by Tijan
Not this night, not our first night all of us were here.
My breath was short. My chest was rising. I felt my nipples harden as I took him in, all of him.
He was in only sweatpants. No shirt. No socks. Just his pants.
The moonlight hit him in the exact right light, showcasing defined shoulders and arms. His chest. The shadow tapered down over his stomach, and I couldn’t see it. That was in darkness, but his side showed not an ounce of fat.
Feeling a breeze that moved over the back of my neck, I lifted my eyes and almost gasped again. He’d been watching me watching him, and a whole other awareness passed between us.
Lust filled his gaze, and it was hungry.
I felt it match a need inside of me. My mouth was suddenly dry. My throat parched.
Then it was his turn.
His eyes trailed down me, over my tank top, lingering on my skin, my breasts. My shirt was made of soft material and it bunched at my waist, showing my sleeping shorts’ waistband. The side of my stomach was exposed and then he moved further, his gaze going over my thighs, my knees, my calves, my feet, and back up.
I felt touched by him.
I should’ve been repulsed.
I wasn’t.
A throb had started and it only intensified as his eyes went to my lips, up to my eyes. He held my gaze, then dipped back and stayed on my mouth.
That same lust was washing through me, hitting my insides like angry waves against a cliff’s edge. It felt violent, but desperate at the same time.
My breath hitched.
I licked my lips.
I sat and watched him. He sat and watched me.
Neither of us spoke. Neither of us moved. Not an inch.
But I wanted him.
Then Nova rolled over, a snore left her, and it did nothing to break the mood.
I still wanted him, but neither of us did a thing about it. That night was a truce in our war.
We’d go back to hating each other in the morning. Hating, but needing.
20
Quincey
I wasn’t sure what I had expected, but over the past three weeks, it wasn’t what happened.
And that was a big nothing.
Nothing happened.
There was no drama.
There were no more police visits.
No calls from my father.
No emails.
Nothing.
I had expected some drama with Nate, but there was zilch on that front, too.
He seemed to sense when I wanted time with Nova—when I wanted to feed her, hug her, play with her, change her diapers, chase after her. And the times when I was tired, he sensed that, too. He stepped in, and even as I would start going to her room, I’d hear his low croons, which were usually followed by her laughter.
Nova was generally a happy baby, thank goodness. Then again, that should’ve been expected if I was just going off Valerie.
Val was the happy one. Not me. If Nova had come from my loins, that kid would be screaming more than not. And judging by Nate, well, I couldn’t judge that. He’d been an alpha dick when I first met him, and I had to give him credit. I understood.
Yet since I moved in, he was the opposite.
I hadn’t expected him and his people to step up how they had.
They took up my fight. I guess it was his fight, too, but it still seemed as though they had rallied around me. Especially Aspen.
Logan, too.
Before he left, he told me to call him if my father made any moves. I wasn’t totally sure what he meant because I was getting a sense he wasn’t just talking about legal moves, but I let it go. After Aspen and Logan left, Emily started up again. Nate mentioned his Miss Sandy was an option as well, but I liked the schedule we had.
Once Emily started, things really did settle down.
She and I already had a schedule sorted. We both helped with feeding Nova. When she went down for a nap, I began using Nate’s pool house as a dance studio. There was hardly any furniture in there since he’d just moved in, and the glass doors and mostly floor-to-ceiling windows felt eerily similar to my old studio.
After a long dance, I came back to the house and helped Emily with feeding Nova again.
It was the afternoons when I started to get restless.
Emily left around five or some days at six. We both traded off just being around Nova.
It was nice, and I knew it wasn’t a normal situation.
Nate had started spending more time in his office. Then he began leaving for business meetings. In his file, Carl had noted that Nate came to the city for investment properties, so I assumed Nate was off doing that sort of work. If he was around during the day, he spent time with Nova, but he was usually around in the evenings, and that was when he really stepped in.
He fed Nova.
He played with Nova.
He held her, sat with her.
He was obsessed with her.
I understood.
So, since I got her during the day, I started giving them time in the evenings.
And because I had the time, I’d go back into the studio.
I was used to dancing for hours, on and off, all day long. And then the shows. Sometimes, we did two shows a day. Sometimes. Not always.
I missed those days.
“Have you thought about returning?”
I was stretching, my head by my toes, when Nate spoke up.
Startled, I whipped up. My heart leaped up in my throat, but then I relaxed when I spotted him. He was in the doorway, holding Nova. Both were quiet and watching me.
Seeing me looking at her, Nova started shaking her arms around. “Penna! Mebgggme. Sloof.”
Miss Sloth had replaced Miss Penguin. She was waving the sloth all around, and her little legs began pumping.
Nate knelt, placing her on her feet, and he stood back, letting her go.
She ran to me, her chunky little body weaving a bit.
Nate chuckled. “It’s sheer stubbornness that keeps her going. She runs with that sloth, and it’s too big for her, but she won’t let it go. She’d go down with the ship before she’d drop that thing.”
