Can't Touch This (Can't Touch This #1)

I bit my lip. “You did?”

He grinned. “After everything I’ve just said, you still doubt that I’m in love with you?”

My stomach installed a trapeze and swooped like a sky artist. “You are?”

“So, so fucking much.” His lips landed on mine. “I’m in love with you. I love you. I adore you. I thought you knew.”

“How would I know?”

“Every time I hug you, I tell you. You don’t feel it?”

A small smile pulled my mouth. “I wondered. I felt something. I’m sure you felt my answer.”

He nodded. “I did. And if it’s not too bold of me to say but you love me too, don’t you?”

Now was the time to either shatter him so he could return to a woman he didn’t love and raise a kid he didn’t even know he had, or admit the truth and keep him and deal with shared custody as adults. I let sanity and common-sense rule over a bruised and juvenile heart.

“I do. I’m in love with you. I think I’ve loved you since you found my lifetime supply of tampons and made a joke about it.”

“It was a pretty big box of tampons.” He cocked his head at the river. “I bet if you tossed them all in Thorn River, it would dry up.”

I swatted his shoulder. “Okay, one joke was enough. I don’t need any more.”

His finger hooked under my chin, tilting it upward. “You know, I just lied about when I fell in love with you. It wasn’t when you were sick.”

“Okay…”

“I knew I loved you before that.”

“Don’t tell me it was love at first sight with the first wiener you brought in?”

“No, Heineken wasn’t when it happened.” He kissed me softly. “It was your sexy faceplant into my man jewels that did it.” He chuckled. “I thought to myself, ‘Now there’s a woman who knows what she wants.’”

I cringed. “Oh, God. One time. Seriously, will I never live that down?”

“It depends how long you put up with me and remain mine.” The lightheartedness in his eyes faded a little. “Please, Ves. Don’t let Michelle ruin what’s so damn right between us.”

I sighed. “I wasn’t letting her ruin it. I was trying to do the right thing.”

“Ah yes, because Nate is my son.”

“You’re acting mightily blasé about this fact. I know you don’t mind animals, but a child is slightly different.” I did my best at adding joviality to an otherwise awkward conversation. “After all, you can’t put him in the kennel with some dried food and a water bowl and expect him to survive.”

“Oh, I know. And I have no intention of homing him in a barn or otherwise.”

“But you have no choice. He’s yours—”

“He’s not mine.”

“But—”

“She lied.” He smirked. “Again. She’s rather good at it.”

“What—what do you mean?”

“I mean she lied when she told the school I had crabs and lied again when she told you Nate was mine. I haven’t been with her since I was eighteen. I’m twenty-nine now. That means Nate would have to be…”

“Ten at least.”