by Whitley Cox
Her mother’s eyes were focused on the canvas, but they filled with joy. “Excellent, dear. I’d say you got your artistic talents from me but … ” She wrinkled her nose and squinted at her painting.
“But what, Mom? I did get my love of painting and artistic talents from you. I was practically born with a paintbrush in my hand. Dad says that all the time.”
Her mother’s eyes turned harsh, almost angry, then they flicked toward Tessa. “You didn’t get it from me, and your father needs to stop saying things like that. He knows damn well you weren’t born with a paintbrush in your hand. He knows damn well.”
Her shoulders dropped with a sigh. “Okay, Mom.” The last thing she wanted to do was rile up her mother again, so she just dropped it.
“Dinner is on the stove. I can’t stop what I’m doing right now. Go eat without me. I need to finish this.” She flicked her hand in a dismissive motion, invariably telling Tessa to git. “Tell your father that he needs to eat something,” her mother said absently, no longer really giving Tessa the time of day. “He’s getting thin.”
Tessa leaned in toward her mother and pecked her on her cool cheek. “I will, Mom. I’ll go get him from the garage now.”
Her mother did nothing but grunt a response.
Tessa glanced at the piece her mother was painting, and just like all the rest stacked against the wall, it was a mother holding a baby. Both mom and child had their eyes closed, but small smiles tilted their lips. Were they simply sleeping? She hoped so.
Her parents never mentioned losing any children and always changed the subject when she asked why she didn’t have a sibling. She’d written Santa for years, asking for a brother or sister. But any time she brought it up with her parents, they said there wasn’t anything sturdier than a stool with three legs, then they’d hand her a cookie or put on the television. Eventually, she just stopped asking.
By the time she left her mother, she was more confused than ever but with less of a heavy heart than their previous visit. At least this time her mother recognized her—kind of. She thought Tessa was a sixteen-year-old version of herself, but at this stage of the game, she needed to take her wins where she could get them. She promised to return on the weekend with more blank canvases. Her mother had also asked for gold leaf, which of course Tessa agreed to.
Thank God for her father’s life insurance policy and the nice price tag the Realtor had listed her parents’ house for. Otherwise, she didn’t know how she would be able to afford her mother’s care at the nursing home. It was one of the best in the city, and its monthly fees, which were more than some people made in a month, reflected that.
She washed her hands in the downstairs bathroom sink of Atlas’s house and stared at her complexion in the mirror. How long before she no longer recognized the people around her? How long before she stopped recognizing herself? She was getting her PhD in a month, but was it even worth it? All that education, only to wind up with mashed potatoes for brains in a few years. Perhaps she should be abandoning all that she’d worked so hard for, and going off to travel the world during the few years of lucidity she had left.
As much as she loved her mother with all her heart, it was like picking a scab and reopening a wound every time she went to visit her. The constant reminder was right in front of her face that just like Lily, she would most likely end up with Alzheimer’s. She knew she should tell Atlas about it, about her mother and the fact that she probably carried the gene as well, but she just wasn’t ready to take that plunge.
Because once you knew, you couldn’t unknow. Once he knew, he couldn’t unknow, and that would forever change how he treated her, what he thought of her. And at the moment, she was enjoying the blissful ignorance of Atlas’s affections for her, and she was going to take her wins where she could get them.
15
“You’re leaving?” Atlas asked, thundering back down the stairs after dealing with the girls. “I wasn’t gone that long, was I?”
After cleaning herself up in the bathroom and getting dressed, Tessa sat alone with her thoughts on the downstairs couch for several minutes, and the longer she sat there, the more she knew she needed to go.
“Aria wanted water, and because my child has no volume control, she woke up Cecily, even though they were in separate rooms. That prompted Cecily to stand up and start yelling at me for her water bottle. She also crapped herself. So it took a while to get her back down. I’m sorry if I made you wait. I didn’t think I was going to be that long.”
Shaking her head, she forced a fake smile at him and slid into her sandals near the front door. “It’s okay. It’s getting late, anyway. I should probably go. I still have some reading to do before bed. I’m trying to read at least one journal article a night in preparation for my defense.”
He sat down on a step near the landing, his chest still bare, along with his big, sexy man feet. She wasn’t sure she’d seen anything sexier in all her life than Atlas with his mussed-up sex hair, wearing jeans, no shirt and no socks. “How is the studying going?”
She shrugged. “Okay. I mean, I’ll undoubtedly be a bundle of nerves when I defend. I was when I got my master’s degree, too, it’s just who I am. But I got the notes and feedback on my dissertation from my supervisor and the other two people I submitted it to for critique, and they all said it looks good. A few tweaks here and there on wording, but otherwise, I don’t have much to change.”
His smile was magnetic. “Fuck, you’re smart.” The gray in his eyes turned almost silver. He stood up and approached her, his body feeling extra big and tall as he invaded her space and pinned her up against the door. His warm breath beat rapidly against her lips. His jaw was working and his eyes so intense, they seared her.
Her eyes shot up the stairs toward the hallway. Aria could come out at any time and see them there. Then what?
