by Ford, Mia
“Why did you come here, Alicia?” I ask after a long moment, curious. “When you couldn’t find Zoe’s house?”
Alicia looks up at me, and I regret asking immediately. Her eyes are too sad, an expression that doesn’t sit right on her little face.
“I liked coming to the park,” she informs me. “With Zoe. And you.”
I sigh and reach out to pull Alicia into another hug. She buries her face in my shoulder.
“We’ll fix this, somehow,” I promise her. “You and me, we’re going to talk to Zoe, and we’ll fix it.”
I need to, for Alicia’s sake. I spent all this time pulling away from Zoe for Alicia’s sake and now, to make my daughter happy, I need to get close again.
I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do. I know that I can’t control myself around Zoe, especially now that I know what it feels like to lose her. If I invite Zoe back into my life, I know that I’m opening myself up to the possibility of something more happening between us.
I wish, for a moment, Rose was here. She was always the best at giving advice; her level-headed approach to any problem had solved many dilemmas for me over the years we were together.
Though, I think with some humor, if Rose was here, I wouldn’t be having this problem at all. Alicia would have her real mother, and I probably would never have met Zoe.
The thought sends a sharp pang through me and I close my eyes. That, right there, gives me my answer.
I don’t want to lose Zoe again.
“Can we make cookies for Zoe?” Alicia asks in a small voice.
“We can make lots of cookies,” I promise. I pause. “We can make some of those rose ones, again. Why did you make them that shape?”
“Because you like roses,” Alicia informs me. “Zoe thought you’d like them, too.”
I smile slightly. Zoe, who knows about Rose, would definitely have thought it would be something that could cheer me up. Maybe on any other day, it would have. But, coming down to the kitchen on Sunday morning and seeing those cookies… It was painful.
“Let’s get home?” I suggest. “I think Zoe is waiting for us?”
Alicia raises her head, her eyes wide.
“Really?” she gasps.
“Really,” I smile. “She told me she was going to wait for us. Ready to go?”
Alicia nods easily. She’s very tired by this point, so I allow her to climb on my back, her arms securely around my neck.
“Alright?” I ask. “If you want, you can go to sleep, I don’t mind.”
“I want to see Zoe,” Alicia says, but I can already hear sleep slurring her voice, and I won’t be surprised if she doesn’t last until we get home.
“Zoe won’t mind either,” I promise. “But we’ll be there soon.”
I walk slowly, not wanting to jostle Alicia too much on the trip. My heart feels light; even for a brief moment, I thought I might have lost everything.
But now Alicia is back with me, and the world is slowly being thrown into sharper clarity. I know what I need to do now. Zoe and I need to talk, and I need to come to some sort of decision.
What should I do? I wonder this as I walk the streets. I can invite Zoe back as my nanny, which would be a plus all round; Zoe will have her job back, Alicia will get to see Zoe, and I will be able to go back to work. But it comes with downsides of being so close to Zoe that it will be impossible not to fall deeper for her.
Or we can organize some sort of roster with Alicia. I snort at the thought that I’m contemplating shared parenting with a woman I’ve only known for a few months, but I don’t want something like this to happen again. Maybe we could pick certain days and Zoe can have Alicia then? It would diminish the time Zoe and I spend together, but Alicia would still get to see Zoe, and I can still pay Zoe for that time.
Option B is the smarter option. It’s the option that I should be taking, according to everything that has happened in recent weeks. If I’d thought of it before I fired Zoe, I would have done it in a heartbeat.
But I know the truth now. I don’t want to see less of Zoe.
“I really am hopeless,” I whisper out loud.
Alicia doesn’t reply; she’s already asleep. I come to the gates of my own home and pause. The house lights are on, and I know Zoe is in there, waiting for us to come home. I have to face her, now, and put all my cards on the table.
When I walk through the front door, Zoe appears from the kitchen. Her face is pale and tense, but she instantly relaxes at the sight of Alicia on my back.
“Asleep?” she asks quietly.
“She’s exhausted,” I say with a small smile. “She’s going to be disappointed; she really wanted to see you.”
“I wanted to see her, too,” Zoe confesses. “But, it’s fine, I can see her another time.”
“Tomorrow?” I suggest. “If you’re not busy?”
Zoe looks taken aback, and then she smiles thankfully.
“Yeah, that would be great,” she says. She stretches. “Well, I should…”
“Stay,” I say, and she freezes. “I need to put Alicia to bed, and then…we should talk.” Her face is expressionless. “If you want to.”
Zoe’s eyes search my face. I’m not sure what she’s looking for, but she must find it, because she nods slowly.
“Okay,” she says aloud. “I’ll put the kettle on. Do you want coffee?”
“Please,” I say. “It’s been a long night.”
Finally, Zoe laughs, her face softening.
“It has,” she agrees. “I’ll see you in a moment, then.”
She disappears into the kitchen. I wonder if she’s as nervous as I am.
It doesn’t matter, I tell myself as I go up the stairs. I’ve let this go on for long enough. It’s time to make my decisions, once and for all.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Seth
I’m so very tired, but I try not to let it show as Zoe enters the kitchen, scrubbing a hand down her face and yawning widely.
