Dirty Secret (The Burke Brothers #1)(42)
Author: Emma Hart

“You don’t have any jiggly bits.”

“Yes, I do. I have jiggly bits and stretch marks.” I grab some of Mila’s clothes out of Dad’s drawers.

“It didn’t bother you when I was carrying you up the damn stairs not so long ago.”

“It was dark,” I offer lamely. That, and I was too consumed by him to think about the flub for even a second. “My body’s not perfect, and it’s sure as hell not what you’re used to.”

“You think I care about perfect?” He sounds half angry and half confused.

“I do,” I say softly.

I swallow and grab Mila’s bag. Conner steps up behind me, grasping my hips, and pulls me back. I can feel his dick, hard, digging into my back, and his breath cascades over my neck.

He runs his hands up my sides, following the curve of my waist, and back down. He slides them around to my stomach. I inhale but he doesn’t falter. His hands ease up my stomach, hovering just below my breasts, then fall back down.

“You’re right,” he whispers huskily in my ear. “I do care about perfect—but not your idea of perfect. I care about my perfect, and you’re it. You always have been.”

His words wash over me smoothly, touching every part of my supposedly perfect body and wrapping it with warmth. I close my eyes and hold on to them, just for a second, letting them warm me inside, too.

Then I let them go.

“I guess your perfect is kind of fucked up, then,” I mumble, stepping away from him.

I go downstairs to the sound of his quiet laughter. I’m allowed to feel this way, I tell myself. Mila isn’t that old, not really, and you don’t get much time to work out when you’re a single parent. Half an hour three times a week to YouTube videos isn’t exactly going to result in a Victoria’s Secret body, even after almost two years.

Okay, so I could probably lay off the cake a little. . . . Who am I kidding? I’ll never lay off cake. I gave up my life for Mila, willingly. I’m not giving up the cake, too. That’s just dumb.

I throw some diapers in the bag, zip it again, and thrust it into Conner’s arms. When he raises his eyebrow, I shrug a shoulder and say, “A real man would never make a woman carry a bag.”

“You’re milkin’ this.”

“Perhaps.”

He closes his hand over mine on the front door handle. “What would you do if I milked it?”

“Depends how.” I turn my face to his until our lips barely brush.

“I was thinking you and me,” he says low, the sound vibrating through me.

“Me and you, what?”

He steps forward until his front is flush against my back and kisses my jaw. “My lips on yours. You gripping my shirt. Whimpering. My hands sliding down your back.”

I breathe a little faster at his words. The kiss upstairs is all too raw. My lips are still tingling with the feel of his, and my heart is still skipping beats in anticipation of more.

“Don’t be a douche.” I wriggle in his arms, but he holds tight. “That would imply we’re a couple. We’re not.”

His fingers twitch over mine. “Is that really what you want, princess?”

I swallow. “Yes.”

I just also happen to want you to kiss the living shit out of me on a regular basis and possibly get inside my pants, too.

Conner steps back, not touching me at all. “Let’s go.”

I resist the urge to look over my shoulder at him as I walk outside, ignoring the flashes and the shouts. He locks the door, then throws me my keys over the hood. He grabs his from his pocket, clicking the fob to unlock the truck.

I tuck my keys into my pocket and climb in. Jesus, they’re gonna have enough pictures for a freakin’ album if they keep this up.

I want to roll down the window at yell at them. What, they want hugging pics? Holding hands? Kissing? Tough shit, cookies. You ain’t getting ’em.

Conner revs the engine and does a quick U-turn in the driveway. I grab the side of the door. Crap! My drive is big but not that fucking big.

Clearly I pissed him off.

Well, that’s what happens when we let stuff happen that shouldn’t. Both of us know it. It’s not just me. We both know that us kissing whenever we get a moment alone isn’t going to solve anything.

Kissing won’t change the fact I went away. Him setting my whole body on fire with just a few touches won’t take away what I took from him.

I took more than a little girl. I took memories. I took first words and first steps and first smiles. I took away sleepless nights and dirty diapers and sick hugs. I took away everything every parent loves and hates.

I took excitement and worry and anticipation and shock. I took pregnancy and I took birth and I took time.

I took what wasn’t mine to take.

He won’t ever forgive me. And he doesn’t trust me. I know it. I can see it in his eyes.

That’s the problem with knowing someone as well as we know each other. He can’t hide anything. Not the quirk of an eyebrow or the twitch of a lip or the flash of an eye. He can’t hide his emotions, not from me.

To him, every flat tone he speaks in is just that, flat. To me, it’s a choir of inflections, all singing a different emotional note.

To him, every stare is basic. To me, every look is filled with myriad feelings spinning until they’re at tornado pace and I can’t tell one apart from the other.

To him it’s simple. To me it’s complicated.

To him it’s nothing. To me it’s everything.

Because I know. I know he won’t ever forgive me or trust me, so he won’t ever love me the way he did before. It’s that simple. Love—true, pure love that shakes you to your bones and coils your stomach in fluttery twists, isn’t based on a lack of trust.

It’s based on everything. Just everything.

And everything is something we can’t ever have again.

So true love, pure love, the kind we had before, will never be ours.

Our love will always be tainted.

And I did that. I took a paintbrush to the purity, and I smeared black all over it. I took the blank canvas and shredded it, toddler-style. No matter how hard you rub at thick, ugly smears, they’ll never go away. There will always be a kind of hideous mark left behind.

We might not notice it now. It might take five years, maybe ten, maybe twenty, but eventually we will. Then what? Everything gets thrown away?

I’d rather have nothing to throw.

I’d rather live without him than know that one day the past will catch up with us and we’ll lose it all.