Wild Side (Rose Hill, #3)(50)

Wordlessly, he pulls me closer. And I let him.

Neither of us addresses the intimacy of me using his bicep as a pillow. Instead, he just carries on in a quiet voice, like nothing is out of the ordinary about this at all. “Let’s be real. She’d be Queen Tabby, who rules the kitchen with an iron fist.”

I press my lips together. “And King Rhys, who dresses up in spandex and—”

“I don’t wear spandex.”

“You should. Those little manties can be part of your new branding.”

“Trunks, Tabitha. They call them trunks.”

I sigh dramatically. “Weak. That just doesn’t have the same ring to it.”

Another amused rumble leads us into a pregnant silence. And then I blurt out the thing that has been weighing on me ever since I found out what he does for a living yesterday. “I’m sorry I ruined your life.”

He sighs, and his head turns in my direction. “You didn’t ruin my life.”

I let my cheek fall against the crook of his arm as I meet his gaze. “It feels a little bit like I did. You just seemed like such an asshole. And I just…I love him so much, you know? I couldn’t lose him too. But once I’m—I don’t know—in a better place, he could go to Florida with y—”

“No.”

My eyes widen. “No?”

“He belongs here. With you.”

I wrinkle my nose to stem the stinging in my eyes. “But what about you? It seems like he belongs with you too.”

He turns back to face the sky now, leaving me to soak in his profile. The strong nose. The heavy brow. A little scar up by his hairline that I never noticed before. I soak him in for several seconds until he breaks the silence with, “I was orphaned too, actually. Milo and I have that in common.”

“Rhys,” I breathe his name. “I’m so sorry.” Any words, beyond the most basic, fail me as my logic rides each wave of understanding. They lap at me one by one.

The way he swooped in instantly. The way he’s shown up for Milo, even when I made it miserable for him. The way he’s upended his life for this little boy. That he didn’t have anyone to invite to the wedding.

God.

He shrugs a shoulder. “It’s okay. I’m thirty-five. I’ve come to terms with it.”

“Thirty-five?”

“I feel like you just added old jokes to your plan of attack. Did you not read the marriage license?”

Clearly not.

Fuck my life. I must seem like a colossal idiot to this man. “I think I blacked out.”

I palm my forehead. My throat is thick with emotion. But my brain? My brain is fogged with embarrassment. I’ve been toeing the line of flirting with a man who is only here for Milo. He flies back and forth for Milo. He married me for Milo. I’m sure he likes me—in his own way—but he loves Milo. And everything he’s done for him has come from a place of knowing what it’s like to live this story.

My hand slips down over my eyes as I take a few deep breaths.

“Tabitha. Relax. You’re twenty-eight. I’m not that much older.”

“That’s not why I’m hiding.”

His fingers wrap around my wrist and pull my hand away from my face. “You’re not hiding. Even if you can’t see me, I can still see you.” Amusement laces his typically menacing tone as he pulls my hand to his chest, leaving it covered with his own.

“No, but you seriously have to hate me. You’re like Saint Rhys and all I’ve done is—”

“Take care of your nephew? Go to bat for him? Fight for him with a level of ferocity that makes me wish I’d had someone like you on my team when I was a child?”

All the air leaves my lungs with a choked oomph.

“I never knew my parents. What I know is that my mom had me as a teenager and gave me up at the hospital. A couple adopted me immediately, but shortly after my second birthday, they decided parenting was too hard. By Milo’s age, I was in foster care.”

The words flow from him so easily, and I hang on to every single one. This man I know almost nothing about—partly because he hasn’t shared, but also because I haven’t asked—is taking me on a walk down memory lane, and I am fully invested.

I want to know so much more about Rhys Dupris. Snuggler of toddlers, master storyteller, professional panty twister, and WPW superstar.

“The longest I ever stayed in one place was a few years.”

I blink rapidly, envisioning him. I imagine Rhys like Milo—same chubby, rosy cheeks but with big dark eyes. What I can’t imagine is giving him away, turning him over to a system where he’d never have any stability.

“How do you know all this?”

“My file.”

I hum, turmoil burbling inside me. No wonder he was worried about Milo ending up there too.

“So you grew up in foster care the entire time? You couldn’t stay in one place?”

He shrugs. The gesture is casual, but I don’t miss the way his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he swallows. “I got big. I ate a lot. I was… I don’t know. I don’t remember what I was like as a small child or any of the families I was with at that time. But I ended up scrappy at school, surly at home. And just not very lovable, I guess.”

A battering ram to my chest—that’s how those words feel. I glance at Milo, who has his body pressed safely against Rhys’s opposite side. Rhys is giving him all the security no one afforded him as a child. God, I just want to crawl on top of him and hug him, squeeze him tight like I do Milo when he’s sad.