“Sorry, it’s late,” she says to me with a grimace. “You’re not tired?”
I am, but there’s no way I’ll miss this. I can see the confusion on her face as she wonders what I want to talk to her about, especially after how our last encounter went, but she’s curious enough to want to hear it. There’s an odd tension in the air that tells us both how important this is.
“I’m fine,” she says. “Running around in the cold air is enough to wake anyone up.”
She obviously meant it as a joke, but I wince anyway.
“Sorry,” I say again. “But, thank you for helping me.”
“I didn’t do much,” Zoe points out. “You’re the one that found her, in the end.”
“If it wasn’t for you, I would have been running around like a chicken with its head cut off,” I say dryly. “You gave me a direction to go in. I don’t think I would have thought of looking for her near the precinct if it wasn’t for you.”
“Why did she end up stopping at the park?” Zoe asks curiously. “It’s not exactly close.”
“When she missed your house, she decided to go to the park,” I say with a sigh. “She said she has good memories of you, her and me being there.
“Oh,” Zoe says quietly. She hunches her shoulders. “If I hadn’t taught her about the streets so well, she might have just turned around and gone home.”
“No,” I counter. “She was determined enough to find you that she left this house while I wasn’t watching. It’s because of you that she’s safe. When she didn’t reach her destination, she headed instead to a place where she felt comfortable, somewhere that you taught her to be familiar with. If it wasn’t for that, who knows where she might have ended up.”
Zoe gives me a small smile. I look determinedly back at her; I fully believe that.
“Speaking of her wanting to find me…” Zoe says. She closes her eyes. “I should have called or visited or something. I was so busy nursing my hurt feelings that I didn’t think about her.”
&nb
sp; “You’re not the only one,” I point out. “I’m the same.” I snort. “I take a week off work to look after her, and then I spend every day moping about my own decision.”
The air between us becomes heavy at once. I’ve finally broached the subject of the last time we saw each other.
“For what it’s worth, Seth, I do understand why you feel the way you do,” Zoe says finally.
“I don’t want you to understand,” I say. Zoe looks at me in shock. I steel myself and meet her gaze with firm eyes. “That’s not something you should have to understand. It was just me being a coward.”
“What?” Zoe asks, shocked.
“I was running away,” I continue. “I pushed you away because I was scared and, when you got too close, I cut you off entirely. That wasn’t fair. These last three days without you…”
I trail off. She’s watching me, waiting for an answer to the questions she has, like she had since the first time we slept together.
“There are many things I regret,” I tell her. “And I’m going to regret my decision for a long time to come, and even more so because I was hiding behind the flimsy excuse that it was ‘for Alicia’ when, really, it was just me being unable to face being hurt again.”
“That’s understandable too, Seth,” Zoe says. “You went through something awful with Rose’s death, after all.”
I frown at her. Somehow, her understanding irritates me. I don’t want her to understand. I think I’d feel better if she would just yell at me.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say firmly. “What it comes down to is the fact that I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
I hear a sharp intake of breath from Zoe. I force my gaze to meet hers once more.
“I don’t know what it is, but I can’t stay away from you,” I confess. “When we’re in the same room together, my eyes follow you. I want to hear you talk and laugh for as long as you’ll allow me. I…” I falter. I’m not ready to say that, just yet. “I want you so badly, all the time. I think I remember saying some of this on Saturday night. It was all true. I want you in my life, and I was scared by how much I needed you.”
Zoe stares at me. And then, to my horror, she bursts out laughing.
That definitely wasn’t the reaction I was expecting.
“I guess you don’t remember my confession, then?” she says as she calms. I shake my head. “Seth, I’ve been trying to get your attention almost since the moment I first saw you. You could have asked me to do anything, and I would have done it, no questions asked. When you gave me this job, I decided to try and get close to you.” She grins at the look on my face. “No, I tried to seduce you. You couldn’t keep your eyes off me? That’s because I wanted you to be looking at me. I only stopped when I found out about Rose. I decided to try and be friends with you instead, and then…” She shrugs helplessly. “Somehow, it’s around then that we ended up having sex for the first time.”
I let out an incredulous laugh. She had tried to seduce me? Does that mean that all those times that she would bend over the counter, wink at me, stretch slowly, brush against me…those were her incredibly effective seduction attempts?
“Sorry,” she adds, though she doesn’t sound apologetic at all.
“Jeez, Zoe,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t know whether to curse you for doing that, or curse myself for being such an idiot.” I give her a small smile. “It doesn’t really matter, though. It’s all gone too far for it to just be physical attraction now.”
“Yeah,” she agrees, smiling at me.
An odd understanding passes between us. I exhale slowly, closing my eyes briefly. I know, now, what I will do.
The only thing I can.
“I want you in my life,” I say quietly. “I don’t care if I have to repent every day for the rest of our lives for how much of a mess I made of things; I’ll do it if you agree to come back. To be Alicia’s nanny. And to be my…” I hesitate. “To be in my life in whatever way you want.”
Zoe’s eyes darken. “You mean it?”
“Yes,” I say, nodding. “
“And you’re not going to pull some stupid cold shoulder act again?” she checks.
