have to be an addict, he didn’t have to be this person, either. He could own his actions and he could choose them.
“I’m sorry, Gina.”
It took a long time for her to look up at him and meet his gaze. For a moment, he wasn’t sure she would. When she did, he saw something there he couldn’t name. All he knew was that it cut him.
“For what?” She cocked her head to the side.
“For being an asshole.”
Gina shook her head. “I knew this wouldn’t be easy.” She laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. “When I knew you’d been served, I kind of wanted to throw up. I knew you’d be angry with me. I just... Crys said she told you and you didn’t want anything to do with us. I never thought she’d lie about that. If I thought for one second that you didn’t know about Amanda Jane, I might have gone about it differently.”
“You still can.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to be a part-time father. I want you to consider what the judge offered.” At the sudden look of fear on her face, he held up his hands as if to ward it off. “Not like that. If we’re in the same household, I can see her whenever I want and so can you.”
She looked as though he’d just punched her. “You’ve lost your mind.”
“Hear me out.”
“It would put us at your mercy, right under your thumb.” She shook her head. “You just told me that I didn’t know you and you’re right. I haven’t seen you in seven years.”
“Which is exactly why you should marry me. Don’t you think it would be traumatic for her to suddenly be left with a stranger?”
The fear on her face was back and so was the guilty chill slithering down his spine.
“I can’t talk about this with you.”
He exhaled, sensing that the earlier door to their childhood memories had been slammed in his face.
She stood. “I have to get back to work.”
“Gina?”
She turned back to face him. “What?”
He found everything he thought he wanted to say died on the tip of his tongue and it was nothing but charcoal and memory.
“Me, too, Reed.” She answered the unspoken questions, regrets and hopes with all of her own. All the things he couldn’t seem to tell her, it was as if she knew them all and had them herself.
Perhaps he’d been wrong. Maybe Gina did know him, after all. She seemed to sense everything he wanted to say but couldn’t.
He wondered why it was so easy to say all the wrong things, but the right ones were practically impossible.
As he watched her walk away, he wondered what the hell he’d been thinking, asking her to marry him. That was pure insanity.
He wasn’t ready to be a father. He could barely manage himself. What was he thinking?
Just looking at facts, if he didn’t know that it was his own case he was judging, he wouldn’t give a child to a man like him. Even with all of his money, all the years between himself and his addiction, all the things he’d accomplished, Reed could only assume he’d blow it and Amanda Jane would be better off anywhere, but with him.
Why he thought he could do a better job than his own absent father—he’d always vowed if he ever had children they’d never know a childhood like his own. It wasn’t all horrible; he’d had Gina and Crystal, other friends, but he never had stability or comfort and he was always left with this horrible ache in his chest, this want of things that weren’t for him.
A hunger.
And he’d tried to fill it with pleasure—with sex, with drugs, with anything that would make that feeling stop.
He didn’t want any child to know that feeling, let alone his own.
He wondered what life had been like for her. If she knew enough now to want what she couldn’t have, if it gnawed at her the same way it affected him.
Gina went over to where Amanda Jane was sitting, took the girl’s hand and led her back toward the kitchen—away from him. He couldn’t blame her.
Maybe she was right to just want a check and his absence.
He closed his eyes as if that could somehow guard him against the sharp blades of that thought. It sliced into him, into every single defense he had.
Part of him wanted to escape, and still another part of him wanted to stay at the Bullhorn just a little bit longer, hoping to catch another glimpse of the woman and child that were the embodiment of a future he’d been afraid to want.
He stayed there in the corner long after he knew she wasn’t coming back to his table.
SEEING REED AGAIN up close and personal had gone better and worse than Gina had hoped. Better because after his initial anger, he seemed willing. Worse, because...
Because he still made her heart flutter like a stupid butterfly and she couldn’t stop thinking about him. She wanted to stop. Gina wanted to push him and all of her stupid hopes and resurrected teen desires out of her head. Two days had passed, and she still couldn’t stop. Maybe she was the addict.
She almost hadn’t recognized him at first. His thin features had filled in and it was obvious he was taking much better care of his body. He was bigger, stronger, a hunger inside him striving to get out and obvious in his every action. He looked like the GQ model version of Reed Hollingsworth with perfect hair, a perfect suit, but his eyes were the same. In those depths was the familiar hopeful kid she’d known.
Once upon a time, she’d wished it had been her that he wanted and while good sense told her that it was just the leftovers of a high school infatuation, her body didn’t know the difference. The hard planes of his powerful body in that suit that had been tailor-made for him, the determined set to his jaw and the ferocity of his expression conveyed that now, there was nothing he wanted that he couldn’t have. Gina found that kind of confidence and power titillating, as much as she hated to admit it.
But he wasn’t a fairy-tale prince on a valiant steed. He was an addict. That didn’t change. He could manage his addiction, but there was no magic cure to free him from the curse. And if there was, it certainly wasn’t her. He’d picked Crystal, not Gina. No, he was no hero.
Though she realized he wasn’t the villain she’d thought he’d become, either.
She knew that she’d agree to whatever Reed wanted if it meant that she could keep Amanda Jane. And she would never just let her go with a stranger. When it was distilled down to its most basic, Reed was a stranger to them both. Amanda Jane played on the floor with a myriad of secondhand toys. She had a doll in an evening gown riding a fire truck. That was her current obsession. She said she wanted to be a firefighter when she grew up and apparently, she planned on doing it in sparkles.
Which was just fine with Gina. Gina made it a point to tell her that with enough hard work, she could do anything—be anything.
Amanda Jane sang a little song to herself quietly and rather than distract Gina from her studies, it soothed her.
No, what distracted her was seeing Reed Hollingsworth.
Gina had always wondered what happened to Reed. If he’d taken the same path that Crystal had, he’d have been in prison or dead. Then her economics class had been assigned an article about rags-to-riches businessman Reed Hollingsworth.
And the article had pissed her off.
How dare he sit there on his velvet throne looking