I went over to the pantry and pulled out the dustpan and broom. “Let me,” I said, when she reached for them.
“Cole, you don’t have to—”
“I know,” I said, sweeping the bits and dust into a neat pile before bending down to brush it into the dustpan. “But this is good practice for me, right? For when I have my own house.”
She watched me dump the mess into the trash, leaning back against the counter. “You think it’s bad luck?”
“That the first time I kiss you, we destroy a piece of your mother’s wedding china? Yes, that is some bad luck.” I replaced the broom and dustpan in the pantry and shut the door.
“Not that. I mean, maybe that too, but do you think it’s bad luck that I broke what was supposed to be my wedding china? Is it a sign I’m doomed to be single forever?”
I turned to see her biting one thumbnail. “No. I don’t think that at all.”
“But what if the universe is telling me something?”
“Like what?”
She shrugged helplessly. “I can’t have nice things?”
Her face was so despondent, I couldn’t resist tugging her hand, pulling her into a hug. “Hey. Come here.”
She moved forward into my embrace, wrapping her arms around my waist. Her cheek pressed against my chest, and I kissed her head before resting my chin on top of it. It felt so fucking good to hold someone like that—protectively, a little possessively, almost as if she was mine.
“You deserve all the nice things,” I told her. “What the universe was telling us tonight is that maybe going at each other while we were supposed to be washing your mother’s most fragile dishes wasn’t the best idea we’ve ever had.”
She laughed a little, the sound muffled against my shirt. “Maybe not.”
“And maybe what we should do is just . . . slow down. Make sure we know what we’re doing. Mistakes—and accidents—happen when people get careless and move too fast.”
She looked up at me. “So the universe was giving us a speeding ticket?”
“More like letting us off with a warning.”
She sighed, replacing her cheek against my chest. “You’re probably right.”
I didn’t want to let her go, so I didn’t. I kept talking, stroking her back. “I just don’t want to do something that . . . can’t be undone,” I told her. “Something that seems like a good idea in the moment, but turns out to be wrong for everyone.”
“I know. I don’t want that either.”
“I love having you in our lives, Chey. That makes this complicated. If I only had to think about what I want right this second, believe me—it would be so easy.”
She laughed a little, although it was a sad kind of laugh, tinged with regret for what couldn’t be. “Yeah.”
I stopped moving my hand and pulled her even closer. Her body was soft and warm, and I’d never wanted anyone so badly. “So fucking easy.”
In my arms, her body stilled, and she inhaled, like she needed to breathe in enough of me to last her a while. “Can I ask you something?” Her voice was quiet.
“Anything.”
Another deep breath. “Do you ever see things being different for you? I mean, do you ever see a juncture in your life where you might feel differently about . . . about letting someone in?”
I knew what she meant, and I wanted so fucking badly to be able to offer her something—anything—that would give her hope. But I couldn’t, not without sugarcoating the truth at best and lying at worst. And Cheyenne deserved so much better. Why should she hang around waiting for me to change my mind about getting involved in a serious relationship—which might never happen anyway—when she could have everything she wanted if she moved on?
I swallowed hard, and instead of answering her question, I told her a story. “When Mariah was about five, I made her a promise. She asked me if I was ever going to get married again and leave her behind, and I said no. Apparently, someone at school whose parents were divorced had been talking about their dad getting remarried and moving away to have a new family—it scared her.”
“Poor thing.”
“Anyway, I promised her that was never going to happen to us. That’s when she told me she likes that I wear my wedding ring. I think it reassures her.”
“Of course.”
“I thought she’d forgotten all about that conversation we had back then, but last year—this was when I asked you for a recommendation for a therapist—my mom was cleaning her room and found this letter she’d written to me but never showed me.”
Cheyenne tilted her head back and met my eyes. “What was in it?”
