From This Moment

by Melanie Harlow

  I nodded, my eyes on my toes. “Right.”

  “She claims to be concerned for your reputation, and for Abby’s well-being. She’s worried that kids Abby goes to school with will hear their asshole parents talking and repeat what’s being said.”

  My stomach turned. I looked up at him. “Do you think that’s true?”

  “I didn’t at first. But then she went on about how people are more forgiving of the man in these situations, how they’ll excuse him because we’re all just Neanderthals following our dicks around and trying to stick it in whoever we can find, but that woman are held to a higher standard and judged more harshly.”

  I started twisting my ring. “She’s got a point.”

  “The moment I thought about someone calling you a name or saying anything that would hurt your feelings or Abby’s, I wanted to fucking put my fist through the wall.” Wes spoke through clenched teeth.

  That almost made me smile.

  “The conversation ended badly between my mother and me, so I stormed out and went to have a beer so I could cool off. But then this group of women came into the bar, sat at a table right behind me, and proceeded to talk about half the town, including me, in a way that made me feel like maybe my mother is right.”

  I picked up my head. “What did they say about you?”

  The color in his face deepened. “Nothing much.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Just a bunch of stupid hot doctor jokes.”

  It wasn’t the whole truth, but I let it go. “Yeah. Drew used to get that, too.”

  Wes watched me playing with my ring, his expression pained. Maybe he didn’t like being reminded that I’d been his brother’s wife, but that was our fucking reality. I told you this would be too hard.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I want to protect you, but I want to be with you, too. It’s so fucking unfair.”

  “It is.” Life. You bitch.

  He turned toward me and looped his arms around my waist. Our hips rested together, and I played with one of the buttons on his shirt, focusing on my fingers and not his face.

  “Hey.” He jiggled his hands on my back. “I’m not giving up on us. And I don’t want you to, either. I’m just irritated with my mother.”

  “Okay.” That wicked little ball was building at the back of my throat again.

  “I mean it. Look at me.”

  I did, but it took me a minute.

  “I will deal with her, okay? She is not your problem.”

  “But she is, Wes. She’s affected by this. How she feels matters. And I can tell you right now, she is going to have a huge problem with us. Lots of people will.”

  “I’ll handle her, I promise.” He tightened his arms around me, lowered his forehead to mine. “Don’t give up. Please.”

  “I don’t want to, but—”

  He kissed me, silencing the rest of my sentence. “Don’t. We’ll figure it out together, okay?”

  “Okay.” When he talked to me in that quiet, sweet voice, I couldn’t refuse him.

  But when I closed the door behind him a few minutes later, I felt a pit open up in my stomach. And as I plodded up the stairs, it began slowly filling with doubt, like sand trickling into an hourglass.

  He came over the next three nights in a row, and each night we took another step forward. Tuesday he came for dinner and did the dishes while I put Abby to bed. He didn’t leave and come back like he’d done the night before; instead, he’d gone up to say goodnight to Abby, come back down, and we stretched out on the couch together to watch a movie. With my cheek on his chest and his arms around my back and our legs tangled beneath a blanket, I felt some of the doubt recede. I had a brief moment of panic when Abby came down the stairs asking for a drink of water, scrambling out of Wes’s arms and jumping off the couch, but she didn’t say anything about him or ask any questions. We didn’t have sex that night, but that was okay—I needed to be sure that our connection wasn’t just sexual, and it felt good just being close to him.

  Wednesday night he worked late and had dinner out, and I hosted Wine with Widows. I didn’t say anything about Wes when it was my turn to talk, but Tess was the last one to leave, and when she asked if I’d seen him, I confessed that I had.

  She gasped. “Spill!”

  “There’s not much to tell,” I said. “We stayed away from each other for two weeks, but the feelings didn’t go away.”

  “Told you.” She looked smug. “So it’s going well?”

  “Yeah.” My face got hot. “It is. I mean, it’s brand new—it’s only been since Saturday—but it feels really good.”