I grinned, scooping her up and giving her a big kiss on her stomach. She shrieked again, but it wasn’t long before her body was twisting. She wanted to run. So I let her go, and as Nate and I both followed her, both sticking to our sides, I remembered his initial question.
“I haven’t.”
He looked up, those eyes so steady on me.
Flushing, for some reason, I ran a hand over my hair. “Thought about going back, I mean.”
“Ah.”
“Not that I’m opposed to it, though.”
Why was I still talking?
He probably didn’t really care. Nova might’ve seen me, wanted to see me, and he brought her out to the pool house. He was making conversation and being polite. That was all.
Was that all?
Why was I questioning it?
“Why do you ask?”
I had to know.
Why did I have to know?
What was going on with me?
I was acting like I was in high school talking to the popular quarterback.
“Did you play football in high school?”
He had settled down on the ground because Nova found some of the toys I stashed for her over in the corner. She was putting those big blocky puzzles together or just banging the pieces against each other.
“What?”
I was being so weird.
I frowned, scratching at my forehead. Crap. I just loosened some of my hair. I scowled but started fixing my bun. “Why were you asking about me going back to dancing?”
“Uh.” He stared at me a moment, his hand automatically catching Nova before she fell backward. He righted her, answering, “You have time now, and I noticed that you spend a lot of time in here dancing. It’s what you did before, you know.” He nodded at Nova, and seeing she was watching him, he gave her a wide smile. She immediately lit u
p.
God.
She loved him already, so much.
I can’t compete with him.
I tensed up, not knowing where that thought came from.
It wasn’t a competition. Nova loved both of us.
But that was the thing. We weren’t equals.
I was back to scowling. Honestly. What was going on with me?
“You don’t have to go back if you don’t want to. I didn’t mean anything by asking.”
He thought I was scowling at him.
I smoothed out my face, silently cursing, and then tried to smile. My whole face felt jerky. I was the opposite of what I used to do professionally. So not smooth.
“I’m not—no. I mean,” Breathe, Quincey. Breathe. Slowwww down. I could hear Miss Clara’s voice again in my head, and it worked. My breathing automatically evened out, and I sat on the floor, reaching forward for my toes, stretching down to rest my chest across one knee.
Home. Being in this position felt like home.
I could feel my heart rate slowing, steadying, and I shifted to the other leg. I moved my arms over my head, graceful, until everything flowed naturally again. I was envisioning going through water, it moving over my body.
I took another breath and sat up. That was better. “Since Valerie died, I’ve thought about nothing but her.”
A dark look flashed in his gaze. “Have you heard from your father at all? Logan asked this morning.”
Right. Back to business.
He was only being polite by asking earlier.
I needed to remember that.
“No. It’s not what I expected.”
He frowned. “Yeah. Me neither.” His hand flashed up, catching a puzzle piece that Nova threw. He put it back down, almost as if he didn’t know he did it. “That alarms me, to be honest.”
I grunted. “Me, too.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded, feeling my throat burning again. I moved my legs together and bent forward, turning my head and resting my cheek over my thighs, just short of my knee. I could sleep like this. I murmured, almost to myself, “He’s gearing up for something. Something big.”
“I don’t know what he could do, though, unless he tried to take over your charge for some reason.”
Panic slammed in my chest. It was icy cold. “What?”
“Does he have anything on you that he could stretch? Anything to make it seem like you’re not sound enough to be Nova’s guardian?”
Yes. So much.
That burning doubled. “No.”
“Then the only play he’d have, but I can’t see him even attempting it, is a coup by your other family members.”
“What?” I was tasting acid.
“Your mom. She’d have to go to his side, a united grandparent front against you. But there’s no way Graham or the other sister would go along with it. Well, I can’t speak for the sister. I don’t know her, but not Graham. If anything like that was even in the works, he would’ve called and given us a heads-up.”
I had started to tune him out.
I had problems growing up, so many of them. But I conquered every single one of them.
There was no way… Was there?
All my therapists, though. He paid for them. He’d have those records, those notes, because I knew he made them share their notes with him, regardless of any doctor-client confidentiality. He ruled the roost and held the purse strings when I was younger. He’d been my father. He’d been paying my bills. He only chose the therapists who would agree to his terms and conditions, and the ones who wouldn’t, I never went to them. That one therapist had been the exception, Naomi.
I should look her up, find her phone number.
I should call her. She’d know ways to help me with problems that I wasn’t even aware I was having. It was how she had always been for me.
“Quincey?”
“Aahhhaamama!” Nova shrieked, pumping her hands all the way up, and then, hearing herself, she began laughing.
My heart stopped. Mama? Had she called me that?
No. She was staring at the wall, and I looked.
It was a picture of a woman with red hair. Not Valerie. It looked like a piece of art the designer had chosen to make the pool house feel more like home, but Nova was now pointing and staring at the picture.
“Mama.” She was saying it over and over again.