“A lot of things—questions about Trisha, about her death, wondering if she was to blame, wondering if somehow there had been a mistake and her mom wasn’t really gone.” I shook my head, my heart breaking all over again. “Again, she expressed her fear that she was going to lose me—either to an accident or another family. She described this nightmare that she has often, in which she wakes up one morning and I’m just gone. She’s alone in the house, and she realizes that everything I’ve said has been a lie—I did leave her.”
“Oh, Cole.” Her eyes grew shiny. “I’m so sorry. Did the therapist help?”
“Yes. Eventually, the therapist got Mariah talking about her fears, even about the letters she wrote but never sent. Apparently it’s healthy and normal, functioning sort of like a diary. A safe place to express her feelings.”
“That makes sense. Did she ever talk to you about what was in the letters?”
“No. And I didn’t want to confront her with what I knew because it felt wrong—like a violation of her privacy. But it also tore me up inside. I want her to know she’ll never lose me.” My chest grew tight. “When I brought her home from the hospital, I set my feelings aside and made a promise to her and to myself that I’d give her all I had. I’d be the best father I could. I’d go above and beyond to protect her, even if it continued to mean setting my feelings aside.”
Cheyenne smiled sadly. “You can’t get involved in anything that would hurt or scare your child. I understand.”
Knowing I had to let her go, I kissed her forehead and released her. “You’re one in a million, Cheyenne. And you deserve the guy who can put you first, give you all the nice things, and never let you down.”
She sniffed. “Ha. Does that guy exist?”
“Yes. And someday I will probably kick myself for not saying it’s me.” I cradled her face in my hands. “But I’ll always be here for you.”
She looked away, but not before a tear slipped down her cheek. “Thanks.”
I dropped my arms, feeling like the biggest dick on the planet. How had I fucked this up? A few minutes ago, we’d been laughing.
“You don’t have to stay,” she said, adjusting her dress and then her hair. “I can finish up on my own.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive. I should probably just get it done without any distractions.”
“I understand. I’ll let myself out.”
“Okay, thanks.” She offered me a half-smile and turned toward the sink, and it took every ounce of strength I had not to wrap my arms around her again.
I was walking away from her when she called out to me.
“Cole, wait.”
I turned. “Yeah?”
“Your ring. You forgot it.” She came toward me, holding my wedding band in soapy fingers.
“Oh.” Shocked, I took it from her and slipped it on. “Thanks.”
Her smile was forced. “No problem. ‘Night.” She faced the sink again.
I walked out of the kitchen, wishing I could flip the dining room table on my way to the front door.
* * *
Ten minutes later, I got into bed with the scent of her still on my hands and in my head. Don’t do it, I scolded, as my fingers stole beneath the waistband of my boxer briefs. She deserves more than starring in your adolescent fantasies, I thought, gripping my swollen cock. She deserves someon
e who can give her what she wants, just like you said, I told myself, slipping my flesh through my palm. The more you think about her like this, the more you want her like that. And you can’t have her, I repeated silently as I worked myself into a frenzy, fucking my fist like I wished I could fuck her.
You can’t have her.
You can’t have her.
You can’t have her.
I exploded in a hot rush of fury and desperation and desire, agonizing that there was no way to be two men at once, to keep my promises and have her to myself.
Nothing seemed fair.
Eight
Cole
I hadn’t slept well, and I was dragging when Moretti picked Mariah and me up the next afternoon at one o’clock. We piled into his car—Mariah liked his SUV better than mine because it was a Mercedes, which she insisted was superior to my trusty old Dodge Durango. You only had to push a button to start it, it smelled new, and it had a sunroof.
“It’s freezing cold,” I told her irritably. “We can’t even open it.”
“The hell we can’t,” said Moretti, turning up the heat and opening the sunroof. “It’s not even snowing today.”
Mariah laughed. “Yay! Dad, can we get a new car with our new house?”
“No. Now buckle your seatbelt back there.”