  “I’ll bet it does. So the sex was just as good the second time?”

  “And the third.” I couldn’t resist. “He blindfolded me with his tie in that bathroom right over there. And tied my hands behind my back with his belt.”

  She glanced at the bathroom and back at me, her eyes wide. “Who are you?”

  I laughed. “I’m still me. I’m just figuring some new things out about myself.”

  He came over later and we snuck upstairs, locked my bedroom door and tore off each other’s clothing before fucking like porn stars in a silent film. When the bed made too much noise, we moved to the floor, Wes on his back on the rug and me on top, riding him with reckless abandon. Before he left, around one in the morning, we laughed at the rug burns on his ass and my knees.

  “Where’s your car?” I asked him at the door.

  He kissed me. “I parked around the block. I don’t want people to see my car here so much, especially this late at night.”

  “Oh.” It was thoughtful and sweet, but it was yet another reminder that what we were doing was something shameful to be hidden away in the dark.

  Thursday Abby came home from school and showed me a picture she’d drawn in crayon of her family. There was me, with long brown hair and big brown eyes and suspiciously big feet. There was Abby, with yellow pigtails and a pink dress, holding a gray scribbly thing I could only imagine was her stuffed elephant. And there was a man, with green eyes and brown hair, whose hands seemed much bigger than anyone else’s.

  Was it Drew? Or was it Wes?

  I felt terrible I didn’t know. Abby didn’t say one way of the other, but she was proud of her work and hung it on the fridge with a Valentini Brothers Farm magnet.

  That night Wes came for dinner again and took us out for ice cream afterward. When we got back, I told him to pull his car into the garage.

  “Are you sure?” he said.

  “Yes. I don’t want you to park around the block and have to sneak over like some criminal.”

  “I don’t mind, if it protects you.”

  “Just do it. It will make me feel better.”

  He smiled and did as I asked, then waited downstairs while I put Abby to bed.

  “Is Uncle Wes still here?” she asked as I turned out the lamp.

  “Yes.”

  “I like when he’s here.”

  “Me too.”

  “It makes me feel cozy.”

  I smiled. “Good.”

  “And safe,” she added.

  My smile faded a little. “You’re safe no matter what, baby. I’m always here.”

  “I know. But sometimes you’re sad at night.”

  My stomach clenched. She’d heard me crying. “Sometimes I do get sad at night. That’s true. But it doesn’t mean you’re not safe. It’s just Mommy trying to get better.”

  “You’re better when Uncle Wes is here. You’re not sad.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Maybe he can move in with us,” she suggested. “Then you would never be sad and I can always feel safe. We could be a family.”

  “Oh, Abby.” I closed my eyes, wishing I could stop time and think of the best way to handle this. Why wasn’t there a Single Widowed Parent Handbook for these moments? “We are a family. You and me.”

  “But a family needs a dad.”

  “Not necessarily. I didn’t h
ave a dad, remember?”

  She thought for a second. “Were you sad about that?”

  “Sometimes,” I said honestly. “But I had my mom and I knew she loved me with all her heart, the way I love you.”

  “But can he move in?”

  Apparently all my heart was not enough. “No, Abby. Uncle Wes just bought his own house, remember?”

  “He could sell that one.”

  I smiled sadly. “Listen. The important thing is that you are loved and safe and sound here with me, okay? Whether Uncle Wes or anybody else is here or not.”

  “Okay. Can you send him up to say goodnight?”

  I hesitated, but gave in. “Sure.”

  As I walked downstairs, I felt that pit open up in my stomach again. Abby was falling in love with Wes right along with me. Could I blame her for feeling safer and happier when he was around? Wasn’t I? But I had to be careful. What if she grew so attached to him she stopped feeling safe when he wasn’t around? As much as Wes and I felt for each other, there was no guarantee this would work. We couldn’t even go out for dinner or hold hands in public, let alone spend a night together or share a home. How could I protect Abby from hurt when I couldn’t even protect myself?

