Chapter 15 #2
I liked witnessing her wonder. My heart clenched at the rapidly reducing amount of time I had left with her.
I’d been able to spend Thanksgiving with her—the holiday marred by her illness and the ghosts it had dredged up for Beau.
Calliope, Elliot, and their father had been there.
Their warmth and conversation helped quell my nerves at being around Beau for the holiday …
a tad. I’d still been reeling with emotional whiplash from being sick, seeing that caring side of Beau only to have him snap back into the harsher, more familiar version of him.
I was trying to make myself not fall in love with him.
Unfortunately, it was too late for that.
Also unfortunately, I’d been unable to be fully present during the first and only Thanksgiving I’d spend with Clara and Beau.
Just before Christmas, we’d be in New York. Cole had invited me to spend it with him, to check out the city, and probably to try to convince me to move there.
It would coincide with the trip to the Natural History Museum, which Clara was cleared for as long as she was admitted to the museum after hours.
Something that had been planned against my will.
And Beau’s, even if he was technically the one doing the planning.
At his daughter’s request. He was putty in her hands.
Though the layers of complication between me and Beau continued to get thicker and thicker, I was happy I’d get to be there for that memory. I was choosing not to think about not seeing Clara wake up on Christmas morning.
As much as I wanted to spend time with my friend, the prospect of being away from her hurt my heart.
I was getting remarkably good and not thinking about complicated or hurtful things. A real talent since I was sharing the same roof with the most complicated and hurtful person I’d ever met.
He appeared just as Clara and I were finishing getting ready to go outside.
“Daddy!” Clara yelled. “It’s snowing! We’re going to go outside to make snow sculptures. You have to come.”
Beau smiled at his daughter. Though I didn’t want to, I marveled at the lines in his face that crinkled in happiness. He looked years younger.
“Of course, Bug.” He ran his hand over her hair.
Beau’s eyes then ran over me, assessing.
I shifted uncomfortably in my thick socks. Winter clothing was not complimentary, especially when I didn’t have the funds to buy the kind of jackets that were flattering or trendy or even actually warm.
The current coat I was wearing was a thrift store find.
The quality of older clothes was better than the mass-produced, big-box stuff that we were polluting our planet with.
It was thick, cut out some of the bitter winter wind, and was almost waterproof.
It was also an ugly shade of mustard, not flattering with my skin tone, and had some weird stain on the pocket I hadn’t been able to get out.
I’d tried to make the look seem intentional with a beige-covered thermal set underneath, which was tight enough to show off my body.
I didn’t miss Beau’s lingering gaze on my breasts and hips, sending rockets of sensation to my toes. But he was mostly staring at the offensive jacket.
“It’s a coat.” I stated the obvious. I had to say something. He was staring at it so intently, and I was not comfortable bathing in the loaded silence.
“Barely,” he replied as he helped Clara into her own. Hers was a thick, expensive purple coat that looked like it’d keep her cozy in Antarctica. It had a cute, bright-pink faux-fur ring around the hood.
My neck heated at the statement pointing out the glaringly obvious gaps in our socioeconomic positions.
I’d grown up poor, had been teased for it, had let it become part of my identity, so it wasn’t a label that made me burn with shame.
I’d been proud of myself for wrenching myself from situations of poverty, debt, and abuse, but I’d never stopped feeling self-conscious.
Like everyone was looking at me, like they had back in school.
Beau was not rich, not by conventional standards. But he had a house, a backyard. His daughter had a room full of treasures and a coat that fit her, without holes, that would keep her warm.
She was healthy.
That was rich.
“You need a better coat for Maine winter,” he told me, pulling a beanie down on Clara’s head.
I zipped up the, apparently, egregious coat. “I’m only going to be here for one winter.” My throat dried, saying it out loud. “There’s no point spending money on a coat I’ll wear for one season.”
Granted, if I did move to New York City with Cole, I would need a coat. But I’d get one in the summer, when all the good sales were happening. If I could afford it. A big if.
Beau was silent as he put on Clara's gloves. “Maine winter is more than one season to you non-natives,” he eventually barked. “It won’t get warm until you’re about to leave. You need a better coat.”
