He nips at my earlobe, and my insides turn to jelly. His hand goes to the waist of my pants and skims along the top, the pad of his fingers grazing my skin. “For now, yeah, I’ll take that label. But eventually Addison,” his tongue trails along the outer edge of my ear and a slight moan escapes my mouth. “That title isn’t going to be good enough.” His hand slips inside my pants, and any thought of Matt, our label, and what our future may look like gets shattered to pieces. Along with any dignity I had, as I’m sure anyone in the surrounding buildings is watching as Damian’s hand sends my body into an all-consuming orgasm that has me gripping his arm for any connection to the earth.

“Are you sure she’s not going to care that I’m with you?”

Damian stops mid stride and backs me up against the white walls of the hospital. His hand runs through my hair as his lips gently land on mine. “She doesn’t get a lot of visitors, Addison. It will mean the world to her that you came with me today.” He kisses me again then pulls me off the wall and towards her room.

“Damian?”

He stops again, curiosity in his eyes, and a compassion I’ve only seen when he’s with her. I’m nervous, and it must be showing. I know I mean a lot to Damian, I know he wants me as his girlfriend and he wants to move us forward, but I also know how important his relationship with Emily is. If she doesn’t like me, this is going to be very difficult—for all of us.

“It’s going to be okay. Emily trusts me, and so if I say you’re cool, she will too.”

“Does she know I work for her attorney?”

“She’s a kid. Doesn’t understand all of that. In her mind, Thomas is trying to find her a home. I’d never tell her he doesn’t think I’d make a fit dad, it would only scare her.”

I nod. He begins walking again and I stop, not wanting to go further until I have all the details. “Why doesn’t Thomas think you’re fit?”

Damian takes a big breath and a sad smile lifts the corners of his mouth. “Remember when I told you everyone at some point or another wants a re-do on their life?”

I nod, giving him my full attention.

“After my accident, for about three years, I was a mess. Completely lost in life. Thomas is holding that against me.”

“How bad was it?” I ask realizing I don’t really know all that much about Damian.

His face falls slightly and he’s quiet, his mind spinning. “Just your typical bad boy behavior,” he finally says before grabbing my hand walking us further down the hall. I’m not sure it was the answer I was looking for, but I’m going to let it go for now.

As we get closer, I realize I need to know one more thing. I should have asked him all of this in the car, but I hadn’t given it much thought. I’ve only seen Emily once, and that was on an errand for Thomas, walking into her room, hand in hand with Damian is going to feel much different.

Stopping, he turns his face towards me, his lip curling up on the side, his dark eyes glistening with concern and understanding. Wrapping an arm around my back, he pulls me closer. “Ask me anything about her, Addison. Whatever will make you feel better about walking in her room together, ask away.”

I see a few chairs in a waiting room and direct us to them. “What happened to her? Where is her family?”

Our chairs are across from each other, our knees touching as he takes my hands in his. He’s rubbing his thumb along the back of my hand, and it’s calming every nerve that is jumping all over the place in my system. His eyes stay locked on mine, his forehead creased in thought and contemplation.

Casually he tells me, “Her mom died in a car wreck a few years back. No known father. She bounced around here and there but eventually ended up with a nice couple down in Goleta. I hear they were good to her, treated her well, but within two months of moving in with them, she got sick. The husband was out of work and wife a teacher. They just couldn’t handle it.”

I nod, my heart heavy with the knowledge that an eight-year-old could be on her own, fighting for a home. My mom didn’t want me, but I had my dad. He’d made sure I never needed anything, made sure I was always taken care of and I felt loved. Always. I wonder if this girl ever feels like someone is fighting for her.

But the person who is doing everything in his power to make sure she’s going to be good, is sitting in front of me. “But how did you find her?”

His eyes scrunch up in thought, his nostrils slightly flaring and I feel I’ve touched on a subject he’s not comfortable with. Releasing my hands he sits back and stares off to the blank white wall behind me.

“Damian,” I say quietly.

He focuses his attention back on my face and his features soften, his eyes lowering and his lips gently turning up. “Reed found her.”

“What exactly does that mean?” I ask cautiously.

He sighs out a big breath then looks directly into my eyes. “Reed knew I was lost, fighting for a life that no longer existed. He was trying to hammer home that there were people a lot worse off than me in this world. The minute I saw her, I knew I had to help her.”

Damian has always been secretive and there is a part of me that doesn’t feel I’m getting the whole picture of the why and how Emily came into his life. But if she gives him purpose, if she brought him back to a peaceful place, I need to accept I may not get more information than this.

I lean forward and kiss him, my hand cupping the back of his neck as the short hair tickles my palm.

“You’re a good person, Damian Walker.” He smiles against my lips. “Let’s go see your favorite blue-eyed-girl.”

“Here, let me help you up.” After an incredibly awesome hospital visit, I decided Addison and I needed to work out, or at least I needed to work out. Emily was great, and Addison was amazing with her, playing Would You Rather? until she’d run out of questions then watching re-runs of American Ninja Warrior. Addison knew every contestant, every move they made, where they went wrong and what they needed to work on for the next competition. It was a little frightening how caught up in these people’s worlds she was and I can only hope I’m going to give her a better life than one living through other people’s dreams. She needs to have her own.

I had dreams at one point as well, and they all came crashing down. When your life suddenly changes courses without asking your opinion in the matter, you need to readjust what you want out of life. Sort out the good and forget the bad. Life has a lot to offer, and if you want to find all the amazing parts, you can. It may be lurking in a hidden corner, out in plain sight or have just moved right next door, but it’s there, and I plan to show Addison how great life can be.

“What’s up peoples?” Fucking Reed walks onto the track, his arms outstretched, and a shit-eating grin on his face.

His shirt is ridiculous.

“Oh my God, Reed, that shirt’s worse than any of my mugs.” Addison is cracking up, and I want to deck the guy for thinking it was okay to wear a shirt around Addison that says, ‘When I get tired of snatches, I jerk it.’

Sure, it’s a CrossFit shirt, and I own a few of them myself, but have some fucking class.

“Don’t throw those dark mean eyes my way, Damian.” He throws his shit on the ground and turns on the music. Far East Movement’s “Like a G6” begins to play and I turn towards Addison, helping her with another pull up. I love the dude like he’s my brother and having four of them, that’s saying a lot. But at some point the guy’s got to grow up.

She loses her grip, and I’m not paying as good of attention as I should. Her hands slip off the bar and she lands right into my arms, causing us both to fall to the ground. “You okay, Green Eyes?” I’m holding her, as we lay on the grass and it dawns on me we’ve gone all day without having sex. I begin to wonder why I brought her here instead of home and straight to bed. After spending over twenty-four hours in nothing but our birthday suits, real life came calling this morning. She was too nervous visiting Emily hand in hand to have a roll between the sheets with me today, and I was too antsy to get her into bed when we got home. All her questions this afternoon threw me. How can I ever tell Addison the real reason Thomas doesn’t want me around? I promised Megan I’d never tell anyone what she divulged to me that night, but she left out the fact that she had a daughter. I’ve often wondered if that makes the promise null and void, if her lack of information gives me the right to take action, even though it’s the last thing Megan would have wanted. I’ve never been able to answer that question.