Fuck, I was gonna cry.
“Derek did pretty well with it until she passed away. It just stirred up all those old feelings, and I think now that she’s gone, he can never really confront her about anything. He’s always struggled with it, and whenever Derek asked about her as a child, we always made up stories to tell him. But when he stopped asking…we knew he’d figured it out. And that was just so hard for Deacon and me to watch, to witness this perfect little boy have to deal with that kind of abandonment. I know he and I are close, that he knows I love him as if I carried him for nine months, but I can never fix that.”
I inhaled a deep breath, feeling like shit, understanding his sudden outbursts and coldness a little more. “He says he doesn’t want to have kids.”
“A lot of men say that until they meet the right woman.”
“But it makes me wonder if he’s afraid he’ll be a terrible parent the way she was, and that that’s what his issue is.”
She shrugged. “He’s the only one who knows that answer. But I know he’s never been able to let anyone in again since Tabitha.”
“Who’s Tabitha?”
She turned quiet, like she knew she’d said too much. “I assumed he’d already told you…”
“He’s mentioned he was in a relationship ten years ago, but every time I ask him about it, he says he doesn’t want to talk about it.”
She gave a slight nod. “He’ll come around, eventually.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t press her for more information because Derek deserved to be the one to tell me—whenever he was ready to do so.
“Deacon and I were really excited to hear about the two of you. There’s been no one in a really long time, and you make him really happy. I think you can put your faith in that. I know you’re scared to expose your daughter to him, get your own heart broken, but Derek will get there. You just have to be patient.”
“I’d wait forever for him.” The words came out all on their own like instinct. I knew Cleo was his mother, but it was impossible not to speak to her like a confidante, as if she were a good friend of Derek’s or something.
Her eyes softened.
“I’m in no rush anyway,” I whispered. “I was going to wait until my daughter was out of the house before I found someone, so…I can wait. I do fantasize about something happening sooner, the three of us being a family, but I know Derek is nowhere near that right now.”
“I don’t think he is either.”
I already felt myself falling for him—and falling fast. My heart had softened for him a long time ago, but now that we were together, making love, being completely vulnerable with each other, that connection was deepening at an astonishing rate. I suspected time passed differently for him, but for me, it was going at the speed of light.
“Deacon and I would love to meet Lizzie. But I suspect we should wait for Derek to meet her first.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t want to confuse her.
“What’s she like?” She grabbed her mug and took a drink. “Do you have any pictures?”
I chuckled as I pulled out my phone. “Do I have any pictures…” I opened an album that just had her pictures, from when she was a baby until now. It was a digital photo album that I could look at any time I was down and needed a pick-me-up.
Cleo took the phone and scrolled through, smiling and saying, “Aww…” every few seconds.
“She’s really bright, but she’s got a feisty attitude. She’s no-nonsense, insists that she needs more independence, plays soccer and softball, says Derek is hot…when she’s waaaay too young to be saying that sort of thing. It makes me realize how little time I have left with her.”
“She knows about Derek?” She kept flipping through.
“She knows he’s my boss but not that we’re together. But she teases me about being with him. Calls him sexy smarty-pants…”
She chuckled and handed the phone back. “She sounds like fun.”
“She is. I’m dreading the moment when boys become a reality.”
“I bet. She’s beautiful.”
“I know…” I was full of both pride and dread.
She drank a few sips from her coffee, her eyes down as she was thinking. “You know, I have an idea.”
“Yeah?”
“Derek struggles to have spontaneous conversations with people, as you know. But when he’s teaching or working on something, it’s a lot easier for him to communicate with people because that’s just how he thinks. So, if he were helping Lizzie with math homework or something like that, it would probably be less daunting to him. He would have something to talk about and be in an environment he’s familiar with. And hopefully, that would make them bond because he’d care about her grades and want to know her progress, just like he does at the university. Just an idea.”
“Yeah, it’s a good idea.” When I pictured the three of us meeting over dinner for the first time, I imagined it would be incredibly awkward—for everyone. But when I pictured him sitting beside her at the dining table with the textbook open as they worked on problems together, it didn’t seem that odd. “I’ll talk to him about it.”
“And can I add something else?” she asked. “Only because my husband and all my children are incredibly gifted and sometimes awkward… Maybe don’t tell Derek that’s what you’re trying to do. Just say your daughter is really struggling with her math or science homework and she’s just not getting it, and then let him take the bait. If he does, great. If he doesn’t, he doesn’t.”
I nodded. “That’s probably smart.”
“Does your daughter struggle with those things? Because if she doesn’t, then it might not work. You’d have to ask her to go along with it, which might be weird for her.”
“No, she’s like me,” I said with a chuckle. “We aren’t good with numbers. She asks me to help with her studies now, and I always tell her she needs to learn how to figure it out on her own. But in reality, I just don’t know. She’s doing geometry right now. It went over my head at her age, and it still goes over my head.”
She chuckled. “God, geometry. I hated that shit.”
I laughed at her profanity.
“Thankfully, my brainiac husband did all the tutoring throughout the years…except literature. Not his thing.”
“I think Derek might go for it. But he’s already so busy as it is that I’m not sure how he would find the time.”
She shrugged. “We make the time for things we care about. I’m sure having a girlfriend doesn’t exactly fit into his schedule, but he makes time for that.”
Not really. We saw each other at work all day, and at the end of the day, we got it on in his bedroom, but we didn’t do other fun things like normal relationships. That wasn’t his fault. It was actually my fault because I had a daughter waiting for me. “Yeah…true.”
3
Derek
I had so much shit to do with the new rover that I had to design, but I had to take a break from it and open my laptop.