She holds out her little arms and he swoops down to pick her up with one hand, swinging her up and onto his hip. “It’s okay, sweet pea, this is my friend, Griffin.”
“Hey there, Hailey.” I tousle her platinum-blonde hair that is a replica of his, right down to the cowlick in the front that forces her short waves to fall on either side of her left eye.
Hailey hides her head in Mason’s chest as he bellows out a laugh. Then I watch the two of them play. I watch this two-hundred-and-fifty-pound quarterback sit on the floor with his daughter and build a tower out of blocks. Then I watch him lie on his back and balance the tiny girl on his feet, whirling her through the air while he makes airplane noises. Then I watch him sing ridiculously embarrassing songs about patty cakes and pony rides as she giggles and tries to sing along with him, but mostly she just pats his face and tries to stick her fingers in his mouth, which he then kisses.
I watch them for hours, sitting on a barstool in the kitchen while nursing a beer. I don’t move a muscle, not even when they fall asleep, her on his chest. I see her little lips quiver and make smacking noises as she sleeps. I see his hands instinctively wrap around her when she shifts her weight on him.
Then I see his heart break when Hailey’s mom comes to gather her up before bedtime. I see the pain on his face, in his every movement. It’s palpable and I can feel it from across the room. He’s a broken man watching his little girl leave as she calls out for her daddy.
I will do anything and everything not to live through that myself.
He walks past me and I jokingly hand him a tissue. He bats my hand away. “Fuck off,” he says, reaching in the fridge for a beer.
I hold up my hands in surrender. “That was painful to watch, man. Is it always like that when she leaves?”
He simply nods his head and then chugs half of his beer.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask.
“Tell you what, that I sometimes cry like a baby when Hailey leaves?” He means it as a joke, but I’m pretty sure there’s some truth there and it guts me.
“No, tell me that Skylar is seeing someone.” I close my eyes and shake my head thinking of how I felt when I walked up those stairs and saw his hands on her. “I walked right into the middle of a goddamn date.”
He laughs.
“I’m glad to see you find this so funny.”
“I don’t think it’s all that serious,” he says. “Would it have changed anything if I had told you?”
I shake my head. “I guess not.”
“Well then, that’s why I didn’t tell you,” he says, as if that clears everything up.
“Who is he, Dix?”
“John something-or-other.” He shrugs his shoulders.
“I know his name, douchebag. I met him tonight. Who the hell is he?”
“They work together, but he’s not on staff at Mitchell’s. I think he’s a food or beverage supplier. I’ve never met the guy, so there’s not much I can tell you.”
“Never met him?” I give him my best what-the-fuck look. “How do you know he’s not some deranged fucker who goes after pregnant women and then takes their babies?”
He laughs again. “Dude, you watched way too much television during your drunken hiatus. He’s fine. Baylor says he’s a good guy who has been working with her parents’ restaurants for years.”
I finish my beer and stare at the empty bottle after I set it on the counter. “Did I ruin my chance with her, man?”
He sighs. Then he puts another beer in front of me. “She still has feelings for you. I can tell by the way her face turns sad when we talk about you.”
“You talk about me?”
“Of course we do. You’re my best friend. You’re her baby’s father. She lost not only Erin, but you. She needed support. Plus, she needed my help to move your big-ass furniture around.”
I laugh. “Yeah, that bed is huge. I don’t know what Erin was thinking when she bought it. It took three guys to move it upstairs.”
I’ll never forget that first night in the townhouse. She jumped up and down on the mattress after the bed was delivered. We were twenty-two at the time and she looked like a little girl on a trampoline. She was so happy and carefree and alive.
“What is it?” Mason asks.
I realize that I’m smiling from ear-to-ear and it dawns on me that I just thought of Erin without feeling sad. I allowed myself to let the happy memories infiltrate the bad ones. “I don’t know. I feel like I’m—”
“Ready to move on?” he interrupts.
