If It's Only Love (Lexi Ryan)

Scarlett Lashenta is sitting on my front porch.

No. Pretty sure that can't be right.

I drag my hand over my eyes, trying to rub the sleep out of them. But when I open them, she's still there-sitting on the front porch of the off-campus two-bedroom I'm renting with friends for the summer. "Can I help you?"

Scarlett tucks a lock of silky red hair behind her ear and gives me a weak smile. "You're Shayleigh Jackson?"

"I am."

"I've seen Easton's pictures of you two in Paris together. You're even prettier in person, though." She bites her bottom lip. Her perfect bottom lip. If I tried to wear red lipstick like that, I'd look like a clown. This woman looks Photoshop-perfect in real life. "I was hoping we could talk? About Easton."

My stomach cramps. I haven't seen him since he left Mom's house the night of Dad's funeral. He's texted, saying he wants to talk. I've ignored him. "Is he okay?"

"Oh, yes. He's fine. Well, as fine as he gets. You know Easton. Every time there's a major change in his life, he struggles a bit, so the new QB coach is getting to him."

I didn't know he had a new coach. I guess we didn't talk that much about his life, now that I think about it.

"You seem like a really nice girl, Shayleigh. At least, that's what I've come to believe from Easton's stories."

"Thanks." This is so surreal. Scarlett Lashenta is sitting on my front porch telling me I'm a nice girl. Two nights ago, I was climbing onto her husband's lap and trying to seduce him.

"You don't strike me as the kind of person who'd set out to tear apart a family." Her blue eyes fill with tears. "I don't believe you'd want a little girl to be without her daddy. That's why I'm here."

Maybe this is a dream. Or a nightmare. It was bad enough to have Easton push me away. I don't need to hear it from Scarlett too. "I don't know what you mean."

"I know what happened between you and Easton in Chicago." She waves her phone as if this explains everything. "But when he slept with you, he didn't know what he knows now."

"Okay?" Why is she here? Easton made his plans clear. He wants to stay with Scarlett because he seems to think I'm just like whatever woman he claims my dad fell in love with. He was drunk and talking crazy. Dad never loved anyone else.

With a sigh, she cocks her head to the side. "He hasn't told you, has he?"

"My father just died."

"About Abigail." She toys with her pearl necklace. "She has leukemia."

My stomach drops to my feet. "What?"

She turns away, staring into the overgrown rosebushes lining the front of the porch. The blooms are brown and dried, and the whole flowerbed looks atrocious. When she turns back to me, tears glisten in her eyes. "She needs us to be a family right now, and I'm here to ask you to stay out of his life."

The words are a knife to the gut. "That won't be a problem."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Why are you here? Easton already told me he's not going through with the divorce."

She wipes away a stream of fat tears. "Between you and me, I don't think our marriage stands a chance if you're in the picture, and I need it to work. Abi needs it to work." She drops her gaze to her shoes and shakes her head. "I'm not trying to hurt you. I'm hoping for your mercy. I'm hoping you'll understand why I'm asking you not to make it harder than it is for him, why I'm asking you to let him focus on his child."

Shay

The first person a woman should want to see after she finds out she's pregnant is the father of her baby. And yet I find myself on the steps of Easton's beautiful home, the lulling sounds of the lake behind me. When I ring the doorbell, I'm not sure what I plan to say, but my body is locked up with worry. Whenever I get him, something pulls him away from me again, and it looks like this time isn't going to be any different.

The second Easton opens the door and he smiles, though? A strange sense of calm washes over me. He drags his eyes down my body and slowly back up before taking my hand and pulling me into the house.

"Abi and Tori are spending the afternoon at the library," he says with a grin. And just like that, his mouth is on mine. His hands are sliding up my shirt and mine up his. We don't even make it past the foyer before we're naked and on the floor-greedy hands and mouths and desperation the backdrop to the breathy sounds that fill the air.

I'm not sure I could ever get used to the fact that Easton wants me like this-that I can have him anytime I want him. Or I could, before.

I push the thought away and focus on the rough grip of his hands on my hips and the wet sweep of his tongue across my nipples.

"I've been thinking about you all day," he murmurs as he kisses his way down my stomach. "I don't know if I actually slept last night. I wanted you in my bed."

I slide my fingers into his hair and tug him up. "Easton."

