Boldly by Elise Faber

Chapter Seven

Oliver

He’d gottenover his fear of holding Noah several months ago.

Then his fear of holding Noah while standing on his prosthesis.

Now he could just hold and stare at the miracle—still tiny, though not as tiny as during those first few months after he’d been born, when Lexi had descended on his house, saying she needed to water his plants because horticulturicide wasn’t going to be committed on her watch. The baby had grown, but he remembered the first time he’d held Noah.

Tiny fingers.

Chubby cheeks.

Eyes that seemed to bore into him even though the kid couldn’t have seen more than a foot in front of his face.

That was the turning point for him.

Because he couldn’t imagine how his own parents could have left him, drugs or not.

How they could have left an innocent child.

How his grandparents or aunts or uncles hadn’t taken him in.

They’d left Oliver to a system that was known to fail. They’d left him to a life without a lot of good in it. Until Teresa and Alex.

Ten years of dreary gray, and suddenly his life was in color.

Until he’d lost them.

But he’d struggled to hold on to the technicolor, knowing that was what they would have wanted for him. Even after his injury, after he’d lost everything, Teresa wouldn’t have wanted him to end up back in all that gray.

Noah had reminded him of that.

When he’d been slipping back down that slope, the innocent newborn had pulled him out, and despite what the rest of the world thought, he really was fine.

Not normal. Not yet. But he’d get there.

Because, as he’d not so nicely yelled at Hazel, he wasn’t defined by his leg. By the loss of it. By the loss of a career.

And if he continued saying that and moving forward and having his eyes up and aware and on the fucking puck, he would be okay. The parts of him that hated where he was, hated Mark Shelby, hated that he wasn’t in that locker room or on the ice or handing a game-used stick over the boards to some kid who would be so excited to receive it she’d be sleeping with it under the covers next to her would eventually fade into the background.

He knew it.

He’d experienced it.

Just…eye on the puck.

A flicker of movement in the hall caught his focus, and he saw Hazel standing there, her face soft and her eyes warm.

When she noticed him looking at her, she smiled and moved into the kitchen. “You’re good with him.”

He shifted and leaned against the counter. “He’s a good baby.”

“Except about the whole not sleeping thing.”

“Except, about the whole not sleeping at the right time thing,” he countered, and watched amusement glimmer through those pretty brown eyes.

“That’s true.” She tucked a strand of her hair—short, curly, and just reaching her jaw—behind her ear. “It’s enough to make a woman never want to have kids.”

That made something in him stand up and take notice.

Something he’d been ignoring since he’d found out about her ex now being an ex. Something he knew he probably shouldn’t act on.

But something he was realizing he was going to act on anyway.

“Kids aren’t something you want?”

She moved toward him, pausing just a foot away, her eyes no longer on Oliver but on Noah, and while he didn’t like that, the look on her face as she glanced down at the sleeping baby was so fucking gorgeous it took his breath away.

Wonderment. Gentleness. Love, even though it wasn’t her kid.

He’d had that.

It was the best drug on the planet—a woman’s love, a mother’s love.

“I want kids,” she murmured. A corner of her mouth hitched up, and he was close enough to see that one day lines would form there, lines born of humor and happiness and inside jokes.

He wanted that with a sudden urgency that nearly sent him to his knees.

“I just”—a finger brushing along Noah’s downy cheek—“wish they’d come with the ability to sleep.” Her eyes hit his, and he could almost see the laugh lines forming around those pretty brown depths, too, the lines she’d earn with age and would only make her more beautiful. “Because I really like to sleep.”

She laughed, and he joined in, quieting the sound when Noah jumped, though the baby slept on, thus proving that he could sleep, but that he just preferred to do it in someone’s arms and during the day, rather than in his crib and at night.

“Can I hold him?” she asked when they quieted again.

“Of course.”

They made the switch, and he watched her shift into Mom Mode, or rather move with that instinctual motion that soothed and allowed Noah to sleep on, the movement that came from somewhere deep inside, maybe programmed into a woman’s DNA all the way back to the caveman days.

And if he’d ever voiced that thought aloud, his adopted mom, Teresa, would have smacked him upside the head and then threatened to never make him brownies again—because not all women wanted to be mothers, and him assuming that it was written into Hazel’s DNA, but not his own was patriarchy defined. Hence, head-smacking and brownie-hostaging.

But Teresa wasn’t around any longer and thinking about the loss of her rather than the look his dad would have given him had he voiced his instinctual, caveman motherhood thoughts (namely that Alex would have cracked up, huge smile turning up the edges of his mustache, and then he would have ruffled Oliver’s hair the same way he had when Oliver was ten, the same way he always would have, no matter Oliver’s age if the car accident hadn’t taken them both from Oliver’s life), was too painful.

So, he focused on caveman DNA.

On brownie hostages and head smacks that didn’t hurt.

And Hazel.

“You’re good with him,” he murmured. God. And seriously, he had a beautiful woman in front of him and he could only repeat the same inane statements over and over again?

He used to be charming.

Now he was…out of practice.

Luckily, Hazel didn’t seem to notice. Her smile grew as she smoothed Noah’s hair back. She slowed her swaying and gazed up at him, eyes twinkling. “He’s a good baby.” Okay, maybe she did notice his lack of conversation skills, but at least she was still smiling, her voice soft when she said, “But you know that.”

There was a question there.

Laid down quietly, but also like an olive branch.