“I … I should go,” she said, but her body said differently, and she turned to pudding against him. Her knees buckled, and she would have fallen into a heap on the floor if he hadn’t pressed his hips against hers to hold her up. She could feel his need for her against her thigh.
“You should go,” he whispered against her jaw, his breath kissing her in a way that made prickles race along her skin.
“I should go.”
“You should go.”
“I should go.” Her purse landed on the floor with a thud, her arms wrapped around his neck at the same time his hands gripped her butt cheeks, and he hoisted her onto his hips. Her lips parted for him as his tongue swept inside, claiming her, tasting her, devouring her. Still carrying her, he headed back down the stairs toward his office, but they didn’t make it there before he stopped in the hallway, her body still perched on his. He pressed her back hard against the wall. She whimpered when he bit her bottom lip, her chin, her jaw. His teeth scraped; so did his beard.
Almost as if they hadn’t just had sex half an hour ago, the man was practically frantic, the way his hands roamed her body, caressing and kneading. His fingers traced along her arms, lifting them above her head, where he pinned them up with one hand. His other hand made surprisingly quick work of his jeans. She had to hand it to the man, holding her up against the wall with his legs, keeping her arms up with one hand and unfastening his jeans with another—he continued to surprise her with his prowess and talents.
She had underwear on, but he’d just have to pull them aside to—rip. Oh, well, then never mind. He’d torn them clean off.
With a bit of an adjustment and pushing her skirts out of the way, he was back inside her in seconds, hammering her hard up against the wall, grunting with each heavy thrust.
She couldn’t even hold on to his shoulders. He had her hands in a vice grip, had complete control over her body and how he wanted it. How he wanted her to take him. Every plunge and every draw of his cock inside her had brighter stars flashing behind her closed eyelids. His teeth raked a track over her collarbone, and she inhaled sharply from the snap of delightful pain. All the while, he
just kept driving into her, never letting up on his rhythm. His ferocity was coming at her in full force with each hard, measured thrust.
She was close. Her clit pulsed, and her pussy tightened around him as he drove up and into her. The first time they’d had sex had been fueled by an attraction they’d tried hard to resist, an attraction they knew was wrong but finally succumbed to. She’d also been kind of pissed off at him, and for some reason the angry sex was really hot. But tonight, his passion came from somewhere else. It was no less wild, no less hot, it was just a place she didn’t recognize, a place she didn’t understand.
“Fuck, Tess,” he grunted into her neck, the fingers of his one hand digging painfully into her butt cheek.
“Atlas.”
“Fuck, Tess,” he said again.
She wasn’t going to be able to hold on much longer, not with the way he was giving it to her, not with the way Atlas managed to make everything feel so damn good.
She broke with a sharp cry, her lips parting and her head tilting skyward as the orgasm hit her with full force. Every muscle tightened, desperate to hold on to the pleasure that tore through each fiber of her body. Squeezing every drop out of the blissful moment that was her and Atlas together. She gripped him firmly inside her, squeezed her hips around his and held on for dear life as the waves continued to wrack her. It wasn’t until a charley horse emerged in her leg that she finally relaxed her muscles.
But Atlas kept pumping. With every deep thrust, he grunted. His rhythm began to falter, and in seconds he was burying his face in her neck, laving at her sweat-misted skin and coming inside her for the second time that night.
Atlas swiped the tip of his tongue over Tessa’s collarbone, enjoying the way she shivered in his arms, her legs wrapped like a vine around his hips, his cock still nestled safely inside her heat.
He wasn’t entirely sure what had come over him on the steps there, when she said she was going to leave. He just knew he couldn’t let her. Not yet anyway. It’d been a long time since he found someone he connected with on such a level, not only intimately but also personally, and even though he was tired and he knew she had to get home to study, he selfishly wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
So he’d charmed the pants—or, in this case, skirt—right off her, seducing her until she gave in. Though he didn’t really think the woman would have required that much convincing. She seemed pretty accepting of his insistence she stay for round two.
Did he have a round three left in him?
He dug down deep and attempted to twitch his cock. At the moment, he did not, but maybe if she stuck around for another hour he could try.
She needs to get home, asshole.
Her sigh of contentment, followed by a hum, made him reluctantly lift his face from the safety and comfort of her neck and look her in her soul-piercing eyes. Blue sparkled back at him like a sea full of diamonds. “I really do need to get going home. As much fun as this is, I still have to study.”
Nodding, he slid out of her at the same time he helped her off his hips. Without a word, she ducked into the bathroom, and he zipped up his jeans.
If he was being honest with himself, he not only didn’t want to see her go yet, but he was also trying to distract her. She was going home to an empty house. There would be no Forest waiting for her, and the thought of Tessa going another few weeks without her dog caused a sharp pain in his chest that he wasn’t at all prepared for.
The toilet on the other side of the bathroom door flushed, and then the sink ran. Seconds later she was out, looking freshly fucked and fucking beautiful.
