“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Samantha exclaimed, striding toward me and poking her finger at my face as though she intended to pop one of my eyes out with a manicured nail. “That’s my daughter. You don’t get to tell her what to do!”
“I’m not trying to tell her what to do.” I tried to stay calm, but I was having trouble, fear bubbling in my system. I needed to stay cool. I needed to stay calm, but that was nearly impossible when there was this woman screeching in my face like she wanted to murder me on the spot.
“Erin, come back here,” Samantha ordered, but Erin had already retreated behind me.
“Stay there, Erin,” I told her, and Erin made it to the stairs, where she clung on to the banister like it was the only thing keeping Samantha away from her. Samantha glared at her through the bars and shook her head.
“You have to do as I say, sweetie,” she said, trying to return to the pseudo-sweetness she had worn before. “You don’t want to get in trouble now, do you?”
“Erin, you won’t get in any trouble if you stay there,” I promised her. I reached into my pocket to pull out my phone and then remembered that I’d left it on the table up in my apartment to charge, not thinking I would need it when I was out that day. I cursed myself. I needed to get hold of Logan, but I had no idea where he was in the first place. Maybe at work? Maybe at school, waiting to pick Erin up …
“Don’t listen to her,” Samantha snarled, brushing me aside as she made her way towards the stairs. I stumbled and nearly fell as she pushed past me, but I managed to keep myself upright and took off after her.
“Samantha, I think you should at least wait until Logan gets home—”
“Don’t you dare say his name to me!” She spun around and hissed the words at me as though I’d slapped her. “He’s got nothing to do with this. He’s been trying to keep me away from her for nine years, and I’m done with it. If I have to take what’s mine, then I will.”
My jaw dropped. She was talking about Erin, about her own daughter, as though she was a possession that she intended to snatch back from the man who had stolen from her. I knew then, if I hadn’t before, that I couldn’t let her go anywhere with Erin—that I couldn’t let her get out of this building with that girl, or there would be hell to pay. I bounded up the stairs in front of her, putting myself between her and the girl.
“Samantha, I think you should leave,” I told her firmly. I had no idea where this was coming from, but I knew I believed it with every fiber of my being; she needed to get out of here, she needed to leave Erin alone, and if she wasn’t going to do either of those things, then it was down to me to keep the girl safe.
“I think you should back the fuck away from my daughter and keep your nose out of my business!” she yelled at me, advancing dangerously up the stairs. I held my ground, planting my hands on my hips and making myself as wide as I could so she couldn’t get past me.
“She’s not your daughter,” I told her, remembering what I’d heard Logan yelling at her before. “You just gave birth to her. You can’t just turn up and take her away.”
“I got the court order,” she shot back, and I shook my head.
“No, I’d know about it if you did,” I replied. “Ant would have told me. And besides, this isn’t how this works. You don’t just turn up in the middle of the day and sneak her out of the building.”
“You’re accusing me of kidnapping my daughter?” She threw her hands in the air as though she could barely believe that those words were coming out of her mouth. That was the way she played it, though—she would accuse you of thinking something ridiculous about her, overlooking the fact that she was actually doing the ridiculous thing. She would get you to back down and give up, but I knew it was crucial that I held my ground.
“Show me the proof that you’re not,” I told her, backing toward Erin as though Samantha might make a lunge for her. My heart was hammering, and my palms were sweating, but this little girl needed me, this little girl who had let me into her life and insisted on pancakes for breakfast the first time I stayed over. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her.
“Show me where it says you get a fucking say in what happens to her,” she snarled, closing in on me, thrusting her face so close to mine I could smell the cheap, musky body spray that she was doused in, head to toe. I had no idea how to stall her any longer, and I craned my neck for someone else, someone I could appeal to for help—”
And that’s when the door opened, and Logan burst in.
“Samantha!” he exclaimed, and he bounded up the steps to stand next to me, getting in between the two of us so she couldn’t move an inch closer to me.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he panted, far less afraid of her than I was. He glanced around and saw Erin standing behind us, and I could see the relief painted all over his face. And then he turned back to his ex, his face twisted with a fury that I had never seen on anyone before in my life. It would have been terrifying if I didn’t understand the depth of his anger, where it came from, and why it was so intense.
“You took her from the school.” He moved toward Samantha, and she backed down the stairs quickly to get away from him. “You knew we had the meeting next week, but you just couldn’t wait, could you? You had to have her for yourself. I know the way you think about her. You’re a monster, you know that? You could have ended up hurting her, or worse …”
He came to a halt at the bottom of the stairs, and for the first time since I’d laid eyes on her, Samantha actually looked a little frightened.
“I just wanted to spend time with her,” she muttered, but she sounded less convincing now.
“Get out of here,” he ordered, voice low and deadly serious. “Get out of here now.”
“You’re not going to call the cops, are you?” she asked nervously, and Logan let out a mirthless laugh.