How had he become so familiar with Noah and his routine? With this house.

“Lexi and Luc spent a lot of time at my place after I was discharged from the hospital, and I spent a lot of time here after Noah was born.”

She nodded, taking in the answer to her question that hadn’t been asked. “You know about him, too,” he said.

Another nod. “Lexi heard about my breakup and descended on my place with ice cream, wine, and Noah.” Sad flickering across her face.

He ground his teeth together, forced his voice to be gentle. “I’m sorry your ex was a dick.”

“He was that.” She sighed. “But I think…” She trailed off and shook her head, eyes drifting to the window, the one that looked out onto the back yard and the lush oasis Lexi had created there.

His feet—one made of metal and composite, the other flesh and blood, but both belonging to him—took Oliver to her, close enough to smell her shampoo, something sweet and floral, to smell her. Clean. Woman. Hazel. “You think what?” he asked softly.

Her body jerked slightly, as though she hadn’t heard him moving, as though she’d been too lost in thought to hear him. “I think…” She turned and her lips parted, eyes flaring, words halting.

Their gazes connected.

He watched the shiver skate down her spine.

Then her lips pressed together, heat dipping into her irises, a blush sliding onto her cheeks.

“Hazel?”

“Hmm?” she murmured.

“What do you think?” he asked. “About your ex?”

The heat banked and while he didn’t like that, Oliver also really wanted this piece to the puzzle of her.

“I think,” she said, turning back to the window, “that I’m more sad because I think that I should be more sad.” A shake of her head. “That doesn’t even make sense. I am sad my engagement ended, especially the way it did. I’m sad that I misread someone so completely to get to the point where I had a dress and a date and had gone cake tasting without understanding who he was. I’m sad that I failed myself in knowing who he was when he should have been the most important decision in my life.”

“And you failed.”

Her gaze remained out the glass. “Now you sound like my mother.”

He winced.

She must have caught it in the reflection of the window. “She’s great,” she said quickly, turning to face him. “Sorry, I just meant that tone is very much my mother, and usually paired with something along the lines of You hold yourself to too high a standard, Hazel Montgomery Reid, or People fail, Pumpkin, or You can’t always do everything exactly right, sugar pie.”

Oliver grinned. “Sugar pie?”

She did, too. “That along with honey cakes, banana blossom, apple sweetkins, and”—her brows drew together—“an iteration on pretty much any other baked good she’s ever consumed. It was torture in high school.” Pink on her cheeks, eyes back on the window. “And now I’m blabbering to you about my ex and my high school experience. Cool.”

Fuck, she was sweet.

A sigh. “My point was, my mom has always been intrinsically herself and never fails to call it like she sees it, including if calling it means showing her daughter that she loves her by calling her Banana Bread Sweetums in front of her entire school while emceeing the talent show”—more pink on her cheeks—“a show I refused to participate in but was forced to volunteer at and work the concession stand because my mom…is my mom.”

He chuckled.

“See?” she said. “It’s terrible.” A begrudging smile. “But it’s also pretty awesome because my mom is always the same, always just her, and she makes it easy to be her daughter.”

“Even though she calls you Banana Bread Sweetums?” he teased.

Her smile grew. “Even though.”

They stood there grinning at each other, and Oliver found himself drifting closer, even though he was already close. But there was something about Hazel that drew him in, a tractor beam to the Millennium Falcon, a lure drawing a fish into a hook.

He thought that her mom must have rubbed off on her.

She was herself.

Open and sweet and self-deprecating.

He liked it. He liked her.

“Your mom is right,” he murmured.

“Hmm?”

“You are too hard on yourself.”

A flash of consternation drifted across her face. “Oliver.”

He touched her cheekbone—high and tinged with pink. “You’ve apologized to me like a hundred times since we started meeting, all for things that weren’t a big deal.”

“Me nearly passing out in your hospital room because I’m a weakling about blood and you thinking it was related to you wasn’t a big deal?”

He shrugged. “You explained. It’s done.”

“Me making you furious enough to leave a session—rightly so, of course—because I made it about your injury instead of you?”

“Again. I explained. You explained. You apologized. I apologized.” Another shrug. “Not a big deal.”

“Oliver, I—”

“Hazel.”

Her eyes narrowed. “It wasn’t a big deal for me to agree to Luc’s scheme to fix you when you didn’t need fixing?” She scowled. “I should have told him that in the first place instead of thinking I was going to swoop in on my white horse, a knight in shining armor, waving my sword around.”

He grinned, imagining her on horseback, waving that sword through the air.

But then she looked so torn up about it that his grin faded, and he found himself running his knuckles over her cheek, something that, every time he did it, he told himself he shouldn’t. Still, it was something he couldn’t stop himself from doing because her skin was like silk, and touching her was…

Everything.

“Ask me why I agreed to those sessions,” he murmured. “Even when I was still thinking it was my injury that had terrified you.”

“I…” Her brows dragged together. “What?”

He tried another way. “Ask me why I didn’t tell Luc to fuck off when he told me about the sessions with you.”

A beat, then, “Why?”

“Because they were with you.”

Her lips parted.

Oliver shifted closer. “Because the first moment I saw you, I wanted to ask you out.”

They parted farther.

“Because I would have told Luc to fuck off if those sessions were with anyone but you.”

Farther still.

And he knew the world could be ending, but he still would have to taste those lips.

So, he did.