I look guiltily into the neck of my beer bottle. “Does that make me a dick? That after two months, I want to be with someone else? Hell, if I’m being honest, it was a lot less than two months. What if it isn’t enough time? What if I’m doing this for all the wrong reasons?”
“Answer me this, Griffin. If there wasn’t any baby, would you still want Skylar? Or would you just be trying to use her to get through your grief?”
“What the hell, Dix?” I pick up my beer and walk into the living room so I don’t take a swing at him.
He follows me, smiling. “See, I pissed you off by even suggesting it, didn’t I? You want that woman with or without a baby. Two months, or two minutes, it doesn’t matter. There’s no set time to grieve someone. Especially not in your situation. I don’t know what Erin wrote in that letter, but my guess is that she told you not to feel guilty about wanting Skylar. That she did everything in her power to push you together and that she wanted you to know it was okay to be with her.” He points his beer bottle at me. “I’m close, aren’t I?”
I nod my head.
“Then don’t be a damn fool. Go after what you want, G. Skylar wants it too, you know, but you hurt her at a time when you both needed each other. She might not feel like she can trust you to be there for her if shit goes wrong again. And who can blame her?”
We drink a few more beers and talk football. Then I hit the couch, that was not built for a guy my size to crash on, and try to sleep when all I can really do is think of a way to get her to let me in.
~ ~ ~
I watch her walk down the street towards Mitchell’s. I know her hours. I knew she’d be arriving soon. Yet, I still showed up here an hour early, at the coffee shop across the street, waiting for her to come to work. I grab my camera and take some pictures of her. Her heel gets caught in a sidewalk grate and I hold my breath, watching her find her balance. She laughs at herself. Snap. I catch the moment on film. She doesn’t look around to see if anyone saw her trip. She doesn’t even care. My eyes move in both directions, searing into the men that turn their heads as she walks by.
Her growing belly is now evident under her winter coat. Yet even that doesn’t detract from the stares she garners. As she gets closer and I zoom in tighter, I see it. The locket I gave her. I can see the sparkle of the diamond when the sun catches it. Snap.
I wondered if she would even open the gift, let alone wear it. I wonder if she thought to put a picture of Erin in it, like I had imagined.
I remember standing on a corner down in Miami Beach a few days before Christmas. I was watching happy couples walk down the street hand-in-hand, window shopping for what might go under the tree. Moms and Dads, going in and out of ice-cream shops and restaurants, swinging their young children between them. Trying to look like I fit in, and not a loser that abandoned his quasi-family, I started looking in windows myself.
The locket practically jumped off the blue velvet and bit me. Hanging from a stunning rope chain was a silver locket with a flower etched into it. I convinced myself it was a lily. The bud of the flower was a diamond—what would be Aaron’s birthstone since he was due in April. There was no way I wasn’t going to buy it. Even if all I ever did was keep it in the box. It was perfect. I knew instantly that Skylar would love it. I just didn’t know if she would love it if it was a gift from me.
But there she is, wearing it only days after I gave it to her. Before reaching for the door, her hand comes up to tou
ch the locket. Snap. Something stirs deep inside me. Hope?
I sit for a while longer, catching glimpses of Skylar as she makes rounds through the restaurant. I gather up my things to leave when I see John walk up and through the front door of her restaurant.
Jealously seeps from my every pore. Has she let him touch her stomach? Feel my baby move? Would he even want to, the sicko bastard? My eyes narrow and my fists ball so tightly, my fingernails break the skin of my palms. I can think of nothing else; see nothing else but visions of him rubbing his hands up and down her arms the other night.
It takes all my strength to remain glued to the chair instead of marching across the street to lay claim on what isn’t even mine; what I gave up so that another man like John could come in and take my place.
The door to the restaurant opens and Skylar walks through, followed by John. She doesn’t have her coat on, but he does. Good, he’s leaving and she’s not going with him. He makes a strange face and reaches out to touch the locket, questioning her. It’s all I can do not to run over and rip his hand away from it.