“I’m calling every damn agency I can find in this city that can lock you up,” he told her. “Now get out.”
“I’m not going until you promise me you won’t press charges.” She crossed her arms over her chest, still clinging on to whatever high ground she seemed to believe that she had left.
“Then I’ll make you,” he replied simply, and with that he picked her up off the ground and carried her, protesting loudly to the door.
“Put me down!” she shrieked. “If you don’t let go of me, I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” he demanded as he kicked the door open and tossed her outside. “Go on, Samantha, get the fuck out of here. You can expect to hear from my lawyer and also the fucking police in the next, oh, I’d say hour.”
She ducked her head down, shot one last furious look at the three of us, and then vanished into the street. Logan pulled his phone out and called the police, giving them a description and a direction. As he spoke, Erin came to sit on the step next to me, and I put an arm around her tentatively. Logan hung up the phone, let out a long sigh, and headed up the steps to join us.
He scooped Erin into his arms and held her close for a really long time as though he didn’t want to ever let her go again as long as he lived. She clutched on to him the same way, and I closed my eyes and felt a wave of relief knowing that I had kept her out of the clutches of that terrible woman. That was all that really mattered to me—I could handle everything else, the break-up, all of it, knowing that at least Erin hadn’t wound up being snatched by Samantha, that she stayed with Logan where she belonged.
“Let’s get home, shall we?” he suggested to Erin, planting her back on solid ground once more. “I think we could all do with some rest and something to eat.”
And I realized, as he spoke, that he was looking right at me.
I cocked an eyebrow. “Me as well?”
“Of course,” he agreed, and he smiled as he offered me a hand. “Both my girls.”
Without a moment of hesitation, I put my hand in his and let him lead me up the stairs. The panic was beginning to recede, and in its place was something else
. Something new. Maybe something better than what had been there in the first place. I smiled as I followed the two of them up the stairs and wondered if something good could come out of this after all.
Chapter 18
Logan
I ran a bath for Erin, and she vanished off into the bathroom for a while—she always felt safe in the bath and liked to read in there, and I figured she could do with a little time to unwind after the utter bullshit that had just gone down with Samantha.
“Oh, my God, are you okay?” Nina asked as soon as I emerged from Erin’s bedroom, which I had checked to make sure that everything was in place; the last thing I wanted was for Samantha to have made off with anything, but nothing appeared to be missing, thank God. I guess the stress of the day must have been written all over my face because the way that Nina reacted made it sound as though I had just collapsed to the floor right in front of her.
I nodded and then shook my head. “No, not really,” I confessed, and I dropped down onto the couch and ran my hands over my face. “I can’t believe I let this happen. I can’t believe she got that far with it…”
“What actually happened?” she asked, furrowing her brow and perching on the edge of the couch next to me. Her presence was soothing, and I found my brain slowing down a little, enough that I could actually talk to her.
“I got to the school to pick Erin up and take her home,” I began, “like normal. Samantha and I, we had managed to come to an agreement where we were going to go to Child Services and figure out the best way that she could be in Erin’s life. Fuck, I was so stupid, I thought that she would actually go along with it this time and put some effort in …”
“Hey, it’s not your fault.” Nina touched my knee, stopping me before I plunged straight into self-flagellation. “You couldn’t have known what she was going to do.”
“I’m pretty sure she just used that meeting to find out where Erin went to school,” I continued, my voice a little shaky, the reality of what could have happened just beginning to sink in for me. “And then … she must have just turned up there and taken her at the end of the day. Jesus, when I get my hands on whoever was on duty at that school, I’m going to tear them a new one.”
“Why do you think she brought her back here first?” Nina wondered, and I shook my head.
“No idea,” I admitted. “But probably to pick up some stuff, or maybe Erin convinced her she needed to first. Whatever it was, I’m so glad that it happened. Fuck knows what she would have pulled if she had managed to get her out of the building; if they hadn’t run into you …”
I fell silent once more, the horror really beginning to make itself clear to me. She could have taken my daughter. The thought was so ugly that my brain could hardly wrap around it, but it was the truth. If Nina hadn’t been there to step in, to stop her …
“I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to thank you enough,” I told her, and she smiled at me. Her hand was still on my knee, and I took it, drawing the knuckles up so I could brush my mouth over her skin. She bit her lip, and I smiled at her, the last couple of weeks forgotten.
“I’m so sorry,” she blurted out suddenly.
“Why?” I furrowed my brow. “You saved my daughter. You have nothing to be sorry about.”
“I’m sorry I just dropped out of your life like I did,” she confessed. “I was so sure … when I saw Samantha, and I heard you guys arguing, I thought there was still something there. I thought I should give you space; I thought I shouldn’t get too involved—I didn’t want to crowd you or Erin, what with having Samantha back in your lives and everything …”
Now it was her turn to run out of words. I knew how she felt; this last hour, the panic I felt when I realized that Erin was missing from school added to the fury at Samantha for playing me like this had me overwhelmed.
