Time Will Tell

I’m only home for two seconds when there’s a knock on the door.

When I answer it I find a very aggravated Teagan on the other side. My first instinct was to ask where Grace was, seeing as how she was missing, but I knew better than that. My second instinct was to pull her to me and ask her what’s wrong, but I know better than that, too – if I try to touch her she looks like she might knee me in the groin.

Instead I just step aside, allowing her to enter. She brushes past me, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Where the hell were you today?” she demands.

“Work?” I lie.

“Dammit, Noah, that was your chance to tell the truth! Why the hell are you fucking lying to me?” she screams.

She looks broken, which hurts. She knows where I was.

I shake my head at her. “I was at Capella’s with Celeste. I should have told you, but I didn’t want you to overreact. I’m so sorry, Teag, I just… she wanted to talk, and I didn’t think you needed to know.”

“You didn’t think I needed to know?!” she exclaims. “Why is it that you couldn’t tell me where you were and Reese, Reese could!”

“You were with Reese today?” I know it wasn’t the right question, but it was irrational and it really bothered me that she was watching my baby today and hanging out with her ex-boyfriend.

“Gah! Noah! You were with Celeste and you lied about it! Reese came by to kiss me and basically tell me I was his again because you were off somewhere fixing things with Celeste and that if I didn’t stay away from you she was filing for custody of Grace!”

I pause. “She said what?” I demand.

“What, you didn’t talk to Celeste about it?” she taunted.

I grab her by the shoulders and pull her forward. “No. Celeste said she was wrong and she was sorry, and she misses Grace and wants to be a part of her life, but she didn’t say anything about you. She didn’t say she didn’t want me to see you, she didn’t say anything about Grace seeing you, nothing like that.”

She shakes her head at me. “But Reese—”

“Reese?” I exaggerate. “You’re ex-boyfriend, Reese? Damn, Teag, I’m sick of him.”

“And you think I’m not?!” she yells. “I’m so sick of him! I already have Kim telling me that we won’t work, I don’t need Reese telling me this too! I knew that being with you would be...”

“What?” I ask bitterly. “What would being with me be like, Teag?”

“Stressful!” she screeches. “Stressful and hectic and crazy as hell! I could handle that, Noah. But Celeste… I can’t deal with her and Reese both meddling with our relationship. Oh, and Kim and my mother, them too! No one thinks we can make this work.”

I just stare at her for a long moment. “I do,” I whisper. “I think we can make this work.”

“I want this to work, Noah,” she says softly. “But, really, lies don’t help things.”

“I know,” I say, rubbing my hands up and down her arms. “I won’t lie again, I promise,” I kiss her softly.

She tilts her head to look up at me. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

She smiles at me, the most gorgeous grin. “Yeah, okay.”

I kiss her again, a deep lingering kiss. She leans into me and her arms wrap around my waist. I smile against her parted lips and take her face in my hands. “Teag, you mean so much to me.”

“You mean so much to me,” she says cutely, kissing me again and again. I wrap my arm around her waist and pull her tightly against me, so tight I can feel her chest through my shirt. She leans in and kisses my neck and my shoulder and my lips. I tilt my head back and she stands up on her toes, wrapping her fists in my hair and bites and licks and kisses me. She moans and it sends chills up my spine.

I feel so stupid for thinking this, but I want her – as in I want her in my bed right now, and if it weren’t for the fact that doing so with Celeste had gotten me a baby that’s probably where I’d take her right now.

Instead I pull away, groaning as I do.

“What?” she asks. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong,” I answer. “I just… we can’t… I can’t… If we keep going, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.”

“Oh,” she says, blushing as much as I am in this moment. “That’s… smart.”

I laugh. “Smart,” I scoff. “It felt like the dumbest move in the world for me to pull away from you right then, when I most wanted to keep going.”

“So why did you?” she challenges me.

“Because you mean too much to me to move too fast – I moved too fast with Celeste and you see what happened.” I explain. I wrap my arms around her again. “I don’t want that to happen to us. You mean more to me than Celeste ever did, and I’m not going to screw things up.”

She snuggles into my chest and I smile.

I think I love you, Teagan Foster.