Chapter 5 - Simon
She’s been here for four days now, and having her this close to me, living in my space and filling my air with her scent… well, to put it bluntly, she is making it impossible for me to think or exist clearly. She’s driving me crazy.
The rational side of my mind has slipped away and abandoned me, and I keep having visions of pushing her against a wall and kissing her.
I want her so badly, but somewhere deep inside me, that small, logical voice is still shouting warnings.
She was never who she pretended to be.
It was a trick. A ruse. A game she played to elicit information from you and your family.
She took your children and hid them.
She never planned to let you know they existed.
So I accept these things and try to keep my distance from her. But then one brush past her, one second of her warmth against me and her scent in my nostrils, and I am melting again, ready to throw caution to the wind just to have her in my arms and her lips on my mouth.
I can’t take much more of this.
On her first night here, I took a huge gamble telling her she could leave.
Not a fuck would I have let her go. No fucking chance in hell. She is mine. It took me five years to find her. She stays.
But thankfully, it paid off. Even the threat against the kids, making them talk to me, wasn’t something I would have done.
I would never hurt those kids, and I would never hurt her.
Even though I found out she had been lying to me the entire time.
My heart wouldn’t let me harm a hair on her head.
My soul still thinks we are made for each other, even though it’s now the most absurd thing I could believe. I can’t stop myself.
We are sitting at the dinner table, and Selene, as always, is silent and has walls so high around herself I couldn’t read her expression if I were psychic.
She’s a closed book, keeping her family secrets close to her chest and silent.
The twins, on the other hand, are settling in amazingly. They are chatty and beautiful and seem to be having the time of their lives in the penthouse.
Yesterday, all the things they chose for their bedroom arrived. A model spaceship, a dinosaur teddy three times as tall as Solenne. A neon pink duvet that I thought Arron would disagree with, but he is incredibly protective of his sister and didn’t mind at all that she got what she wanted.
He was more interested in the galaxy projector anyway.
They have a closet full of new clothes, toys, art supplies, and things I don’t think they even know what to do with. And they are loving it.
Selene also had a big box delivered for her. Clothes, toiletries, things I thought she might need. I had to guess, though, because she refused to order or choose for herself.
I assume she has a lot of secrets to keep from me, secrets about her family and what she was really doing with me all those years ago. But there is also something in her eyes that looks like longing. But it’s probably wishful thinking on my part. She’s probably just longing to escape me.
Fuck. My feelings towards her are affecting my decisions. And obviously, we are from rival families, and she is fully aware of that.
I stare at her across the table, waiting for her to feel my eyes on her. When she does, she glances at me, and just as quickly she looks away. But in that brief moment, my heart somersaults.
I still have hope that what we had back then was real. It felt so real. I still have so many feelings towards this girl that I have no idea what to do with them.
This isn’t me at all, though. I am logical and controlled. I don’t sit around daydreaming about whether or not a girl really loved me once upon a time. I look at the facts. The reality of who she is and the potential threat she poses to my family and me.
Whatever is going on in my heart now is dangerous, and I need to get it under control.
It’s late afternoon, and the penthouse is quiet. Suspiciously quiet considering two five-year-olds are living here. I’ve quickly learned that when they go quiet, you have to check on them.
Selene is sleeping, rest I think she desperately needs, so I am on twins-duty.
“Solenne?” I call my daughter’s name. “Where are you, little monster?”
Silence answers me.
Then a quiet giggle.
I soften my steps, realizing she’s hiding somewhere.
I know how to walk without being heard. Following the sound of her sneaky little laughter, I stop outside the door of my library. I hear the giggle again. Then I hear Arron hushing her and complaining that she’s making too much noise.
Silence.
I step inside the library and pretend to browse books, humming to myself.
The soft scuffle of shoes on the floor. A sharp breath.
“I wonder where my kids are. I was going to read them a story,” I say out loud, running my hands over the books.
“A story!” Solenne can’t sit still long enough to stay hidden. She leaps out from behind the leather armchair. Arron groans as he stands up next to her.
I press my hand over my heart and pretend to be horrifically surprised.
“Wow! You almost made me fall over! I had no idea you were there!” I declare, trying to catch my breath.
“What story?” Solenne asks, completely disinterested in my fake surprise.
I laugh, shaking my head as she comes to stand next to me and looks up at the rows of bookshelves. “What story will you read us?” she asks again when I don’t answer right away.
I turn to my son, who is still standing near the armchair.
“What story do you want, Arron? Seeing as Solenne chose last night’s story,” I ask.
“Um. What about pirate maps?” he asks shyly.
“You like maps?” I say in surprise.