She shakes her head at him, shrugging her shoulders while giving him a small smile. I’ve never wanted to be a fly on the wall so badly. He leans over to kiss her on the cheek and then she waves goodbye. The whole time, working the locket between the fingers of her right hand.
Suddenly, she turns to me and looks me straight in the eyes through the glass of the coffee shop window. Like she knew I was here. She briefly closes her eyes and tilts her head to the sky. She visibly takes a breath before looking both ways and crossing the street.
I quickly pay the check and meet her out in front of the coffee shop. She raises her eyebrows at me, in the same way she did the other night. She wants me to be the first to speak.
“Coffee?”
She raises her brows dubiously. “Haven’t you had enough coffee, Griffin?”
She did know I was here. I put my proverbial tail between my legs and give her an innocent shrug.
“My wait staff all know who you are,” she says. “Mindy noticed you hours ago. What are you doing here?” I see her warm breath meet with the cold air every time she speaks.
“You must be cold. Come inside.”
She shakes her head. “I have to get back to the restaurant. I just wanted to thank you for the locket. It’s beautiful. But I also wanted to tell you that I don’t think this will work.” She motions between the two of us and then nervously twists the ring on her pinky finger. “I understand you feel bad for leaving the way you did. That you feel guilty about not being there for Aaron. We slept together. It happened. It doesn’t even matter that it was the best sex I’ve ever had. We did it out of grief, and that’s no way to build a relationship. It’s not enough. Aaron deserves more than that. And for the first time in my life, I think I do, too.”
She looks over her shoulder at Mitchell’s. “I have to get back now. Go home . . . er, wherever. Go back to work, Griffin. Do something with your life that Aaron will be proud of.”
She starts to walk away, but I grab her arm and whirl her back around. She questions me with her eyes.
“What’s your favorite flower?” I ask.
“Huh?” She eyes me skeptically.
“Flowers. Which are your favorite? It’s an easy question, Skylar.”
With a sad smile, she reaches up to touch the locket. “You already know.” She checks the traffic before crossing the street. I could swear I see a genuine smile creep up her face in the reflection of a cab window, but it could just be my overactive imagination. The same imagination that has her dumping the food guy and giving me another chance.
I watch her walk away without so much as turning back once to look at me.
I should be upset. But I’m not.
I don’t think I heard a word she said after ‘best sex I’ve ever had.’
chapter twenty-five
Gavin sets another beer down in front of me. He and Mason decided to take me out for drinks and get my ass off Mason’s lumpy-as-hell couch.
I’ve given her some space. I haven’t stalked her since the coffee shop earlier this week. Maybe once she gets used to the idea of having me back again, she’ll come around.
Gavin shakes his head at me. “As the guy who had to win back one of the other Mitchell sisters, I can tell you they’re all stubborn as hell. It took me months to get Baylor to let me back into her life and I didn’t even screw up as badly as you did.” He tips his beer at me. “You don’t have months, Griffin. You need to do something now, before your kid is here. Take it from me, you do not want to miss the birth of your child. It’s something you’ll never get back.”
I set down my beer, trying to perfectly match it onto the wet ring it left on the bar moments ago. “She hasn’t lifted a finger to talk to me. What am I supposed to do?”
Mason and Gavin look at each other and back at me. “You’re expecting her to pick up the phone?” Gavin asks. “Come begging you to go back to her? Don’t be a fool. You let her blow you off and then you walked away, man. What is she supposed to think? I don’t care what they say. Women want to be chased. They want some kind of grand gesture and shit like that.”
Mason nods in agreement. “You need to show her, G. Not just tell her. Work your way back into her life. Do something unexpected. Claim what’s yours. You never hesitated to do what you needed to take care of Erin. Why should it be any different with Skylar?”
I laugh at the absurdity. “Because Skylar is not a woman who needs to be taken care of.”
