Chapter 16 LEO #2
The book was about World War II but as the pages passed, I didn’t soak in the words like I would if I was reading it for myself. I was too busy trying not to stutter or rush through the words to absorb them.
This was her area of expertise. Books. History. Knowledge.
I was just a thug mechanic doing his best not to let the nerves creep into his voice or his hands shake as he turned the page.
Never in my life had I felt more vulnerable than I did in this moment, reading Cass’s book to her while she listened on.
On the floor, her phone dinged.
Cass sat up straight, stretching for it, but I beat her to it, reading the text.
“It’s your mom. She says they are bringing dinner over tonight. Around five.”
“Okay.” She relaxed into the water again, resting her cheek and hands on the edge.
Those eyes met mine, the color as fine and smooth as the best whiskey.
Her cheeks were flushed the color of the peach roses Emmett had brought her today.
Her hair was tied up and only a few tendrils skimmed the water’s surface.
“You’re beautiful.” I caught a droplet of water at her chin.
“I don’t feel like it.”
“Then believe me when I say you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Her eyes welled with tears. There’d been a lot of tears, most ones of frustration and exhaustion during the late-night hours when Seraphina wouldn’t sleep or struggled to nurse.
I picked up the book, reading a few more pages until she stopped me at the end of a chapter.
“You don’t talk about your parents,” she whispered.
“No.” I closed the book and set it aside, leaning forward. “I don’t have a close relationship with my mother.”
“And your father?”
“Haven’t seen or spoken to him since I was twelve.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.” I sighed, not wanting to get into this, but I also wouldn’t deny Cass her curiosity. “My dad was a drunk and a womanizer. Guess the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”
“You consider yourself a drunk?”
“No. But I doubt he would have either. He never lived with us so I didn’t know him well.
He and Mom weren’t married. I don’t know what their relationship was, but at times, he’d stay over.
He’d be around for a week, then disappear for two months before coming back.
Finally Mom had enough. When I was ten, she told him to get lost.”
“And you never heard from him again?”
“He moved to California. Got tied into a club down there. He came back once or twice that following year. Mostly I think to see if Mom was serious. She was. The last time he came by, I was home. She doesn’t know I was listening, but I heard her threaten to call the cops if he showed again. He didn’t.”
Cass stretched out a hand for mine, lacing our fingers together. “You’re not him.”
“I don’t want to be him. I won’t be him.”
Her hand gripped mine tighter.
“I was on that path,” I said. “I doubt my life in the club looked a lot different than his. The club was part of the reason Mom and I don’t talk much.
Not that we were ever close before. I think she looks at me and sees my father.
After I graduated, she moved to Tucson and I joined the club.
We talk a few times a year. Birthdays. Christmas. That’s about it.”
Mom had married a few years back. I hadn’t gone to the wedding, nor had I been invited. She’d told me after the fact, promising it had been a no-fuss thing at the courthouse.
I’d called her earlier this week to tell her about Seraphina. She’d been surprised to say the least, especially since I hadn’t told her about Cass or the pregnancy over our Christmas phone call. But Mom had been polite. She was always polite.
As a teenager, we’d argued. She’d get frustrated with me, wishing I’d been different. Wishing I’d cared more about school and my future than joining the local motorcycle club. Exasperating. That had been her word for me.
Our fighting had ended abruptly the day she’d moved to Tucson. Maybe she’d given up on me. Maybe I’d given up on her. Maybe we’d both exasperated each other.
I hadn’t spoken to Mom long when I’d called. We didn’t know one another and that wasn’t going to change. Though I’d promised to send pictures of Seraphina. She’d invited us to Tucson, a trip we both knew wouldn’t happen anytime soon.
Maybe one day my mother would meet my daughter.
But in the past fourteen years, I’d seen Mom twice, so I wasn’t going to hold my breath.
Part of that distance was on me. I wasn’t sure if there was a fix to be made or if it was best to simply acknowledge that my family lived here and was not related to me by blood.
Until now.
Seraphina was my blood. She was mine.
She’d always have Claudia and Dale as grandparents. She’d have a crew of aunts and uncles—Dash, Emmett, Presley and everyone else—who’d spoil her and shower her with affection. Cass and I had no siblings, but my Seraphina would have a big family.