  Wes was in the kitchen, leaning back against the counter, looking at his phone. For a moment, I was back in time, looking at another man in dress clothes after work, checking his messages, waiting to say goodnight to his little girl. Everything was good. We were a family.

  He looked up at me, his forehead wrinkling with concern. “What’s wrong, baby?”

  I twisted my ring. “Abby wants you to say goodnight.”

  “Okay.” He paused. “Is that okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  I pressed my lips together. “No ghosts. Just a little worried about Abby. Go on and say goodnight and then we can talk about it.”

  “Okay.” He dropped a kiss on my head as he walked by, then put a hand over mine. “Stop fidgeting. Everything will be okay.”

  I tried to smile.

  He left the room, and I saw that he had put the dinner dishes in the dishwasher while I’d been upstairs with Abby, and the pans I’d used to cook with had been scrubbed and set out to dry on dishtowels. I’ll say one thing for Lenore. She raised her sons right.

  Was I doing right by my daughter?

  My throat tightened. I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see Wes in the kitchen doorway, his face etched with worry. “What?” I asked.

  “She asked if I could be her dad.”

  The room spun. “What did you say?”

  “I said I couldn’t, because she already had a dad, and nobody could ever replace him.”

  I nodded as tears swam in my eyes. “That’s a good answer.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “She asked me if you could move in.”

  His face went a little pale. “What?”

  “Because she wants to be a family. Because she feels safe when you’re here, and I’m not sad. My daughter doesn’t feel safe with me, Wes. I’m not enough for her to feel safe. I’m not doing this right.” I dropped my face into my hands and cried, conscious of the fact that this was exactly why Abby didn’t feel taken care of with me. I wasn’t a real adult in her eyes, because real adults don’t cry. But it only made me sob harder.

  Wes’s arms came around me in an instant, and I let him hold me, my sobs muffled in his chest. He rubbed my back and spoke softly. “Hey. Listen to me. You are doing a great job raising Abby. I’ve spent enough time with kids her age to know that not all of them are as well-mannered or kind or happy as she is.”

  “How can she be happy?” I cried. “I can’t give her what she needs.”

  “Yes, you can, and you are. You’re giving her a home and healthy food and unconditional love every day. You’re also showing her an example of a woman who suffered an unimaginable loss but picked herself up and carried on. You’re teaching her that life is unpredictable, sometimes sad, but at the end of the day, what matters is that you have each other. And you’ll always have each other.”

  “There’s no such thing as always,” I sobbed. “It’s a lie. I thought I’d always have a husband. She thought she’d always have a father. You thought you’d always have a brother.”

  “I did, Hannah. And there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do to have him back again, even if it meant giving you up. I know I said the worst thing I ever did was walk away from you, but if I could trade places with him and spare you and Abby the pain you’ve suffered, give you back the life you wanted, I’d do it.”

  “Don’t talk that way.” Suddenly scared of losing Wes too, I wriggled my arms free and threw them around his neck. “I can’t lose you.”

  “You won’t. Hannah, you won’t.”

  “I need you.” I clung to him, desperate to get as close as I could, craving the physical reassurance of his body.

  “You have me.” His arms were warm and solid and strong. His voice held nothing but strength and certainty. “I’m here.”

  I started kissing him everywhere I could—chest and shoulder and neck and throat and jaw. He took my head in his hands and sealed his lips over mine, a kiss that promised always and made me feel like it was real as long as I could feel him next to me. Our hands moved frantically over each other’s bodies. When our passion pushed us past the limits of resistance, and our clothing made us feel like we were trapped in two separate cages, Wes grabbed my hand and pulled me out the back door.

  We ran across the lawn to the garage and slipped inside through the service door. Wes yanked open the passenger door to the backseat of his SUV, and I jumped into it. As soon as he got in and shut the door, I undid my jeans and shimmied out of them. He unbuttoned and unzipped his dress pants, shoving them down past an erection that sprang free from restraint.