“That’s bullshit,” he says. “All women want to feel like their men will take care of them no matter what. They want to feel like you would turn your world upside down for them.”
I skeptically eye my twenty-two-year-old single friend. “How the hell is it that you don’t have a girlfriend, Dix?”
“Hailey is the only girl I need in my life right now.” He shrugs. “Anything else would just be a complication.”
“So, what do I do then? You know, to claim her?” My eyes go between Gavin and Mason. “You two experts have any suggestions?”
“You could start by coming to brunch on Sunday,” Gavin says. “It’s at the new restaurant on Long Island.”
My eyebrows touch my hairline. “Go in front of the firing squad? Are you fucking crazy?”
Gavin laughs. “Hey, I’ve had to eat crow with her family more than once. Believe me, they all understand what you’ve been through. Doesn’t mean they’re not upset that you up and left. But I don’t think it would take much to win them over again. And I think it’d go a long way with getting back into her good graces.”
I take a long swig of my beer. “Her dad scares the shit out of me.”
Gavin gives me a pat on the back. “His bark is far worse than his bite, my friend. Take it from someone who’s been there.”
I nod. Then I notice the bartender as she writes something on a napkin and pushes it over toward the three of us. “I get off at two if any of you are interested.” I spot her phone number scribbled on the white square of paper as she winks at us and saunters away.
The three of us share a laugh and then I put my beer bottle down on the napkin, smearing the numbers as they become completely unreadable.
~ ~ ~
I’ve never been a particularly anxious person. Even when the women in my life were slipping away. I was fortunate that I could take it all in stride and not be destroyed by it. In my business, I’ve seen more than a few people turn to lives of drugs, sex, and even crime to try and get rid of their demons. No, it took more than sickness, death, even emotional abandonment by my own father to break me. It took Skylar Mitchell getting knocked up with the kid I didn’t even know I wanted to have. It took the guilt I harbored over wanting her so badly that it seemed she had become the very air I needed to breathe.
Taking the Long Island Railroad from Midtown to Massapequa, I sit for the hour-long ride, entranced by how the tips of the white flowers shake, not from the movement of the train,
but because my hands are shaking faster with every mile it takes me closer to her. Closer to her family. Closer to every person I need to make things right with.
When I get to my stop, I slowly make the half-mile walk to Mitchell’s, needing the time to clear my head and prepare for what I’m sure I’ll be walking into.
When I open the doors and step into the restaurant, the first pair of eyes I see boring into me are those same emerald-green ones that haunt my dreams. However, they do not belong to the girl that I dream of. They belong to her father. Bruce Mitchell is one intimidating son-of-a-bitch. But he’s a walking contradiction. He’s about as big as I am, and he makes sure everyone knows that his three daughters are his goddamn life and if you hurt them he’ll break every bone in your pitiful body. Yet, he’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.
I hand him the bottle of wine that I brought and he silently nods as he takes it from me.
It’s moments like these that I question if I’m being confronted by the leg-breaker or the giant teddy-bear. I’ve never felt more like I might piss myself than right this very second, as he takes me by the elbow. “Come with me, son.”
Son? He called me son. That has to mean he’s not going to cut me up and put me in the meat locker. I try to breathe a small sigh of relief, but it’s hard with his hand gripping me, pulling me behind him into the restaurant office. I don’t see Skylar anywhere, but we pass by her mom and sister, who give me looks of sympathy that have me feeling like a lamb being led to the slaughter.
He shuts the door behind us, standing between it and me, eliminating any chance of escape. “How are you, Griffin?”
“Uh . . . I’m fine, sir. How are you?”
He scolds me with his stare. “Son, that’s not what I’m asking.” He walks across the room, shaking his head. He leans back, propping himself against the edge of the large desk as it creaks under his weight. “Your wife died and you’re about to become a father. I’m asking how you’re doing with everything.”
The Mitchell Sisters: A Complete Romance Series (3-Book Box Set) Page 53