I gnashed my teeth together. I hated his offhand mention of me leaving, as if it were just a detail to him. As if it weren’t ripping me apart inside.
I didn’t want to tell him I didn’t have money to spend on another coat, so I just nodded.
Clara was too excited about the snow to catch the comment about me leaving. It was a sore subject for her, one we danced around. Because whenever it was mentioned, her eyes went glassy, and she asked why I couldn’t stay with her forever.
I asked myself that often.
It didn’t help that Beau put on his own thick, impressive jacket and boots before coming outside with us.
The lines blurred when he did things like this.
Technically, I shouldn’t have been there since my job was taking care of Clara when he wasn’t around to take care of her.
But I already had my jacket and boots on, and Clara’s gloved hand was already clutching mine.
So I was trapped in a faux family dynamic that tortured me with what I’d never truly have.
Again, I brushed those thoughts to the deepest reaches of my mind, forcing myself to be present with Clara. Not that it was difficult. I inhaled the crisp air, tilted my head upward to let the flakes melt on my cheeks, then grinned, opening my mouth to let them dissolve on my tongue.
Clara laughed, following suit.
I smiled at her happiness, her wonder, then my gaze found Beau. He was watching us both, his eyes blazing with an intensity I hadn’t seen since before the night in the hotel.
Despite the icy temperature, my body flamed.
“Let’s make the sculpture,” Clara announced, breaking the moment.
It needed to be broken. I couldn’t get sucked in again. So instead, I focused on building a snowman, preparing to ignore Beau completely.
I scowled at the silver car that drove past and the male driver before looking back down at the snowman I was making.
“What was that?”
I looked up to Beau, who was not focused on the snowman’s facial features as he had been previously, but laser focused on me.
“What was what?” I tried playing dumb, packing in snow.
“That look.”
“What look?” I continued with the snow, glancing up only to see Beau not buying my innocent act even a little.
“You know what look,” Beau rumbled. “I’ve never seen you give anyone, except me, a dirty look, and you just gave one to that car.”
I gulped at the weight of his perception. He’d been watching me, cataloguing me carefully over all this time, even when I thought he didn’t like me.
The thought warmed me despite the snow in my hands. Though the prospect of this conversation wasn’t exactly ideal.
I sighed out a breath, watching it cloud from my mouth. “Well, that guy is an assh—butthead,” I corrected, looking at Clara’s beanie-covered head. Not that butthead was something I wanted her repeating either.
Beau’s posture stiffened. “What did he do?”
At his words, I felt danger fill the air, my instincts telling me to lie.
“Nothing.” I waved my hand dismissively. “Not a big deal.”
The snow crunched as Beau rounded our large snowman with purpose, my heart rate spiking as he grasped on to my hips in a strangely intimate embrace, considering our current arrangement and current audience.
Clara, to her credit, didn’t seem to bat an eyelash, too busy with her snow sculpture.
Almost every moment of the day, I admired how unusual and unique she was, so unlike children her age who typically required constant attention and direction.
I normally would’ve been content to watch her do her thing, even more content with Beau’s hands on me, which were branding me through the cheap jacket I was wearing.
If not for the rage radiating from him that made my lip quiver.
“What. Was. That?” Beau repeated.
“He has road rage,” I answered. “He tailgated me the whole drive home from the bakery with Clara the other day. I was going the speed limit. Apparently, he didn’t like that.”
“Why in the fuck didn’t you tell me?” Beau’s nostrils flexed.
I frowned. “Because I don’t think to tell you about every facet of my day, especially when it pertains to impatient men.”
Beau’s face went blank, then he let me go.
That was a good thing.
“I’ve got to go,” he said roughly. He walked to his daughter, laying a kiss on her head before whispering in her ear.
He didn’t look at me again; he simply got in his truck and drove off.
I didn’t let myself wonder where he went.
BEAU
Though I wanted to tear through the neighborhood, I kept to the speed limit.
A couple below, even. Because we’d just had the first snow of the season, it was a family street, and there were likely to be a bunch of excited kids not paying attention to where the sidewalk ended underneath the blanket of snow.
I knew the owner of the car. It was a small town, a quiet street. And although I was not a friendly or talkative neighbor, I knew most everyone on the street.