“Does she know about Seraphina?” Cass asked.
I nodded. “I called her the day after we got home. You were both sleeping.”
“You’re doing a lot while I’m sleeping. Cooking. Cleaning. Walking the halls with her. You need rest too, Leo.”
“I’m used to it. Years of long nights.” A half-truth.
Cass’s wasn’t the only mind unable to shut down. The only time I could let myself relax was when both of them were sleeping, something that didn’t happen often enough.
A squawk from the bedroom sent me to my feet. I grabbed a towel and held it out for Cass as she stepped from the tub and wrapped it around herself. Then she hurried past me to the bedroom, where Seraphina was ready to eat.
The three of us settled on the bed and once Cass was done nursing, I took over burping while she dressed in oatmeal sweats. Then we let Seraphina look around a bit before taking her to the living room, where we could set her in a swing.
“Want me to grab your book?”
Cass shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not really into it, which is strange because it was exactly the kind of book I would have devoured a year ago. Maybe my tastes are changing.”
“To what?”
“Fiction.” She grimaced and scrunched up her nose, something so cute I had to laugh.
“I’ve heard fiction is quite popular.”
She groaned. “And I like it. I’ve always enjoyed historical fiction. But that was a distant second to nonfiction. Now they’ve seemed to swap. What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing, babe. Nothing at all.”
“Everything is changing. Fiction feels like a betrayal to all the years I spent studying history.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” She sighed. “I guess because I used to like real-life events. Now, maybe I just need to escape the real world, and fiction feels like the easiest route at times. And maybe because it hurts a little bit.”
“Hurts?”
“Because as the days go by, now that she’s here, I realize there’s no going back. I won’t get my doctorate like I’d always planned. It seems . . . unimportant. But it used to be so important.”
“You might change your mind one day.”
“True.” She nodded. “But there’s no school here, and I can’t imagine moving away.”
If she did, she’d have company.
“What do you miss most about school?” I asked.
“The library and the smell of old books. The discussions with professors. The debates with classmates. I loved how in a small group, we’d each like a different aspect of one particular story.
That’s what I like about history. We all see it through our own vantage point.
And true stories are the most powerful.”
This woman was fascinating. We hadn’t spent nearly enough time getting to know one another, and as she spoke, I drowned in her every word. “How’d you get into it? History?”
“From books when I was young. And trips we’d take.” She smiled and snuggled deeper into the couch, stretching out her legs.
I pulled them into my lap, massaging the arches and toes. “This okay?”
“I’ll kick you if you stop,” she said, making me smile.
“My parents love to camp. When I was ten, Mom declared that she wanted to visit all of the national parks and picked Redwood National Park first. We drove down there that summer, making a three-week trip of it. Our station wagon didn’t have a DVD player or anything, so I’d read.
If we passed a town with a second-hand bookstore, we’d stop and I’d sell whatever book I’d finished reading and buy something new. ”
“I bet you read more books that summer than I’ve read my entire life.”
Cass giggled. “I do read a lot. But after you read to me in the bathtub, I might have to make you do that with me all the time now.”
I’d do anything she asked.
“There was no GPS then, so Dad taught me how to use a compass and read a map. When we got there, I was mesmerized by the trees and the forest. I couldn’t believe they were so big.”
“There’s a picture of your mom hugging a tree at your house. In the hallway. Is it from that trip?”
Cass sat up straighter. “I didn’t think you’d looked at those pictures.”
“That one jumped out at me. So did the one of you with braces and bangs.”
“No.” She covered her face with her hands. “I was an awkward teenager. Please block that one from your mind forever.”
“You looked cute.”
“Liar.” She laughed. “But yes, that was the trip. Before we left the area, I bought a book about the park. How it was important to the American Indians. How it changed from logging after the westward expansion. How it was saved from destruction and turned into a national park. On the drive home, I read it twice. And it became a tradition for me. We’d go to a new national park every summer, and on the drive home, I’d have a new book. ”
“They’re in the office?” I glanced down the hallway, picturing some of the books I’d helped her put in there.