He lowers his smile to my mouth and kisses me until everything else falls away. He only stops his touching and kissing-his worshipping-long enough to put on a condom and position himself between my legs. He pauses there, so close to where I need him, and frames my face with his hands. "We're really doing this," he says softly, reverently.

I lift my hips, seeking him, needing him. One last time.

He slides into me and moves so tenderly that tears sting the backs of my eyes. "I love you."

"I love you." All I can do is bury my face in his neck and hold on, because it's only love, and that's never been enough.

And when we're spent and breathless, once my tailbone feels tender from the hardwood floor, he rolls us over so I'm on top of him and wraps his arms around me.

"Sorry about that," he says.

I close my eyes and focus on the rise and fall of his chest with his heavy breaths. "Why sorry?"

"I was thinking about you, and then there you were." He chuckles. "I don't know, Shay. After years of thinking about you, of missing you and wanting you, it's going to be hard to pace myself now that you're mine."

Emotion clogs my throat at that, and I can't reply. I can hardly even breathe. Now that you're mine. But for how much longer?

He rolls us to our sides before standing and helping me up. He scoops our clothes into a big pile in his arms. "Coffee?" he asks with an arched brow.

I bite my lip and shake my head. "I'm good."

He smacks my bare ass. "Then go get in bed. We have three hours until Abi gets home, and I want to spend it all naked with you between my sheets."

I try to smile, but this morning's news weighs heavily on me and I can't quite make my lips obey. This is all a preview of what could have been, and I'm being sliced apart from the inside. "Hey." He cups my jaw. "Did I hurt you? Are you okay?"

"You didn't hurt me." But I'm not okay. "Come on." I don't want to share my news while we're standing naked by the front door. "I'm going to go upstairs and clean up. I'll meet you in bed."

His eyes flare hungrily again and his gaze dips down and back up, but I turn away before he can meet my gaze. This feeling in my chest when he looks at me like that and I know what I have to tell him? It's a little bit like heartbreak.

Easton

Something is wrong with Shay, and I think I know what it is.

I open the curtains in my bedroom to expose the picture windows and the floor-to-ceiling view of Lake Michigan. I wasn't kidding when I said I wanted to spend the afternoon in bed with her. While she cleans up in the bathroom, I run downstairs to grab a plate of fruit-grapes, fresh strawberries, a few mandarin oranges-and a pot of coffee in case she changes her mind about it.

When I return to the bedroom, Shay's in my bed. She curled on her side with her head on my pillow as she reads the back cover of the military suspense novel from my nightstand.

"I liked this one," she says.

I smile. I'm going to love trying to keep up with her. "I wouldn't have thought you'd have time for pleasure reading while you were working on your dissertation."

She huffs out a laugh, but there's no humor in it. "Maybe if I hadn't made time for pleasure reading, I would've finished a couple of years ago."

I set the plate of fruit and carafe of coffee on the dresser before climbing into bed with her. "You're really here." I pull her back to my front and press my hand flat against her breastbone.

"I am," she says. "It's unreal. I didn't think we'd ever . . ."

I press a kiss to her bare shoulder. She didn't believe we'd make it work. One night in Paris then a night in my hotel room in Chicago before her dad died. I want us to have a chance, and it's always been yanked away from us before we could settle in.

"We're going to make it," I say. She stiffens in my arms, and I instinctively hold her tighter. "I know you're scared. I know you don't trust this to work, but . . ." I force myself to relax my hold. "I'm struggling to not be selfish. I want you in my arms all the time, but I know you have other things to do this week."

"You're the least selfish person I know," she says softly.

"Maybe I just hide it well." I mean it as a joke, but it doesn't sound like that. "I've been pretty selfish with you."

"Not with Abi. Not with Scarlett."

I shrug. I don't particularly want to talk about my ex-wife while Shay is in my arms, but there's still so much of our pasts we haven't hashed out. If she wants to talk about this now, we will. "I've had my moments, but don't paint me as a martyr just because our situation is unconventional."

Turning in my arms, she presses her palm to my chest, as if trying to measure the beats of my heart. "When did you find out Abi wasn't yours?"

"When Abi was sick, I wanted to see

if I was a match to donate bone

marrow. Most of the time, parents aren't a match, but I wanted to try anyway. Scarlett panicked that it was like a DNA test or something and they'd tell me I wasn't Abi's father." I close my eyes as I remember her stopping me on my way out the door. Her panic. Her tearful confession. The way she begged me not to leave her. "She told me she'd lied because she'd wanted to give her child the best, and she believed I was meant to be Abi's father."

