If It's Only Love (Lexi Ryan)

Chapter Thirty-One

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. Content property of NôvelDra/ma.Org.

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.”

“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’t have felt so determined to make us a family.

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.” Reаd at Draмanоvels.com

“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 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?”