“Where’s your phone?”

I roll my eyes and grab my phone, clicking onto my message screen. “Do you want to see it?”

“No. I trust you. Just read it.”

“Hope you’re working hard knowing that my mouth will be wrapped around your cock later. xo”

“That’ll do it.” He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“That’ll do what?”

“Paint an image in his mind that he won’t forget anytime soon.”

“What? No. There’s no image to paint. He knew it wasn’t meant for him.”

“Did you write my name?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you say, ‘Griff, hope you’re working ‘hard’ knowing my mouth will be wrapped around your cock later?’”

“No.”

“Then for at least a brief moment, he thought about your mouth wrapped around his cock. And he’s not going to stop thinking about it anytime soon.” Griffin shakes his head. “Not gonna lie … that doesn’t make me too happy.”

My head whips back. “Well, I’m so sorry that doesn’t make you happy. It thrills me to have my boss thinking I rock his baby all day and suck cock all night.”

He rubs his mouth.

“Are you grinning?” I move closer as he steps back and shakes his head. “Yes, you are.”

The back of his legs hit the sofa, and I lunge at him. His hand falls from his face to catch me as we tumble onto the cushions. Sure enough, he’s grinning.

“Not funny.” I straddle him, fisting his shirt as he shakes with laughter.

“Baby … you’ve never sucked my cock all night.”

“Stop it.” I surrender, burying my face in his neck while he wraps his arms around me. “It was meant for you. It was meant to be sexy. But it turned into the most embarrassing moment of my life.”

“You’re a mess.” Griffin rests his hand on the back of my head and rubs my back with his other hand.

“I know.”

“But you’re my mess.”

I lift my head, searching his eyes for a glimpse of the man who tried to kick me out of his life a few days ago. “But I think you’ve known that I’m a mess since the day I didn’t have money to pay for tampons, wine, and my junk food cravings.”

He nods, stroking the back of my hair.

“So why was forgetting your birthday—having a bad week—the end for us?”

Discomfort flashes in his eyes that squint a fraction. “I was going to ask you to move in with me.”

Ouch. The wounds on my heart start to tear open again.

“I thought we’d go to dinner, take a long ride on my bike, and find a spot to watch the sunset. I wanted to tell you about my promotion. I wanted to hear about your week because I knew you were not yourself. Then I wanted to tell you how crazy it was for us to live apart when I spend most of my waking hours thinking about the next time I’ll get to see you.”

“I’m sorry.” I hate the way those words sound. Every fiber in my being means them, but they still sound like hollow words filling space and quickly evaporating.

Meaningless.

Forgotten.

Invisible.

“I know you’re sorry.”

“But you don’t forgive me?”

He rubs his lips together and shakes his head. “It’s not that. I forgive you. It was just a moment that gave me pause. You weren’t the girl I wanted to ask to live with me. You weren’t the girl I’d been missing all week. I feel like I’m losing you to another man’s past. It’s a fucking awful feeling to see you suffer and not know how to fix things for you.”

“I don’t need you to fix anything for me. I just need you to hold my hand sometimes as I try to figure this out for myself.”

He sits up a little, and I slide off his lap onto the cushion next to him.

“How can I hold your hand when I can’t reach it? That’s my point. On Friday I realized your answer to a shitty week was distancing yourself from me. What happened to the girl who said I made her feel safe? What happened to the girl who fell into my arms after a long day and said one hug righted all the wrongs?”

This love thing hurts. “I guess I didn’t look at it like that. You have been my pillar of strength. You still are.”

“And you’re my greatest weakness because I let you into the part of me that’s unguarded.” He takes my hand and presses it to his chest.

Griffin has defined love for me in ways I never imagined. I’m not sure I realized his real role in my life until I was faced with the possibility of not having him in my life at all. The day I chased him down the hall to his bathroom, I was chasing the part of my heart that broke off and gave me the middle finger while saying, “I belong to him, not you.”

My hand curls, fisting his shirt. “This messy girl is going to mess up—a lot—because I’m young and stupid. You weren’t supposed to come into my life until I had it together. You’re the guy who is supposed to appear after a string of bad decisions. But here you are, watching me stumble around the craziest self-discovery. If I don’t lose you, it will be a miracle.”

“Swayz …” His hand cups my cheek.

“Griff,” I whisper, covering his hand with mine. “I need a miracle.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Jenna used to lay out my clothes. Today she would have had a tie draped over my suit jacket. The right tie. The color or pattern would be symbolic of my day, and she would know what that symbol needed to be.

The night I asked her to marry me, we discussed children over her birthday dinner at our favorite steakhouse. She asked me how many I wanted to have someday. I shook my head, afraid to tell her. Jenna rolled her eyes and grabbed a pen out of her purse and an old receipt. She tore it in half and wrote a number on it without showing me. She handed me the other half and the pen.

“Write your number,” she said.

“My number?”

“How many kids you want to have. And if our number is the same, you get down on one knee right here, right now, and ask me to marry you.”

I wanted to marry Jenna, but I knew there wouldn’t be any kneeling that night. Growing up without much money gave me the drive to make sure my family would always have food on the table. Growing up with no siblings gave me the desire to have a table full of mouths to feed.

She showed me her number first and asked me not to run away or pass out.

Five.

Jenna wanted five kids. Career-oriented people like us did not have five kids. One was a luxury.

I didn’t run or pass out. Pushing my chair away from the table, I got down on one knee. There was no speech. There was no ring. All I had was half a receipt in my hand that I unfolded to reveal my number—five.

Life didn’t care about our desires or dreams. We realized it after seven years of trying to conceive a child. That one child of ours isn’t a luxury. She’s a gift and a symbol.

Today there’s no tie draped over the suit jacket on my bed, symbolizing success, courage, or prosperity. Instead, there’s a little girl grabbing and kicking at the mobile of toys dangling above her play mat on the floor of my bedroom. Morgan is symbolic of life. When I look at her, I see everything I ever wanted, everything I’ve lost, my greatest love, my deepest sorrow, my darkest moment, and the promise that love never dies.

“Professor?”

I smile. It’s “Professor” today. I’m glad. Yesterday’s text derailed my afternoon and made it impossible to sleep last night. An average day without incident is exactly what I need.

“In the bedroom.”

“Are you dressed?”

I finish buttoning my dress shirt. “I am now.”

“Wow. What’s the occasion?” Blue eyes inspect me from head to toe.

“I have an orientation and I’m speaking at a luncheon for our department. But …” I frown at the ties hanging in my closet. “I need the right tie.”

Swayze steps in front of me and sifts through the ties. “This one.” She grabs a blue and white striped tie.

“Can’t.”

She chuckles. “Why not? It goes with your pants and it brings out the blue in your eyes.”

“I’m sure it does, but I have to choose between these three ties.”

“Boring. And…” she grabs one of the boring ties “…you need to untie them when you’re not wearing them or else—”

“Stop!”

She freezes. But it’s too late. The unknotted tie hangs from her finger.

“Um … I don’t understand.”

I shake my head and sigh while adding that tie to the others I will not be wearing.

“Wait.” Her jaw drops. “Oh my gosh. You still don’t know how to tie a tie? Nate, how can that be? You’re thirty-six. You have a PhD.”

There’s my Daisy. Professor is now Nate. And she’s giving me that look. The one that says she knows the most intimate details about my childhood.

“I hate ties.”

“I know.” She looks up at me and wrinkles her nose.

“It’s okay.” I smirk. “I know you know.”

With a slow nod, one that looks equal parts relief and regret, she returns her attention to the ties. “So why do you have all these ties that require you to tie them? Why not buy clip-ons?”