He needed to add her name change and all this stuff she’d revealed to the list of things to deal with and think about.

He knew for sure he wasn’t worth that sort of intensity of emotion, but what did that matter? Did it at all?

She deserved better than he could ever give her. Deserved more than a guy who was afraid of actually being in love with her because it felt too much like something he hadn’t done in five years.

Even when maybe it didn’t.

He rolled again, settling her against his side, her head on his biceps, and put it away. There’d be time later but right now he wanted her to feel better. “Are you all right? You looked a little stressed at the end tonight.”

“It’s just family. You know? I love them. They’re always there for me. But they can get to me in ways no one else possibly could. They want the best for me. GJ feels like he’s in charge of all the siblings. He’s a dingus, but it’s from his heart. He just can’t see why I make the choices I do. And sometimes he comes off as totally dismissive of my accomplishments. It’s always the same. Which is actually sort of comforting. For a while no one got in my business for any other reason but cancer, dying, death and then how I was recovering, or not, from that. It felt like I was reduced to a place where all I was was someone to fix, you know?”

“Can’t imagine the answers to those questions varied too much. Not for a while. I mean, I assume you were happy before he got sick, given the way you talk.”

“I loved him. I was happy. He was good for me. I was good for him. We had a good life and then he got sick and died and then I lost my way. Or maybe I just sort of chose a different way for those eighteen months. Whatever. I’m good now. ”

She was quiet but he knew she was working something out and so he waited, enjoying the weight of her against him and the scent of sex still in the air.

“Who I am will always be part of what I had with Eric. But I realized after you and I started up that I can have those memories and still enjoy this. But I don’t know how you feel. You said once you didn’t think it was weird. Do you want to know about it or not at all? Do I make you feel bad when I talk about my life before?”

“It’s not the fact that you loved someone before I came along. I can deal with that. But I can’t compete with a ghost.”

“You don’t have to. It isn’t a competition.”

He snorted. “Of course it is. He’ll always be frozen in time for you. He’ll always be better than me because he never had the chance to fuck up and I’m a dick for thinking that.”

“You’re not a dick. But he’s not better than you.”

There was a catch in her voice as she pushed from the bed to stand.

“What is it, Tuesday?” He turned on the bedside light before piling pillows at his back.

She was agitated, clearly upset about something more than her argument with her brother or any of the feelings stuff they’d just exposed.

“You don’t have to compete because he never made me feel what you do.”

They both went still as the words echoed between them and then soaked into Ezra’s brain.

“I was with Eric for a little over nine years. We had a great sex life. He and I fit well. But you? You touch me and everything else fades into the background. You fill me with so much raw yearning I can barely breathe. When it’s you and me, skin to skin, it’s raw and beautiful and all encompassing. It nearly hurts, you make me feel so good. That scares me and it makes me feel guilty. Like I’m betraying him. And I don’t care. I want you more than any guilt I might feel. I’ve never wanted anything or anyone the way I want you.”

It was exactly that combination of words he’d been waiting to hear. He hadn’t known it until she’d said them and he’d heard them. He had been struggling with how to feel about this man she’d loved, exactly as he’d told her.

The longer he’d known her and the more he’d allowed himself to feel about her, the more he’d wanted to mark her in some sense. To feel like what they had was special and good and that she wouldn’t trade it. Was that petty? If Eric had been alive he would feel that way about his wife, right? So why should Ezra feel bad that he finally believed she’d choose him.

He wasn’t a man who could live in the shadow of another. But she’d just told him that wasn’t the case. He was relieved. And a little uncertain he deserved it.

“How can this be a betrayal of a man who died over four years before we met? And if he was as good of a guy as you say, do you really think he’d be down with you existing by stringing together a few visits to hotel rooms here and there just to keep from losing your shit? Is that what you want instead? Never belonging to anyone so you never have to risk feeling again? Because Eric doesn’t care. He’s dead. You aren’t. It’s a waste of the life you’re blessed with to choose an empty existence over something that makes you feel, because what you and I have is different than what you had with someone else. Big deal. Ezra and Tuesday should be different.”

She stood there, just a few feet away and for the first time since they’d started sleeping together he didn’t wonder if she was wishing on some level that he was another man.

And then she came to him, sliding in between the sheets.

“Okay,” she said quietly.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“YES, YES, YES. That one.” Kelly looked Tuesday up and down. “That looks gorgeous on you.”