Alexei shifted onto his stomach, propping his chin on his folded arms. “You were in love with Saint from the start?”
“Head over heels. Not sure I knew it, though. And Lena was a good distraction. She was so easy to be with... like, she didn’t care if I fucked other people. She didn’t expect anything from me but a wild night in, and it was... I don’t know, release, maybe? Escapism. It was everything I needed for a while.”
“What changed?”
“Lots of things.” I sifted through memories that had been buried to make room for new ones. “For one, she clocked Saint and how I felt about him. And then she met a girl that turned her head, and the mad sex we were having?—”
“With Saint?”
“That was only a couple of times, but yeah.With Saint. Just as I was starting to realise I lived for those little glimpses of him as much as a whole night with her, she left, and me and Saint went back to staring at each other in the dark.”
“You still do that.”
I hummed a laugh. “Yeah, but we do everything else too, and that’s because ofyou.”
Alexei shook his head, but I couldn’t tell if he disagreed or just didn’t fucking know how important he was.
Quiet fell over us, even without Saint. I wondered if he’d leave the house. Come back with another giant tree. But my heart knew he wasn’t going anywhere tonight, this morning, whatever goddamn time it was, and I let myself sink into the bed, sliding easily into that lazy place between awake and asleep.
“Did you know she had become Joe Carter’s surrogate?”
Oh yeah. We weren’t done with that.
I opened my eyes. Alexei hadn’t moved, but he seemed closer, like he was inside my brain and already knew the truth. “Joe told me he was having a baby with Lena before it happened. It was the right path for him and Harry, and he didn’t want it tainted by bad feeling with me.”
“This is the same Joe who calls you a prick at every opportunity?”
“Eh, he doesn’t mean it.”
“You are friends then?”
“Probably.”
“It did not affect you that he and Lena shared this?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
Alexei held my gaze as if I had any hope of ever reaching the bottom of his. “I see you with the other children and it makes me wonder if you ever wished to be a father.”
“I have enough responsibilities.”
“That, I do not dispute, but it’s not what I’m asking.”
I knew it wasn’t. But I also knew the answer to the question he wasn’t tangibly voicing. “I love the kids we already have, but when I look at their parents—their fathers—and see the fear in their eyes, it gives me fucking hives. I don’t have the capacity to be scared of anything else.”
“You really do not want children of your own?”
“No. I never have.”
Saint reappeared as I spat that truth. He had water and coffee, and he didn’t blink as he caught the end of a conversation I’d had with him a decade ago.
He got back into bed, his body heat warming my spine as Alexei had before him.
I leaned into it. “The little girl’s cute though, eh? Looks just like her.”
“She looks like Harry.”
Okay. Maybe I didn’t know everything. But I knew well enough that biology didn’t matter when it came to raising kids. “Did Rubi get to have his cow over that too?”