“Anyway, he got mad when I called him out on why that was stupid. You know, like there hadn’t been a thousand girls over the years and like our friendship hadn’t devolved to the point we only spoke to each other if he wanted or needed my help once he’d started doing MMA at Maio House. Then he hung up, and I didn’t hear from him again until you showed up.

“Grandpa Gus refuses to speak to him, and after knowing and training with Peter for most of his life, all he gets out of him is distant politeness. And I know that chafes his ass big-time. I know it. It’s easy for people to love you when you’re doing things for them, when they get something out of it. But it isn’t so easy to find people who will still love you when you’re down and need help getting up. That’s when you really find out who’s with you for the right reasons.

“My best friend, Luna, told me once that everyone has a threshold for what they’re willing to forgive. That you can forgive someone but never forget what they said, and you shouldn’t. A real friend wouldn’t have said and done the things he did. So if you are getting jealous”—I looked right into those bright eyes and smiled at him because he was still looking sick and pissed and jealous, and I was eating that shit up—“there’s no reason for you to do that.”

All I could manage to do was feel the soft puff of his breaths on my lips as he breathed long and deep, and I couldn’t begin to imagine what was going on in his head. So when he spoke next, the last thing I expected was to hear strain in his tone. “I left you too, Lenny. I never said those ugly words, but I wasn’t there when you needed me either. I reckon that might be worse.”

Honesty is a funny thing. It’s brutal and wonderful at the same time, somehow. And it was the best response he could have ever given me, and that was how I knew how totally and completely different Jonah was from Noah. They weren’t even in the same country together.

“Yeah, you did, and you’re a dipshit for that, but you didn’t know I needed you,” I replied carefully. “That’s the difference. He knew and he didn’t give a shit. You were an idiot, but you left because you were worried that your own life was basically over. Yet, you came back, even if it took you almost two years, you asshole.”

He made a noise in his nose that might have been in amusement or pain. Both, knowing him. Definitely both.

“I thought my life was over when I found out I was pregnant, and if I could have run away, I would have. So I get it. But you wouldn’t have disappeared if you’d known, right?” I made myself ask, and I got my answer by him shaking his forehead against mine.

“Not for anything.” One of the hands on my cheeks moved to rest on the nape of my neck, cupping it, his breathing getting even deeper. “I’d like to have a word or two with this arsehole, if it’s possible.”

Fourteen words were all it took to change my fucking life.

To tip my face up. To say fuck it and press my lips against his for the first time in so long. It was just a second, then two, of my mouth pressed against his like it was my first kiss before I pulled back.

But he followed my retreat. Jonah’s mouth dipped back to mine, his warm lips against my own, so soft, so lingering. I’d look back on that moment and think that it was the most intimate kiss of my entire fucking life. No tongue. No sexual shit at all. Just long, endless touches of our lips meeting in lingering pecks. Kisses on the corners of my mouth, over the bow of it, just below my bottom lip, and more and more and more and more across them.

Jonah Hema Collins was kissing me like he handled most things in his life, I was coming to see: seriously and deeply and carefully.

But it was the touch of what I knew was a hand on my ankle that had me pulling back and glancing down at the body trying to scoot over onto my lap that broke our mouths apart.

It was then as I looked down at my chunky monkey that I felt the tear slide down my cheek and off my chin.

I watched with my own two eyes as a big hand, that was becoming more and more memorable to me by the day, reached up and wiped the trail off. It was after that that his other hand came up and cupped my other cheek, and Jonah said in that voice that I had tried to exorcise from my life, in that voice that felt like a warm, heavy blanket, “I missed you.”

Oh hell.

Oh, fucking, fucking hell.

He had no idea that someone could come and scrub my memories clean, and I doubted I could ever forget that moment, even if they tried to do the same a hundred times. I really did.

I pulled back at his comment, wanting to stay where I was but not wanting to stay there either because… I liked it too much. And no fucking sooner had that thought entered my head than I asked myself what the hell I was doing. Running away? Ending this sweet-ass moment because I was scared of what it might mean? Really? Me?

God, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so disappointed in myself.

I didn’t do shit like that. That wasn’t me.

Then again, it was one thing to do something risky that only caused physical pain. Physical pain you could manage with ice, rest, and anti-inflammatories. It was the other kind of pain, the one that snuck under your skin and settled up in quiet places you didn’t go visit that often, that wasn’t so easy to get over. That was the difference, wasn’t it?

“What are you thinking?”

I glanced up at the intent face focusing on me, and just went for it because why not? Because I was scared of what he’d say? That should make me want to do it more often.

Life was short. You either took what you wanted or you didn’t. You either regretted not doing something or you regretted failing. Not doing something would keep me up at night. But it was failing that I could laugh at eventually and get over.

So I told him, because that was who I was. Who I had always wanted to be. “That I had wished you had liked me more before—”

He groaned. “I did, Lenny. I liked you heaps. I never forgot about you.”

“You didn’t let me finish,” I said. “And that I also really like you, and I was thinking that maybe I shouldn’t, but maybe I should because you might end up breaking my heart, but you might not. What do you think?”

His slow blink had me smiling at him.

“Too blunt, huh?”

His own small smile crept across that handsome, happy face. “Nah, just perfect.” He shook his head, that smile growing. “I won’t be breaking any hearts. You can take my word for it.” He held his hand out toward me. “You ready to go?”

I took it, but I didn’t stop looking at him.

Jonah’s big grin didn’t go anywhere as he picked his daughter up, dodging out of the way of a stray hand aiming straight at his beard to grab it and pull. “Let’s go, yeh? Before my mum comes up?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

He kept me company as I grabbed a pair of ankle socks and put them on, getting a pair of tennis shoes from the rack in my closet before all three of us headed downstairs. Sarah was still in the kitchen with only Peter that time, and it didn’t take me too long to pack Mo’s backpack with formula, fresh diapers, wipes, and a premade snack because I wasn’t about to lug Grandpa’s homemade food around with me since they were in glass containers.

If Sarah watched me the entire time I got Mo’s stuff together, I ignored her. The person who watched me the closest was Jonah, who looked into the bag, took out his phone, and I bet wrote notes about what was already inside, adding in what else I put in there afterward.