Chapter 14 #2
Autumn didn’t return to the office for the rest of the day, communicating to me through Barbara that she would finish the day working from home.
I’m keyed up while the kids and I have dinner, expecting, surely, at any moment, that I’ll receive a text from Autumn or a knock at the door.
She might think she’s done with me, but after the way she barged into my hotel suite Friday night just so she could check on the kids, I can’t imagine she could or would so easily “move on” from them.
They mean more to her than she wants to let on.
With the kids bathed and dressed in their pajamas, I’m not the only one who keeps drifting toward the front as the night wears on, peeking through the blinds at the houses across the street.
My sweet Josephine looks up at every noise she hears from outside, holding her hairbrush on her lap.
The closer we get to bedtime, the more disheartened she becomes… The more disheartened I am as well.
Maybe it would be for the best if Autumn “moved on” before the kids become any more attached to her than they already are. Yes, it’ll break Josephine’s heart, but surely time would heal that wound. Eventually. Hopefully.
As the clock ticks down, the four of us sit on the couch, cuddled close, while listening to Josephine read aloud a chapter from the third book in The Babysitter’s Club series. Sebastian is already nodding off toward the end, and Benjamin’s eyes are starting to droop.
With one last peek at the darkened street, seeing no movement, I sigh. “Think it’s time for bed.”
Josephine shoots a worried look toward the front door, abandoning her book in favor of her hairbrush. “Please. Just five more minutes?”
Finally addressing the elephant in the room, I tell Josephine, “I don’t think Autumn is coming.”
Her chin begins to quiver. “Can’t you call her and ask?”
I give Josephine a searching look as her eyes turn watery. I want to give in and see Autumn as much as she does. But it’s best to get this over with. I squeeze her knee. “I know you care for her, but she’s not—”
The beeps coming from the front door’s electric keypad have us both turning to face it, and Josephine’s expression lights up brilliantly.
“I didn’t miss bedtime, did I?” Autumn asks, rushing into the house before I have the chance to so much as rise, her cheeks flushed with exertion. Did she run here?
“Autumn!” Josephine shouts and bounces off the couch, startling Sebastian awake.
“Tum Tum!” Sebastian says, sliding off the couch to follow his sister, both of them wrapping their arms around Autumn.
I gape. “How do you know the code to my lock?” And why does it please me that she waltzed right in, as if she lives here?
Dressed in a silky black robe over her pajamas, wearing a brand-new pair of slippers on her feet, Autumn waves to the kitchen.
“You have it written down and stuck to the refrigerator.” Then she bends and says to the kids, “Sorry, I’m late.
I had to watch Brady until my parents got back from dinner. ”
“You coulda brought him with you,” Josephine says, grumpy that she had to wait so long.
Autumn and I meet each other’s eyes over her head. “I’ll, um, ask him next time if he wants to come,” she says.
So there will be a next time. My shoulders relax at the thought.
Autumn nods at Josephine’s hairbrush with a smile. “Let’s get the boys to bed first. I want to try out a new braid I learned.”
“Okay!” Josephine takes off toward her bedroom. “And I can show you my new painting!”
As soon as she’s gone, Autumn’s smile moves to Sebastian, whom she lifts and settles on her hip, turning away from me without a word.
Inside the nursery, she doesn’t pay me a lick of attention as I give Benjamin one last diaper change and she tucks Sebastian into bed, bending to kiss his cheek.
The back of her robe rides up high, and I kick myself for forgetting my phone on the coffee table.
Autumn settles into the rocking chair and lifts her arms. “Come here, big boy.” She’s not talking to me, unfortunately.
“I’ll tell Josephine it’ll be a few more minutes,” I say quietly.
Autumn nods, humming when she reclines the chair and arranges Benjamin on her chest. “Don’t let me fall asleep,” she sings, rubbing the baby’s back.
When I don’t say anything, because I absolutely do want her to fall asleep and accidentally spend the night once more, she kicks off her slippers and says, “And no sneaky pictures of my feet unless you plan on paying me for them. You still owe me for the other pics.”
I make a garbled, choked huff, buoyed by the teasing tone in her voice and the fact that she wiggles her toes. If we were alone, I’d ask if she’d allow me to massage her feet with some lotion, then her calves and her thighs, and finally her clit. Fuck, it’s so hot to imagine.
Autumn seems to startle, perhaps forgetting she’s angry with me, for reasons I still don’t understand. The second she looks up at me, she scowls. “Pretend I didn’t say that.”
“Nope,” I say, leaning back against the changing table with my arms and ankles crossed, watching the angel rock my youngest son to sleep.
As I thought she might, her eyes begin to drift shut.
It’s only minutes later that she and Benjamin are fast asleep.
Quickly running to tell Josephine to wait a few more minutes, I get my phone and return to the nursery.
I gently move Benjamin to his crib, then get a few close-up shots of my angel with my camera.
If Josephine wouldn’t be so disappointed, I’d leave Autumn where she is.
“Wake up, angel,” I whisper, cupping Autumn’s cheek, even daring to steal a small kiss on her lips before her eyes finish fluttering open.
“No more of that, BigDawg,” Autumn says with a yawn.
“No promises.”
She rolls her eyes, arching her back when she stretches her arms high above her head after I help her from the chair. The belt on her robe comes loose, revealing a tiny, silky pajama top that hardly covers the lovely swells of her breasts.
Autumn catches me staring, for which I make no apology before silently following her down the hall to Josephine’s room.
“Finally!” Josephine says, sitting cross-legged on her bed with her watercolor pad on her lap, having painted another family-style picture of the five of us. “That took forever!”
Once Autumn finishes braiding Josephine’s hair into the most complicated braid—a carnation? Coronation? Something like that—I quickly catch up to Autumn in the entryway. I spin her around and slap my hands over her shoulders against the front door.
“What things?” I ask.
“Let me go,” Autumn says, crossing her arms beneath her breasts, pushing the material of her top down enough that a sliver of her right nipple peaks above the collar.
I want to tug the hem down to bare her breasts, then take her nipple in my mouth.
Get her so worked up that she begs me to take her to bed, where I’d keep her all night long.
I step closer, my toes butting against her slippers, which I wish she hadn’t put back on.
The pair she’d left in my hotel room is currently hidden in my closet, and I have no plans on giving them back.
“You said we wanted different things. I’m not letting you go until you tell me what those are,” I say firmly.
Autumn works her jaw before lifting her chin. “I don’t want to have to take another one of those pills because the man I’m casually fucking is irresponsible. Now move.”
I react as if I’ve been struck. “Casually fucking?”
“What else would you call it, BigDawg? I mean, the sex was hot, but it’s not worth making either of our lives ‘harder’ by accidentally getting tied down to each other for the next eighteen years.”
I can’t move a muscle, reduced to ashes by her words. Tied down? Would she really find being with me so awful?
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she says with a sneer when I can’t respond fast enough, and she successfully shoves me away, escaping through the front door.