Chapter 27
I feel caught as my teenage daughter sits on the second to the bottom step, waiting for me.
Such an odd role reversal, but here it is.
Stella was upset when we came home from the fair, and no matter how hard I pressed, she refused to tell me why.
After locking herself up in her room, she was asleep when I left.
Or so I thought.
I will admit, this is all new for me. I never snuck out.
It was impossible from the compound. The security in that place is insane.
It’s a million miles to anything from there, and well, I never had a good reason to try.
I have no idea how this is supposed to go or what I’m supposed to say to my thirteen-year-old as she stares me down like she’s getting ready to yell and then ground me.
“Were you with Elle?” She looks impossibly hurt.
Oh boy. I take a seat on the step beside her. “I thought you were asleep.”
“I was faking it.”
“Why?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
I swallow and stare into my daughter’s eyes. My wife’s eyes. “Yes. I was with Elle.”
“Are you… are you… having sex with her?” She swallows and blushes, her gaze falling a bit from mine, but she leaves that heavy question hanging between us.
Shit. Sometimes it’s awesome being a single dad to a daughter. This is not one of those moments.
“Yes.” And please God, don’t ask me to elaborate on that.
She nods and falls silent, staring at the carpet on the stairs between us, and I have no fucking clue what to say.
“I thought you didn’t like her. You were always kind of mean to her. At least when she first moved in.”
“I tried not to like her.”
“Because of Mom?”
My insides tighten. “Because of a lot of reasons.”
She nods, and I find myself staring down at the top of her head, wishing she’d look up so I could figure out what she’s thinking. “I know why you blame yourself for Mom.”
My lungs empty, and my chest clenches like it’s caught in a vise.
Now she looks up. Straight at me. “Uncle Oliver and Uncle Carter told me.”
I nod. That’s all I’ve got. In a way, I’m relieved they did because how do you tell your daughter you’re the reason her mother is dead? On the other hand, it should have come from me, and it should have come a long time ago.
“Why did they?” It’s likely the wrong question, but I’m curious.
She leans forward, bringing her feet up to the first step and dropping her elbows to her thighs.
A frown pulls down her lips as her eyes train toward the front door, and fear grips me.
The thought of losing my daughter’s love is the most crushingly terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced, and I lost my wife.
This is why I never told her. This. This right here. I can’t breathe, and my heart feels like it’s beating out of my chest, silently begging her the way I am.
“I saw you walk off with Elle. I saw you take her hand, and Uncle Oliver noticed I did. We met up with Grace and Uncle Carter, and I heard them talking about it a little when they didn’t realize I was listening.
They talked about how relieved they were that you were finally putting the past behind you and moving forward. ”
“Bellas—”
“I asked them why you blamed yourself for Mom—that I had overheard from Grandma and Grandpa a few years ago—and Uncle Carter and Uncle Oliver told me about the fight you had with her that night. The things you said.”
Emotion clogs my throat, and I do my best to clear it, but her utterly despondent tone and expression break me in two, and a tear slips down my cheek before I can stop it. My head falls in shame, my heart cracking open, bleeding out.
“I didn’t know how to tell you. Bellas, I’m so sorry.”
She swivels in my direction and takes me in, our faces only illuminated by the soft glow of the small lamp on the entryway table. “I told Mercedes Smart that she was a stupid, insecure bitch, and I hoped she died a painfully slow death.”
I startle back an inch. “What?”
“She was teasing me. Making fun of me for things I’d rather not tell my dad, but I said it to her. I was angry and upset, and I lashed out. Shouted something I didn’t mean to her.”
“Honey, I—”
“I know you loved Mom. I know you wish it had been you instead of her. I overheard that too.”
Fuck.
“We all say stuff we don’t mean.” Her eyes shift back and forth between mine. “I don’t blame you for what happened to her. You didn’t mean what you said, just like I didn’t. It just took me a little while tonight to figure that all out in my head.”
More tears fall, and there’s no way I can stop them. A shudder wracks through me, and I grab my daughter, dragging her to my chest and holding her firmly against me. She grips my shirt with her small fists as her body trembles and jerks while she cries softly against me.
For a few minutes, I rock her, hold her, cry with her, feeling so blessed and undeserving. Feeling a lightness I haven’t felt since the day she was born. She’d make her mother so proud, and I know Reese is watching us now, feeling this with us.
“I love your mom, Bellas. I always have, and I always will. I miss her.” Especially right now. I’d give anything for Reese to see Stella like this. Growing up and so sweet and smart and beautiful and perfect.