“Jeez, you’re cranky today,” Mariah muttered. She was aggravated with me because I’d said no to inviting Cheyenne to the movies with us tonight. My reasons—it was a tradition just the two of us shared, I wanted some father-daughter time, Cheyenne probably had plans anyway—were not to her satisfaction, and she’d marched up to her room after the argument and hidden out in there until it was time to go.
My mother had annoyed me too this morning, dropping all kinds of hints about Cheyenne, wanting to know how things had gone last night, remarking again and again on how beautifully she’d grown up, what a sweet daughter she was, how much Mariah loved her. Finally, I’d gotten tired of it and locked myself in my room just like Mariah had. I didn’t need anyone to tell me how amazing Cheyenne was. It wasn’t that I hadn’t noticed she was beautiful and sweet and great to Mariah—and beyond that, I knew she had a dirty mind and she sometimes imagined doing filthy things with me—it was that I couldn’t do anything about it.
And that was driving me fucking insane.
Our first appointment was at the house nearest to my mom’s, a stout brick colonial with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a den off the back, and a kitchen that looked like it had last been remodeled while Reagan was in the White House. It was okay, but I didn’t get a feeling when I walked through it that told me I’d live there.
We shook hands with the agent, a woman named Florence Billingsly with a towering beehive hairdo whom I recognized as a town council member and Bellamy Creek Historical Society volunteer. She asked after my mother and made sure to emphasize how close we’d be to her house if we lived here. “Why, you wouldn’t even have to call her to borrow a cup of sugar,” Mrs. Billingsly said with a laugh. “You could just walk right over.”
I shuddered.
“So what did you think?” Moretti asked as we drove away.
“I don’t know,” I said, craning my neck to look at the Dempseys’ house as we drove past it. Was Cheyenne home? Was she thinking about me? “Some of those kitchen appliances are older than we are.”
“They could easily be replaced,” he said reasonably. “The bones of that house are good.” As a builder, Moretti was used to looking beneath a house’s cosmetic appearance to the foundational structure.
“The deck in the back looked a little warped, didn’t it?”
“Another easy fix,” Moretti replied. “We can replace those boards. Or better yet, tear the whole thing off and build a new one in a weekend.”
“It’s really close to my mom’s.”
Moretti laughed. “I can’t help you there.”
The next one was only a few blocks off the lake, almost walking distance and definitely biking distance to the public beach. Mariah liked one of the bedrooms, which was painted a pale blue with an underwater mural scrolling across three walls. “A mermaid room,” she gushed. “And it has its own bathroom right there! I wouldn’t even have to go down the hall.”
The kitchen was definitely an improvement over the previous one, but the house was slightly newer construction—about fifteen years old compared to fifty—and Moretti wasn’t as confident in its bones. The central stairway seemed to tilt slightly to one side, and when we checked out the back of the house, he said the gutters had obviously been dumping water right next to the foundation for years, the yard wasn’t graded properly, and I was definitely looking at replacing the roof soon. “They went cheap on those shingles,” he said, shaking his head. “You might get another couple years out of them, but that’s it.”
On our way out, we stopped in the kitchen to say goodbye to the agent, who was doing a crossword puzzle at the table. He wore a cardigan sweater and bow tie, and his name was Moe Kravitz. He was an old-timer, retired from the Post Office, and he’d taken up real estate after his wife died a few years back. Confidentially, he whispered behind one hand, he thought this one was overpriced.
“I think you’re right,” said Moretti, looking over the spec sheet.
Moe looked pleased someone agreed with him. “And what’s your name?” he asked Mariah.
“Mariah Mitchell,” she recited.
“And how old are you?”
“I’m nine.”
“That’s a wonderful age,” he said. He shuffled over to a briefcase on the counter, opened it up and took out a Dum Dum sucker. “Would you like a lollipop?”
Mariah looked at me dutifully. “Can I have it?”
“Sure,” I said, stifling a yawn.
