asked to spend the day with Mom, and all of that was good.

So I was going to make sure this ended on a good note.

“I’ll be back around five, assuming nothing wild happens. Have fun with Mom.”

“Okay.”

I wanted more than that. I wanted to see the light in her eyes shine again, see any hint of a spark in them, but that too, I’d have to wait for.

I grabbed my keys on the wall at the top of the stairs and headed down them. I had one hand on the garage door, the other holding my keys and coffee.

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