Page 22 of Elijah's Hope
“Warning,” I said. “She shoots a little.”
“Oh, hell no,” Ark stated. “I’m already broke.”
But then the door to Bud’s opened and Zeke and Eve walked in, with junior, as ever, strapped to Zeke’s chest.
“A baby!” Shelby shouted. She popped out of her chair and made her way toward them. “Hi, my name is Shelby. I’m here with Eli,” she said, pointing over her shoulder at me. “And who is this little fellow? Is he Mr. Cuteness? Because he looks like a Mr. Cuteness to me.”
This, I thought,is going to be interesting. What happened when the sweetest woman alive met the biggest, meanest badass of them all? Looked like sweetness won out. Eve was jabbering about Zeke Jr. Then next thing I knew, Shelby was asking if she could hold him.
In what had to have been an epic internal battle, I watched Zeke unstrap the baby from his chest and gingerly, like he was handing Shelby a bomb and not a baby, turn the boy over to her.
In two seconds, Junior had a fist full of Shelby’s hair and a smattering of kisses on his chubby baby cheeks.
She looks good with a baby in her arms. She’s going to be a natural mother.
I pushed that thought out of my head immediately. She wasn’t going to be my kid’s mother, because, just like I never figured I would marry, I definitely never figured on kids.
Always thought that, without having that fatherly role model growing up, I would be a shit dad.
Still, Zeke didn’t strike anyone as father material, but when you saw how he wasn’t able to stand five minutes without his kid in his arms, you knew that sometimes a person’s past didn’t matter when it came to parenting.
Maybe sometimes it was about what type of person you chose to be.
* * *
The next evening
Eli
It was time to kiss her.
Tonight we had decided to stay in and cook, and I used the wordcookloosely. Gert’s store didn’t have much of a selection, but it did have pasta and jar tomato sauce. I bought some ground beef from Bud and made what resembled meatballs that we cooked in a pot on top of Shelby’s stove.
As part of the fancy stash, I had ordered a bottle of good red wine. Now we were sitting on her bed, which was more fun than eating at the lone table in the room, with plates of pasta on our laps and red Solo cups of wine precariously balanced on her thermal blanket.
After three days together, there was no point in thinking I could hold her at some sort of emotional distance. I had been worried about her getting too attached to me so it might hurt her when she left.
Now, I was worried about me and how I would feel when she was gone.
So there was no point in maintaining the platonic thing because we were already past that.
At least I was.
Sitting on the bed with her, watching her chat away, it occurred to me the reason I hadn’t made my move was because there had been no opening. No moment when I caught her looking at my mouth. No pregnant pause where the sexual tension between us had been thick and heavy.
We talked. It felt like I had never talked as much in my life as I had these past few days. And I listened. I had done that, too, while she shared her life with me. Little anecdotes that charmed me. Made me laugh and smile more than I recalled ever doing.
I talked more about my mother, which I never did with anyone, but Shelby just drew it all out of me. Not the specifics. I still couldn’t tell her what my mother had done to pay the rent. I didn’t want to tarnish our time with that crap, but if I was being honest, I also didn’t know how Shelby would react.
The type of girl she was, the family she came from. She wouldn’t understand the choices my mother had to make.
Other than that, we were totally open with one another. We had become legitimate friends. No matter what happened after this, Shelby was going to be someone in my life. I was as sure of it as I was the sun rising.
Did I want her?
Daily. Hourly. Minute by minute. I couldn’t remember the last time I had wanted a woman like I wanted Shelby. Because it wasn’t just sexual, it was so much more. I wanted her smile and her laughter as much as I wanted her pussy and her mouth. It was a constant seething ache. My hand was practically sore from jerking off so much these past three nights. But none of that mattered. Because what I wanted wasn’t in question.
Did Shelby want me?