But now I was sitting here, next to Nina, and I felt like things were settling a little. The water calming once more, the ripples receding.
“I understand,” I told her. It seemed to matter so little now that she was here, now that she had done the right thing and saved my daughter from being kidnapped by her own damn mother.
“I shouldn’t have just left that way,” she admitted. “But when I saw Erin and Samantha I—I guess something just snapped. I didn’t want her to take Erin anywhere.”
I fell silent again for a long moment, not sure what to say. I was so emotionally and physically exhausted—and I knew it was far from over, that there would be charges to press and statements to give, and that I would need to fight hard to make my daughter feel safe once more, to prove to her that I could protect her, and that I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her ever again ...
But the way Nina was looking at me right now, the sincerity in her voice, the touch of her fingers against my hand; I could forget it, for a moment.
“Well, I’m grateful for it,” I told her softly. “I don’t know what would have happened …”
“But it didn’t,” she assured me. She dropped her eyes down a little and took a deep, slightly ragged breath. I knew what she was going to say next was going to be big. This day, it felt as though our emotions had been laid out once and for all.
“Look, Logan, I have to admit something to you,” she told me, looking at me intently. “When I met you—both of you—I really didn’t … I had never imagined having a family.”
“I know.” I brushed my finger over her knuckles. “And that’s okay, I don’t—”
“But I understand it now,” she blurted out, seemingly before she could stop herself. “I never imagined, I just never understood, what it was like to want to—to want to belong to something like that before. But I want to belong to you. I want to belong to this thing between you and Erin. When I saw Samantha down there, taking her, I just …” She shook her head again as though the emotion was too much for her to handle.
She swallowed and took another breath like she was trying to drink the air around her, find enough oxygen to get the words out. “I just want to be part of this,” she admitted. “And I know I shouldn’t have just cut you out like that before, with what happened with Samantha, but I just saw this woman moving in on what I didn’t realize I saw as my territory. You know?”
“I think I’m starting to.” I smiled at her. I didn’t realize it, but that was what I had been waiting to hear from her for the longest time; I needed to hear the promise that this could work.
“I don’t know how it’s going to work,” she warned me. “I mean, I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m pretty far from any kind of mother I’ve heard of before.”
“And that’s okay,” I promised her. “When I had Erin, I never thought I would be anything other than a fucking disaster. You can’t learn this stuff. You can’t just know it. You have to try, and sometimes it just … it just works out for you.”
“Jesus, you have no idea how glad I am to hear you say that,” she told me, chuckling a little nervously. “It sounds crazy coming out of my mouth. I really never thought I would feel this way about anyone, but you guys …” She trailed off once more and just looked at me, and the expression on her face said everything that I needed to hear.
I had been so convinced that I was never going to find a way to work someone into my life, and then this woman just dropped out of the sky and into my life, and now it felt as though she had always been destined to find me, to find us.
“I think I want to give things a try between us,” she continued after a long pause. “If you’ll have me.”
“Of course, I will,” I promised her, and before I could stop myself, I leaned over and planted a kiss on her lips. She touched her fingers to my face, and the connection between us was never stronger than it was at that moment. It felt as though our bodies were melding together like our lives were finally clicking into the places they had always meant to be.
When I pulled back, she giggled and shook her head.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she replied. �
�It’s only … when we met, I never thought that this was what would come from it, you know?”
“Me neither.” I cocked my head at her. “You were just the hot girl downstairs.”
“Hey, hot woman, at least,” she teased, and I laughed.
It felt so damn good to laugh after everything that I had been through that day, that we had been through. I leaned forward and pressed my head against hers, closing my eyes and inhaling the sweetness of her scent. “I’m very happy right now,” I told her. It didn’t feel like enough to convey how I felt, but it would do for now.
“Me too,” she agreed, and for a long while, we just held each other, there on the sofa, at the beginning of a life we had been looking for together.
Chapter 19
Nina
I wasn’t sure how long I just sat there in silence with him, but it felt like I could have stayed there forever. I was just so fucking relieved that everything had happened the way it had—seeing Samantha trying to get her claws into Erin had underlined the fact, once and for all, that I wanted to be a mother to Erin. In whatever way I could.
Eventually, we heard Erin moving around in the bath, and he pulled back and smiled.
“I guess I should go get her out,” he remarked, and he got to his feet, running his hand briefly over my back and sending a rush of electricity over my body. I desired him so much that I could hardly think, but it was more than just on the initial physical level that had first attracted me to him. I needed him more than that, in a seriously profound way, like my soul ached for every part of him.
He went to get Erin out of the bath, and I curled up on the couch with a smile on my face, waiting for them to come back. There was still so much in my life that was up in the air—I had no idea what I was going to do for a job, where I was going to go after this, but these two were a grounding presence, a promise that the future was worth throwing myself into.
One Night Stand Page 14