Free Darker Than Desire by Shiloh Walker Page A

disaster you call an office. I’ll get them. You’re sure I shouldn’t check with Max about this? I can have one of the nurses ask him.”
    â€œIt’s not necessary. It will be okay.” His skin felt tight, oddly itchy at the thought of David settling into that house where Max had been shot, where Miss Mary had died. But he’d think on that later. “I’ll call you once I know when I’ll be headed home, okay?”
    â€œOkay. We love you.”
    We  … the thought of it sent a rush of warmth through him and he smiled. “Love you guys, too. Give Rocketboy a hug for me.”
    The line went dead and he dropped the phone into the cup holder, focused back on the road.
    The past twenty minutes had passed in an odd, strained silence. If the rest of the drive could be like that—
    â€œIs it hard, raising a kid that ain’t yours?”
    He glanced over to see Layla staring outside. The wind tore at her hair, messing it up, but she hadn’t complained, something that told him more about her distracted state of mind than she’d probably like.
    â€œMicah feels like he’s mine,” he said softly.
    â€œBut he’s not.”
    â€œDoesn’t mean I don’t love him.” He shrugged. “I’m going to adopt him, give him my name. It’s all a formalization, though. In my heart, in my head, he is mine. He has been for a while.”
    Maybe even from the very first time Noah laid eyes on him.
    â€œDo you think he loves you more than his real dad?”
    Her voice was husky now, husky and soft.
    Sympathy stirred in him and Noah, not for the first time, wished he could find it in him to offer something false and empty that wouldn’t hurt as much as the truth. She had enough hard stuff in front of her. Offering her some sort of hope could make it easier.
    But false hopes, empty hopes, weren’t going to help. Not in the long run.
    He’d been silent too long and she turned her head, glaring at him, the lenses of her purple contacts looking odd with her swollen red eyes. “Well?”
    â€œMicah’s dad wasn’t much of a father,” he finally said. “Micah barely remembers him. Doesn’t talk much about him.”
    â€œI…” She licked her lips, shrugged. She took a final drag off the cigarette and then put it out in the Coke can she’d been using in lieu of an ashtray. “Maybe things can change. People can make themselves better, right? You did. And you really did change. Sometimes I hate you for it.”
    â€œI don’t know what you want me to say to that, Layla.” Slowing at the stoplight, he looked over at her.
    She stared stonily out the windshield. “I want you to tell me I can change.”
    â€œThat’s up to you, though. Do you want to change?”
    â€œIf I didn’t, I wouldn’t be in here with you, Preach. That’s for damn sure.” She scraped her nails down the front of her jeans, her hands shaking slightly. “I don’t want any damn thing, not from you. But look where I am.”
    Silence ticked away; the light changed. Pushing down on the gas, he pondered his response another few seconds and then finally said, “I think, if you really want to, you can change.”
    â€œHow?” she said, her voice the faintest whisper.
    â€œThe same way I did. By focusing on one day at a day. At first, you focus on one second at a time. One minute. And you never lose sight of what matters to you the most.”
    She slanted him a quick look.
    â€œYou’ve got something that matters, Layla. We both know who it is.”
    â€œHe doesn’t care about me.” She plucked at a thread coming loose from her jeans. “I didn’t really give him much reason. And he’s happier with Sybil, you know. She knows how to take care of him. I don’t.”
    â€œSo learn.”
    *   *   *
    Keys clutched in his fist, David