“I miss her too. I wish I had known her.”
A bite into my lip to stop a sob. “I wish that too. So much.”
“I know, Dad,” she whispers into me, her voice hoarse. Pulling back, she wipes her tear-soaked face, and I do the same with mine while keeping her close to my side, pressed into me. Her watery blue eyes lock on mine. “But now you love Elle too?”
I lick my lips. “I think I might, yeah.”
“Are you going to marry her?”
Christ on a cracker, how do I answer that? “I don’t know, Bellas. It’s far too soon to think about that. She’s recently divorced, and we’ve only been… we’re not exactly…” Fuck, I don’t know what to say. “It’s new, and we don’t want to rush anything. I don’t want to rush her. Does that make sense?”
“I guess so.”
“She also wants to keep it quiet for now.”
Her eyes sparkle up at me as I run my hand down her long, long hair. “Because of me? Because she’s my teacher?”
“Sometimes I forget just how smart you are. That’s definitely one reason.”
“I’m happy it’s her.”
Now I get choked up again. “Me too.”
She drops her head onto my shoulder and the two of us sit here, lost in our thoughts.
“You have school tomorrow. Or I guess it’s today now.”
“And you have work.”
“We’re both going to be tired then.”
She giggles, and never has a sound made me smile the way this one does. “I went into your office earlier. I saw the plot of land on your computer. The blueprints for the house. It’s not just sketches anymore. It’s actual blueprints.”
“Oh?” That catches my attention.
“The land is six million dollars?”
I chuckle at her shocked tone. “It is.”
“But there’s no house on there. That’s just the land. You’d have to build the house.”
I kiss the top of her head, breathing in her sweet, clean scent. “It’s a lot of land, and this is Boston. What did you think of it?”
She looks up. “Will you build me another greenhouse?”
I press another kiss, this one to her forehead. “Bigger than the one you have now, yes. And with all that land…”
She climbs onto my lap the way she used to when she was a little girl, and I just about lose my shit again. My arms snake around her, and I hold my baby because when the hell will I ever get this chance again? She’s growing. So fast. Too fast.
“Do I have to be a doctor when I grow up?”
I laugh at her scrunched-up, grossed-out expression. “It’s the Fritz way.”
“Uh-uh. Aunt Rina is a nurse.”
I grin at her I got you there expression. “But she’s still in the medical field,” I tease.
“Daaad,” she whines with a sing-song inflection.
“It’s medicine or bust, kiddo. Sorry.”
“Then I’m running away tonight.”
I pinch her side, and she smacks at me, but my tone grows serious. “You can be whatever you want to be as long as you’re happy. That’s all I ever care about.”
“Then I think I want to be a chef. Open a restaurant called Stella’s that serves food I grow.”
“I think that would be incredible.” And I do. Truly. She’s an Abbot-Fritz and has a trust fund bigger than the gross national income of some small countries. She can make all her dreams come true and then some.
“I guess I might like the idea of moving and building that house. Can we show the land to Elle?”
I lean back against the step, my eyebrows at my hairline. “You want her to see it?”
She turns her head fully in my direction and nods exuberantly, her bony butt digging into my thighs, and I adjust her on me. “I love her too.”
God, this girl.
“I’d be okay with it if she was my stepmom one day.”
And now I’m about to cry like a pussy again.
“We’ll talk about it another day. Like I said, she might not be ready for all that yet. Us Fritzes are a lot to take on.”
“I think she could handle it.”
“I hope so.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have said that out loud. Maybe I shouldn’t even be thinking along those lines, but I did, and I am, and fuck it. I want it. I want it all, and I want it with Elle.
“I’m beat, and you need to get some sleep.”
She groans like the teenager she is and climbs off my lap, standing up and stretching out her limbs as a yawn hits her lips.
Without waiting for me, she trudges up the stairs, heading for her room, and I follow, pulling her in for another hug in front of her door because I’ll never get enough of them.
“Night, Bellas. I love you.”
“Love you too, Dad.”
She shuts the door, leaving me out here, and it’s almost as if I don’t know what to do with myself now. I never thought I’d feel like this again. Never dreamed of it because I never wanted it.
“Thank you, Reese,” I whisper and walk down the hall to my room.
It’s pitch-black in here, but I find my way to my window and stare out toward Elle’s dark one. She’s asleep. Barely stirred when I finally dragged myself away. It was torture, and I miss her already. Wish I were back in her warm bed with her sweet body wrapped around mine.
This thing between us is tricky. But now she’s ours, and I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep her that way.