“I’ll try not to,” I say. I raise my hand to cup her cheek, and I smile when she leans into it. “I want to know everything about you and explore every inch of you.”
She looks at me and, suddenly, her smile turns wicked. “There’s not much of me that you haven’t seen, by now.”
I choke on a laugh. My amusement, however, becomes a fissure of passion that sparks down my spine as she steps in close, looking up at me challengingly. The air around us grows heavier again, but this time for an entirely different reason.
“Of course, I won’t mind if you want to take another look,” she says quietly.
I’m at a crossroad, yet again. I can stop this, and force myself to be content with Zoe being in my life just as a friend. Or…
I smile slightly and lean in, my lips lightly brushing against hers. I have already promised myself that I won’t run away anymore. I can’t think about the future anymore; it will come when it is ready, favorable or not.
“I like the sound of that,” I purr. “Maybe I should explore you thoroughly inside as well.”
She smiles against my lips and steps so close that her chest is flush with mine, her breasts pressing against my chest.
“I think a thorough exam is required, here,” she murmurs.
I capture her lips in a searing kiss, no longer interested in the metaphors. Zoe is here, she’s in my arms, and, this time, I’m not fighting to stop it. I want her. She wants me. It’s time we both got what we want.
She pushes back, her tongue tangling with mine, standing on her toes to lean further into me. I spread my feet a little, steadying us both, and press one hand to the small of her back. The other hand is traveling up, under her shirt, skimming over her hips and stomach.
When she pulls back, we both gasp for air.
“Bedroom?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say, and then I smirk. “I need a proper bed if I’m going to fuck you all night long.”
“God, yes,” she moans, her eyes fluttering.
We rush out of the kitchen and up the stairs. I’m reminded, suddenly, of the first time we did this, after I helped her out of her sodden shirt, which she had gotten stuck in. Knowing what I know now about her original intentions when she came to work with me, it’s actually hilarious that that, her most successful seduction attempt, was an accident.
We creep past Alicia’s room. She mutters something as we go past, but she doesn’t wake, and it’s with breathless giggles that we dart into my room and close the door. As soon as we’re in, Zoe pushes me back, a predatory look in her eyes as she stalks toward me.
“I want to taste you,” she says silkily. “I want to feel every inch of you in my mouth as I suck you dry. Then I want to make you hard again so you can fuck me.”
My breath catches in my throat.
“Yeah,” I say in a strangled voice. “That sounds good.”
She gives me a smirk, eyes dark with ever-growing lust, and then steps back, out of my reach. I blink, confused.
Then, slowly, she reaches down and fingers the hem of her shirt. Her eyes never leave mine as she slowly pulls it up, teasing it over her stomach and her breasts, running her fingers over her skin and scratching it with her nails as she goes.
My mouth goes dry. She’s giving me a strip show.
“Don’t look away,” she teases. “No touching, either.”
Bit by bit, inches of her skin are revealed until she pulls the shirt over her head, mussing up her curls even more, leaving her standing in a bra and jeans. I’m aching hard now, and I want to just go over there and take her in my arms.
But before I can even think about making a move, Zoe winks at me as she reaches behind her, running her fingers along the wire of her bra. I hear her unclasp it and then she slowly pulls one arm and then the next through the straps, holding the materi
al in place.
She lets it drop, and her breasts bounce free, nipples hardening in the cool air. I lock my body up tight, dropping my eyes down to her jeans as she plays with the zipper teasingly.
“Look at you,” she says. “You almost look ready to burst right now.”
My erection is pressing uncomfortably against my pants. I want to take it in my hand, but I know I won’t last long if I do that. Just watching Zoe slowly strip in front of me has been almost more than I can handle.
“We’re almost done,” she grins.
She pops the button on her jeans and then slides the zipper down, brushing the jeans over her hips. Zoe turns around, then, and bends over to slowly pull her legs out of the jeans, presenting her panty-clad backside, wriggling the round globes at me. She looks over her shoulder and smirks at me, no doubt knowing what she’s doing to me.
Maybe this is her revenge, I think, hazily. She’s drawing this out on purpose as a punishment.
If this is her idea of her punishment, I’ll take it every day for the rest of our lives.
“I want to fuck you so hard,” I gasp, pressing my hand against my erection; even that small amount of pressure on my cock makes me see stars.
“I know,” she smirks.
She straightens and slides her panties down, kicking them off. Now totally bare, her naked body swaying as she makes her way over to me, she pushes me backward until my knees hit a chair, forcing me to sit.
“Let’s take a look, shall we?” she purrs, falling to her knees in front of me.
She pulls at the elastic band of my trousers, and I lift my hips without consciously deciding to do it, desperate for her touch. She slides them down, taking my boxers with them, and pulls them off my legs, one by one. My cock stands proudly, free of its confines.
“I’m going to suck out everything,” Zoe promises.
Then her mouth is on me, and I throw my head back. Having Zoe’s mouth on me is like nothing else, even being in her body. Her mouth is constantly moving on my cock, sucking and licking and swallowing around me, and it sends me into a frenzy of passion, trying to buck my hips up further into that wonderfully wet heat that has enveloped me.