Broken Crown by Susan Ward

Author:Susan Ward [Ward, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance
Publisher: Susan Ward Books
Published: 2015-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

I go into the kitchen, bypass the hard liquor, and pour myself a glass of wine.

The house is quiet. Chrissie must still be in the studio working. She probably doesn’t even know that I’m here yet. Good. I need time to regroup.

I go out onto the patio and settle on a lounger. I need to think this one through before I make so much as a single step in any direction. Figure out what I want. Figure out how to make it work. Be honest with myself about what I can and cannot do.

Honest with myself.

Fuck.

My weak suit.

Can I even do this?

It won’t be the same as it was last time we were together. To be with Chrissie means I have to be willing to do everything in this house. Anything short of that would be unfair to her and wrong for the kids.

Do I want to complicate my life with kids?

It’s already complicated. One of those children is mine.

It’s an incredible feeling.

Does Chrissie even want me in her life?

Fuck, that isn’t something I’ve thought about.

Why did I just assume we’d be together?

Fuck, I love her.

I don’t want to lose her again.

I take a sip of my wine. I want to be here, nowhere else ever again, except with her, but Chrissie comes with kids—lots of kids—and that’s hardly an element I expected myself to be considering at this point in my life.

Not after Molly.

I push away those memories. It hurts too much to love a child and then to lose them. I never wanted to go through that again. The pain of loving someone, completely, and then having it taken away. Too soon. Leaving a hole in you that never goes away.

Yet somehow, Chrissie’s kids have roped me in since the day of their birth. I’ve always loved them. The love I feel for her children runs deeply through me in a way that has always left me sharply surprised. Probably just an extension of loving her. No, they’re wonderful children. I like them.

But to live with them fulltime.

To be here.

Is that even something possible for me?

I have always enjoyed my visits surrounded by Chrissie’s family. I spent a lot of nights during her marriage in her backyard overlooking the Pacific, talking late into the night with Jesse, envious and admiring them both, and relieved of that tedious sedative boredom that claims me too often by doing nothing but watching her for hours with her kids.

The way she smiles at them, touches them, made me ache. I’d wonder if that was the way she was with Jesse in their private moments, what it would feel like if I’d known her this way when we’d been together before.

It was like visiting a spa when you can’t afford it. I’d leave rejuvenated and pinched. The experience recharging me; the cost hurting me. The cost was always leaving, sharply aware that Chrissie was happy and married to Jesse.

I’m not the man Jesse Harris had been.

I don’t have a clue what they need from me.

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