"What did you do?"

"I grieved a little, I guess. Now it truly doesn't matter to me. She's my daughter, but when I first discovered she wasn't biologically mine, I had to rearrange my perception of everything. Including my marriage and how hard I was willing to bend to make it work and how long I was willing to continue what felt like a ruse at that point. Scarlett and I were married in name only. When she moved back in after Abi's diagnosis, I insisted she sleep in a different room until we figured out what we really wanted. The day of her confession, I went from wanting to stay married for my three-year-old daughter's sake to wanting to stay married because I was afraid she'd take Abi away from me if we divorced. What claim did I have if she wasn't even my blood?"

"That's awful."

I stroke Shay's hair and twist to press a kiss to her forehead. "I don't think she would have. Hell, she barely fought me for primary custody when we finally did divorce." I sigh. "Scarlett knew-knew before she even held Abi for the first time-that I was the best choice she could make for her daughter. While I resent the lies and manipulation, I understand that Abi was always her priority. Just like she was mine."

"Can I ask you a question?"

When she doesn't immediately ask, I say, "Of course."

She worries her bottom lip between her teeth and watches me for a long time before speaking again. "Do you ever think about the decision you made when you found out Scarlett was pregnant?"

My breath catches in my chest. Painful. I think about my decision to stay with Scarlett a lot, but in the context of Shay, I think about it almost compulsively. If I could rewrite the past, I would've found a way to be Abi's father without marrying Scarlett. But even from this vantage point, I can't see how that would've happened. Scarlett didn't want to be alone, and if I'd known Abi wasn't mine before she was born, I wouldn' have felt so determined to make us a family.

Shay studies my face. "I'm not judging your decision either way," she says, misinterpreting my silence as defensiveness. "I just wonder if you've ever considered how you could've handled it differently if you'd known the truth. What would you have done if you'd known Abi wasn't yours?"

My chest tightens.

"I don't mean about us," she says in a rush. "I mean, do you think you would've married Scarlett?"

I pull back so I can see her face. "But there was an us."

"Barely." She looks away when she says the word, and I wonder if it feels like as much of a betrayal to her heart as it does to mine.

I take her chin in my hand, guiding her to meet my eyes. "Not barely."

"It was one night in Paris, Easton."

"Does that make it any less real?" I take her hand and press it to my chest. "Does what I felt here not count because I only got one weekend to touch you? To hold you? What we had was real. Maybe it didn't last long, but it was the most honest thing I've ever felt for any woman. Even when I thought Abi was my daughter, you were part of the equation. It wasn't an easy choice."

"But what if I hadn't been in the picture and you'd known she wasn't yours? Would you have stayed? Would you have wanted to be Abi's father?" Her face falls. "That's not a fair question, is it?"

"She's my daughter in every way that matters, Shay. I cannot imagine what my life would be like if I didn't have her, and I don't want to." I swallow the lump in my throat. She's asking me a serious question and she deserves an honest answer. "No. If I'd known she wasn't mine, I wouldn't have stuck around. Raising another man's child is a heartache I wouldn't have signed on for if I'd known."

She nods slowly.

I wrap my arms around her because I can feel her pulling away. "Does it bother you? The idea of getting involved with a man who's already a father? Does it bother you that Abi remains my priority despite our DNA?"

"No. That doesn't bother me." I see the truth in her eyes, but it doesn't explain the stiffness in her body.

"What about Scarlett? Will it bother you that she's around sometimes?" I blow out a breath, realizing I should address the possibility of Scarlett moving to Jackson Harbor now and not later. "Will it bother you if she decides she wants her second home to be here and not Chicago?"

She blinks at me. "She's thinking of moving here?"

I nod slowly. "I was trying to talk her out of it, but I'm not sure what's going to happen now."

"Oh. I guess that could be good for Abi."

But not for her? Is that what she's thinking? "Scarlett can live right next door if she wants to, and it won't change the fact that I want you."

She curls into my chest and closes her eyes.

I stroke her back. "Hey, Short Stack. Talk to me. Are you okay?" Please don't panic. Please don't give up on this before we even have a chance to begin.

"Will you... just hold me for a while?"

"Of course. You're talking to the guy who wants to hold you forever, remember?"