He reached for her hand and pressed a hard kiss to her lips before he led her back up the stairs to the landing. “Aria has preschool tomorrow followed by dance lessons with my friend Adam’s wife, and then an appointment with you Friday afternoon. I think I’ll take Cecily to story time at the library while Aria is with you.”
Her cheeks turned rosy, and her smile grew brighter. “Look at you being super dad. You guys are busy, busy.”
He snorted and rolled his eyes. “Keeps them from destroying my house.”
“So I will see you Friday then?” Her free hand was already on the door handle.
“Unless you want to come by tomorrow night?”
Say yes. Say yes.
She shook her head. “I’m afraid I can’t. I’m meeting with my supervisor to go over the data from a study we’ve been working on.”
Damn it.
“Friday?” he asked, regretting his needy tone.
“Maybe. What about Saturday?”
“Poker night with the guys.”
“Sunday?” Well, now he felt a bit better that she was also throwing out days and it wasn’t just him. He wasn’t beginning to feel weird about how insistent he was being about seeing her so soon again. “Let’s touch base Friday,” she said quickly. “I was going to wait and go see my mom on Saturday, but I’m thinking that day might be better dedicated to studying, so I might go Friday night after work.”
“Is she just elderly and in a home?”
A pain and something else he couldn’t put his finger on flashed behind her eyes. “Something like that, yeah. Anyway, I’ve got to run.” She disentangled their fingers, pressed that same hand to his chest and leaned in for a kiss. He deepened it, cupping her cheek in his palm and angling her jaw to grant him better access to her mouth.
His heart ached for Tessa. It must be hard only having one parent alive, no longer independent enough to live alone. He was fortunate his parents were still doing relatively well health-wise. His father had suffered a stroke last year, and his mother was dealing with some pretty debilitating arthritis, but other than that, they still lived on their own in Atlas’s childhood home back in Portland. They’d offered to take Cecily when things with Tamsin went down, but he knew it would be a struggle for them to take care of a new baby. So even though his life was a bit of a shitshow, he took her in knowing he could be more hands-on and available than his parents.
Breathless and starry-eyed, she broke the kiss moments later. “I really have to go.” She opened the door but turned back to him. “Thank you for the wonderful distraction tonight. You, this, all of it is exactly what I need to soothe the ache in my heart from not having Forest with me.”
His lip twitched.
Her grin turned vibrant, and she leaned in for one more kiss. “I’m glad you’re not such an asshole anymore.”
Growling, he kissed her once more, then reached around and pinched her butt. “Go before I cart you back downstairs and distract you some more.”
She squealed and jumped away from him, bouncing down the steps toward his driveway. He watched her get into her car and drive away. It wasn’t until she was down the road that he finally closed the door, the same moment his phone began to vibrate and ping in his pocket.
At first, he thought it might be Tessa, calling to say that she already missed him, but then he saw that it was his father’s cell phone.
“Hey, Dad.” He climbed the stairs, then went to the kitchen to pour himself a bourbon.
“Son, I’m afraid I have some terrible news.”
Oh no.
A lead weight dropped with a heavy thud in his gut.
Here he’d just been grateful that his parents were both healthy and lived in their own home. What had he done? Jinxed them all?
“Tamsin took her own life today. She’s gone, son.”
He finished pouring his bourbon, then made his way into the living room, numb as his father went on to explain what happened and how his cousin got ahold of a syringe and injected an air bubble into her own vein. She’d been moved from the ICU burn ward to just a regular hospital room, and apparently the nurses were on strike so there was a severe staff shortage, and she managed to snag a syringe off a nearby cart. She coded, but there wasn’t anything they could do to save her.
Tamsin—sweet, confused, troubled little Tamsin, who had been more like a little sister to him than anything—was gone.
“She didn’t want a funeral,” his father went on, though he was sure his dad had been speaking for some time now. Atlas just hadn’t heard him over the white noise of his own thoughts. “Your mother went to see her a little while ago, and although your mom didn’t want to talk about it, Tamsin did. She laid out a plan for Cecily in case she died, then laid out a plan and expectations for herself. Makes you wonder how far back she started planning this.”
If he knew Tamsin, probably from the moment she looked at her face in the mirror for the first time. She was a beautiful young woman, and after the explosion, she was unrecognizable as her old self. The doctors made no promises they could get her back to looking like she did before the explosion. The burns were too severe, and she was missing part of her nose and cheek.
“She wanted you to adopt Cecily as yours. She signed over everything in the event she passed. She said because she didn’t have any money and we all spent a large chunk of her life bailing her out, she didn’t want us spending a dime on her in the afterlife.”
Atlas sipped his drink to coat his tight, dry throat.
“She said she’d haunt us if we went against her wishes.” His dad laughed, but it was forced and died out fast. “All the possessions she had were destroyed in the explosion, except for a locket she wore around her neck. It’s to go to Cecily.”
His nostrils flared and his jaw pulsed as he fought to reign in the flood of dueling emotions inside him. “Nobody from his family is going to challenge me for custody, are they?”
“You mean Ty’s family? I don’t think so. He wasn’t close with his parents. I’m not even sure who or where they are. Don’t even know if they know Cecily exists.”