Chapter 560 | Let Mommy Make Up for Lost Time

Chapter 560: 560 | Let Mommy Make Up for Lost Time

She stood. Smoothed her blouse. Set the water glass down with a soft click.

Then she walked around the island, and she took my hand.

Not the way she took my arm at agency events, all polish and performance. Not the way she’d steered me through a hundred difficult conversations over nine years.

This was different.

Her fingers threaded through mine, warm and certain, and there was a small tremor in them that she couldn’t hide and didn’t try to.

"Come on, baby," she said.

The word landed differently than it used to. There’d been a time when baby was maternal, warm, the thing a guardian said to the kid she’d raised since he was eight. It didn’t mean that anymore. Or it meant that and something else, layered together in a way that should have felt wrong and stopped feeling wrong somewhere around the third month.

Sloane watched us go with an expression I couldn’t fully read. Something possessive and something soft, holding hands in the middle of her chest.

"Two hours," she called after us. "I’m setting a timer."

"You are not setting a timer," Diane called back.

"I have a phone and a strong sense of grievance. I’m absolutely setting a timer."

I let Diane lead me down the hallway I’d walked ten thousand times, past the office and the theater room and the linen closet, toward the wing of the house that held her bedroom. I’d only been inside that room a handful of times before everything changed between us, and every time since had rewritten what the space meant.

She opened the door. The California king dominated the room the way it always did, all cream and gold and expensive fabric. The evening light came through the gauze curtains and turned everything soft.

She pulled me inside. The door clicked shut behind us. The lock turned.

And then she just stopped.

She stood there holding my hand, her back to me, her shoulders rising and falling with a breath that went too deep and came out shaky. The composure that had held for eleven days finally started to give at the seams, and I watched it happen without saying anything because some things you didn’t interrupt.

"Diane."

"Give me a second." Her voice was thick. "I’m having a moment. I’m allowed one moment."

I stepped closer. Put my free hand on her shoulder. Turned her around.

Her eyes were wet. Not spilling, not yet, but close. Diane Fitzgerald, the woman who’d rebranded Heroes who set buildings on fire and never once lost her cool in front of a client, stood in her own bedroom with her hand shaking in mine and tears sitting on her lashes.

"You were gone," she said quietly. "The bond didn’t tell me anything. I don’t have a bond. I just had a monitor and a green light and a room that got very quiet. And I sat there thinking about a promise I made to Reina, that I’d fill your life with happy tears, and instead I was sitting in a hospital watching you not breathe."

"I’m breathing."

"I can see that. Sugar, believe me, I have looked." A cracked laugh escaped her. She reached up and pressed her palm flat against my chest, over my heart, the same thing Sloane kept doing, the same instinct to confirm through touch what her eyes already told her. "You threw yourself in front of fire. At four percent stamina. With a separated shoulder."

"To be fair, I didn’t know the exact percentage at the time."

"That is not comforting."

"I’m not really trying for comforting. I’m going for factually accurate."

She hit my chest with the flat of her hand, no force behind it, then left her palm there. Her thumb traced along the fabric of my hoodie. The tears finally spilled, one on each cheek, and she let them fall without wiping them away, which told me more than anything else how far past her limits she’d been running.

"I don’t do this," she said. "I don’t fall apart."

"I know."

"I fix things. That’s the whole thing. That’s the entire personality."

"I know that too."

"So you understand why this is deeply inconvenient." She looked up at me, and beneath the tears there was something fierce and possessive and completely unguarded. "You are not allowed to do that again. I have a very long list of reasons and every single one of them is you."

I cupped her face in both hands. Her skin was warm and wet and she leaned into it before she could stop herself, eyes fluttering shut. The composed CEO who ran the highest-grossing Hero PR agency in California melted into something raw and honest in a way exactly two people in the world ever got to see.

"I’m here," I said.

"You’d better be."

"I’ve got weeks to make up for tonight."

"Yes," she said, and her voice steadied, some of the old edge coming back into it as she pressed closer. "You do. Weeks. I intend to collect on every single one of them." Her hand slid down my chest to my stomach, fingers spreading over the muscle that hadn’t been there a year ago. "Sloane gave us two hours, and I don’t plan to waste one second of them being upset."

"She’s setting a timer."

"Let her set a timer. I’ve closed deals in twelve minutes and I’ve closed deals over three days. I know how to manage a clock." She rose up onto her toes, the last of the tears vanishing into something warmer and considerably more dangerous. "The question is whether you can keep up, baby. You have been in a hospital bed. I’m told you’re healing fast."

"Very fast," I said. "Concerningly fast, according to Juno."

"Good." Her mouth was an inch from mine now, and her hand had gone flat against my stomach with intent that had nothing to do with checking my pulse. "Because I have eleven days of not touching you to make up for, and I refuse to be gentle about it, and if you tell me your ribs still hurt I will simply not believe you."

"My ribs are fine."

"They’d better be."

She kissed me before I could add anything else, and it started soft, the way she almost never let it start, all the fear and relief and love she’d been carrying for eleven days poured into the press of her mouth against mine. Then it stopped being soft. Her hand fisted in the front of my hoodie and she pulled me toward the bed, and the last thing I heard before she stopped talking entirely was her murmuring against my lips.

"Two hours, sugar. Let mommy make up for lost time."