  “Oh, fuck.” He lifted his hips off the seat and reached into his back pocket, pulling out his wallet.

  “Let me.” I grabbed it from him, fished out the condom, and tore the packet open.

  “Oh my God, I feel eighteen again,” I said as I rolled it over his thick, hard shaft.

  “So do I, so you better get over here before I come just from watching you do that.” He reached for me, swinging me onto his lap, groaning as I positioned his cock beneath me and slowly lowered myself onto him.

  When my ass was resting on his thighs, I grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt, panting through the deep, stabbing twinge. But we had no time for comfort. And I liked the pain anyway—there was no pleasure without it.

  “We have to hurry,” I said as I began to move, rocking my body over his.

  “No problem.” He grabbed my ass and pulled me tight against his body as he flexed his hips, grinding the base of his cock against my clit.

  Our eyes locked as we raced toward the peak together, our skin growing damp with sweat, the car windows fogging up. It was our own little world, a secret paradise where no one could find us, no one could hurt us, no one could tell us what we wanted was wrong. We were together as one, and nothing would ever come between us. “Yes!” I cried out as my body erupted in powerful, billowing waves. Wes groaned, his body stiffening, his hands squeezing my ass as his cock pulsed with life inside me.

  “Tell me again,” I said, breathing hard, tipping my forehead against his. “Tell me again I won’t lose you.”

  “You won’t lose me.” His hands slid up my back. “I’m here.”

  I closed my eyes. “God, I wish you could stay the night. I want to sleep in your arms. I want to wake up and know you’re there. I’m so tired of being alone when the sun comes up.”

  “I wish I could, too. But I think that would be very confusing for Abby.”

  Abby. My sweet girl who wanted Wes to be her daddy. I thought about the drawing on the fridge.

  If only it were that easy.

  “It would. And I don’t want to confuse her any further.” I sighed. “Come on. We better get back inside. I don�
��t want her to wake up and think I left her.”

  We pulled ourselves together enough to sneak back into the house and check on Abby, who was sleeping soundly. Wes was nearly out the door when he noticed the drawing on the fridge.

  “Is that new?”

  I glanced at it. “Yes. She brought it home today.”

  He moved closer to it, and I followed.

  “I’m not sure whether that’s you or Drew,” I confessed. “But I didn’t want to ask her.”

  “I think it’s me.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. She always tells me I have big hands.”

  “Oh.” Part of me was glad she’d drawn Wes, and part of me wasn’t.

  “They’re nothing compared to your feet, though. What’s going on there?”

  I laughed, looking down at my bare feet. “I don’t know. I only wear a six and a half.”

  “You look like a hobbit or something.”

  I hit him on the shoulder. “Thanks.”

  “I’m teasing. You know I think you’re perfect.” He moved toward the door again. “Hey, how about piano shopping on Saturday, and maybe dinner out Saturday night? You and me and Abby?”

  “Really?” I smiled. “Do you think we can?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d love that. I’m sure Abby would, too. I have to work, but I can probably get off around eleven.”

  “Great.” He gave me one more kiss and cradled my face in one hand.

  I turned my cheek into his palm.

  “We’ll get there, Hannah.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes. We are not going to be sneaking around in backseats forever. I promise.”

  Stop promising me things, I wanted to say.

  I was starting to believe in them.

  Fifteen

  WES

  I’d avoided my mother all week. Refused to take the lunches she packed for me to work. Ate dinner at Hannah’s almost every night. Came home so late she was already in bed when I got there. The only time I saw her was in the morning before work, but I never initiated a conversation with her and gave only one-word answers if she asked me a question. I didn’t enjoy the hurt expression on her face, nor did I enjoy freezing her out. And I knew I’d make up with her eventually, but dammit, she owed me an apology.