Nova couldn’t talk when Valerie died.
I bent my head over my knees, and I let the burning move through me.
I wasn’t surprised when I tasted salt on my lips a moment later.
Valerie.
Why did you have to go?
21
Nate
The next night
“Hey, loser.”
I gave Graham Robertson a look as he tapped me on the arm, passing to slide in the seat across from me.
“You don’t know me well enough to use Logan’s terms of endearment.”
He laughed, taking his coat off and putting it on the chair next to him. “You’re right, but we’re family, so I figure I can. And who says it was Logan’s term of endearment? Maybe that’s what Val called you on your ‘off’ times?”
I relaxed, then sat up. “Was it? Did she?”
“No.” Another laugh from him as he grabbed the drink menu. “Val just called you ‘him’ or by your name. That’s about it. She didn’t talk about you much, to be honest. Didn’t have to, I guess. We all knew she loved you.”
I felt a good one-two punch at everything he just said.
Valerie.
I’d been so focused on Nova that I pushed my thoughts and emotions about Valerie to the side. I didn’t know if that was fair to her or not, but Nova and the fight for Nova took first priority. Hearing that information now, regret sliced through me.
If she had told me? What then…
But I hadn’t called him to discuss Valerie. It was the other sister I needed information on.
The waitress came over, getting our orders. When she left, Graham lifted his chin toward me. “So, what’s up? I’m guessing you called for a reason, and talking about Val’s term of endearment isn’t it?”
I liked Graham.
We’d known him since college, though not well. Mason had met him at a football camp, but it wasn’t until after college that we got to know him better. He suffered an injury and went into sports broadcasting instead of an NFL career. Then when my brother-in-law and Aspen lived in Seattle, and Graham was here, it was inevitable our paths would cross more and more. Because of all that, I felt comfortable viewing Graham as a friend.
“Has Duke Royas reached out to your mother at all?”
The waiter had come over, and he was in the midst of lifting his glass for a drink. He froze right before the glass touched his mouth at my question. Then he set it down and scowled at me. “You’re serious?”
I had to ask. “Yes.”
“Fuck no. I hate that dipshit. Not only did he fuck over my mom, and he wasn’t in the standing to do that in the first place, but he’s been in Quincey’s head all her life. He’s turned her against us. Swear to God, she felt guilty about just having a meal with us.” He made a gun motion pointing at his head. “That’s how engrained he is in her head. Poisoned my own sister against us, against all of us.” He paused, frowning, and gripped his water tighter. “Why are you asking?”
“Because Quincey moved in with me.”
My statement was the equivalent of a mic being dropped.
Graham could only gape at me, and as far as I’d known Graham, he wasn’t a guy to gape. Always charming. Ever smooth. Maybe one or two retorts to Logan, but he was mostly a laidback and unshakeable guy.
Graham Robertson was shook now.
“You kidding me?”
“No.”
“When? I mean, fuck. Fuck! That’s great, right? That means you have Nova then?”
I nodded. “We dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s, but we have her. Both Quincey and I do.”
“In your house?” He jerked upright and shook his head briskly. “Wait a minute. You have a house here? Since when?”
“About four weeks ago, maybe a little less.”
“Holy shit. You Fallen Crest people move fast once you know what you want, huh?”
“Want my daughter? Fuck yes. You have kids?”
“I don’t, no. Val was the first in the family to have them.” Graham winced, reaching for his beer again. “Is that why you’re asking about Duke? Is he making things hard on Quince? Fuck, of course he is because he’s a dick.”
I nodded. “He’s been quiet lately. I was wondering if I needed to be gearing up for a fight that I can’t see coming.”
“Oh. Well.” He thought about it, taking another sip of his beer. “I mean, if Quincey and Nova are with you, then there isn’t much he can do. Right? Unless…”
“Unless?” I raised an eyebrow.
He took another drink of beer and grimaced as he swallowed. “Man, I don’t know if I should say anything. I mean, that’s for Quincey to tell you.”
“Quincey isn’t sharing. If I need to know something, then I need to know. I can’t fight a battle if I don’t know all the plays.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I can see that. But I feel like I’m betraying her if I tell you.”
I couldn’t fault him, but it had to be said. “This is Nova. She’s who we’re all protecting at this point.”
He grunted. “Fuck.” He hissed that word. “I know, and I can totally see Quincey not sharing because yeah, I can’t imagine what she’s going through right now. He’s been in her head all her life, literally. She’s probably detoxing from his toxin, you know? There’s absolutely no way he’ll go to any of us to move against her. No way in hell. He knows that’s a lost cause. We all hate him, but the only move I can see him making is either declaring you unfit or declaring Quincey unfit.”
“He has no standing against me.”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t think so. He’d know that, too. You’re stacked with everything. Job. Money. Family. Connections. I can only imagine shit you might’ve pulled when you were younger, but I can’t see any judge taking him seriously. So, then, it’s Quince.” He was grimacing again.