Moe handed it to her, and she thanked him. “You know, there’s a beautiful old house that just came on the market over on Rosebud Lane,” he went on. “I forget who has the listing, but it’s real nice. Needs a little TLC, maybe, but the lot’s terrific and it seems to me the price is right.”
“We’re actually headed there now,” Moretti told him, folding the spec sheet. “It’s Joy Frankel who has that listing.”
Moe nodded enthusiastically. “Yup, yup. That’s it. It was Charlie Frankel who told me about it last week at the Rotary Club meeting. That’s his daughter-in-law.”
“Right.” Moretti caught my eye and jerked his head toward the front door, and I got the message—we had to get out of here, or Moe was going to want to talk forever. He held out his hand. “Thanks for showing us the house, Moe.”
“Oh, sure.” Moe shook Moretti’s hand and then mine, but kept right on talking. “Joy’s the one who won that beautification award from the Historical Society for the work she did on those flower beds out in front of the general store.”
“Is she?” Moretti said absently as he steered Mariah out of the kitchen by the shoulders.
Moe followed us. “Yup. Yup. Fine job she did there. She’s married to Chuckie Frankel. Remember when he hit that home run to win the state tournament back in, ohhh, what was it, seventy-nine or so?”
“Can’t say that I do, but I’ve heard the story.” Moretti pushed the front door open and herded Mariah and me through it. “Well, we should go. I don’t want to leave Joy waiting.”
“Right. Enjoy your afternoon!” Moe stood on the front stoop of the house, waving at us as we got into the car like a grandpa saying farewell after a Sunday visit.
“What a nice old man,” Mariah said from the back seat, tearing the wrapper off her sucker.
“He is, but he’ll gab your ear off,” Moretti said, starting the car. “And I don’t think that’s the house you want.”
“It’s not,” I agreed, yawning again. “I don’t mind some manual labor, but I really don’t want to have to buy a new roof so soon. Or deal with water in the basement. Or a crooked staircase.”
“This next one should be better, at least structurally,” Moretti said. “It’s at the top of your
price range because it’s got four bedrooms, more square footage, and it’s on a huge lot, but we can probably get them to come down a little since it needs some cosmetic work. No deck, but like I said, we can build one in a weekend. And it’s definitely far enough away from your mom to avoid unannounced drop-in’s.”
“Not even the moon is that far,” I mumbled.
As we headed west, we passed the elementary school Mariah attended. “That’s my school!” she said.
“Oh yeah? What grade are you in now?” Moretti asked.
“Fourth. Miss Cheyenne teaches kindergarten there too.”
I pictured her there, sitting with her little students on a colorful rug, reading them a story, teaching them to add and subtract, making construction paper turkeys. She was probably a great teacher. I bet the kids adored her.
She was a great kisser too. I propped an elbow on the door and rubbed my thumb along my lower lip, recalling that bourbon-and-pumpkin-pie-flavored kiss last night—her mouth beneath mine, her hands fisted in my shirt, our bodies pressed together. It seemed unreal, like a dream. My eyes drifted shut, and next thing I knew, my head nodded and I jerked myself awake.
“Hey. Everything okay?”
The SUV was stopped at a red light, and Moretti was looking at me. I straightened up in the passenger seat and ran a hand over my hair. “Yeah.”
“You seem kind of out of it today.”
“I’m tired. Didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Why not?”
“A lot on my mind, I guess.”
The light turned green, and he focused on the road again. “How about a beer when we’re done?”
“I’m taking Mariah to the movies tonight, but we could go for a beer before dinner. Just have to drop Mariah off at home first and check with my mom.”
“Cool.” Then he squinted, his neck elongating as he pulled up in front of the house for sale and stared out the windshield at a car parked in front of it on the street. “What the . . .” He groaned, long and loud. “No fucking way.”
Mariah gasped in the back seat. “Uncle Enzo, you said a bad word.”
Make Me Yours: The Bellamy Creek Series Page 10