“Grandpa never let him look at the maps,” Solenne says with a serious undertone.
“Why not?” I ask, seizing the opportunity to learn more about their grandfather.
“He never let us look at anything,” she huffs, pouting angrily.
“Where is your grandpa now?” I ask.
Arron has come closer. He pulls his mouth to the side. “Dunno. We haven’t seen him in a long time.”
“How long?” I ask, surprised.
“Long, long, long time,” Solenne says seriously. Of course, to a kid, a week is a long time, so I don’t really know what this means.
“And our uncles,” Arron adds. “‘Cause we ran away from grandpa’s house.”
“You ran away?” I ask, surprised.
“Mommy took us away to keep us safe,” Solenne says, reaching up to try to pull a book from the shelf. I pull it out and hand it to her before it falls on her head.
Selene ran away. She said her father was coming for them, but I believe it was a lie.
I thought, after finding out who her father was, that she was making things up to build a story around herself.
A story that would help her get closer to me to gather information for her father, like she was doing in the past. It’s not proven that she was doing that in the past, Simon.
Maybe give her more benefit of the doubt than that.
“When Mommy ran away from Grampa’s home, was it raining?
Was it hot outside?” I ask, trying to figure out how long ago she apparently fled.
The thing is, Selene might be able to make up stories and lie to manipulate me into doing what she wants …
but the kids won’t be able to do that so easily.
They will trip over the truth. Even this truth was, in a way, a slip-up.
“It was snowing!” Solenne declares excitedly. “I had to wear my boots.”
“Snowing?” I ask thoughtfully. That means it was still spring, and it’s summer now. The last time it snowed was almost two months ago. Has she been on the run with them for two months? Staying in hotels and running from her father?
I look down at my kids, and my heart aches. They have been living in a chaotic world for months, if I am correct. And they need this home more than I could have imagined.
But why didn’t Selene tell me this? Why would she be so determined to escape me, only to go back to living in motels and running?
What is she hiding?
“So, you like maps?” I say to Arron with a smile. “Well, I have the perfect book for you.”
Reaching up to the highest shelf, I pull out a book that is much bigger than the others.
I sit down on the floor, and both children sit next to me with eager anticipation.
Placing the book in front of us, I point to the cover.
“Myths and Legends and Treasure Maps,” I read out loud.
“When I was very young, my father gave this to me for my birthday.
I carefully open the old cover to a random page in the book, and a tea-stained map spreads across two wide pages.
On the map are intricate drawings of ships and sea monsters.
In the column on the edge of the page are short descriptions of the markings on the map.
Arron’s eyes are wide with curiosity. He shifts closer to me, resting one little hand on my knee while he leans over the map and starts asking questions about the images.
“What is that?” he asks, pointing to a serpent.
“It’s a sea dragon,” I tell him. “You like land dragons, so you will probably like sea dragons too?”
“No, I like dragons,” Solenne corrects me, crawling until she’s right over the book and peering closely at the images.
“What is that?” Arron asks, pointing to a chest of golden coins.
“Pirate treasure,” I tell him. “That’s where it got buried by the Pirate Captain. He had to put it on the map, so he remembers where it is.”
“And that?” he asks, tracing his fingers over a red dotted line.
“That is a pathway that shows you how to get to the Mystical Caves way up here,” I follow the pathway to the top of the map near a mountain range.
For an hour, we page through the book, and I tell them short stories I make up about the different graphics on the maps.
The children are riveted, and I am so happy to have them sitting with me that I don’t even notice the time passing or how the room is slowly growing darker as the sun begins to set.
When Selene walks into the room, the twins have both wedged themselves onto my lap and look very comfortable while still talking about the maps.
I don’t see her until she is standing right next to us.
“What is going on?” she asks with a cold edge to her voice.
I look up. “We are looking at Pirate Maps,” I smile.
She frowns at me, as though she’s trying to understand what I’m really up to. She pulls her mouth tight in disapproval until Arron looks up from the book and grins at her. “I want a sea dragon, Mommy,” he says.
A quick smile spreads over her face.
“Where will you keep it, baby? You will need to live on a boat.”
Arron looks at me with eyes wide and hopeful. “Can we get a boat?” he asks.
I chuckle, loud and genuine. “Sure. Let’s get a boat and a sea dragon!”
“Yay!” Solenne shouts, jumping up and falling off my lap onto the soft carpet.
“Um, I think story time is over,” Selene says, taking Solenne’s hand and pulling her to her feet.
“But mom,” Arron groans, reluctant to climb off my lap.
I lift him up, not wanting to cause more drama between Selene and me. I stand and swing Arron in the air. “Aren’t you guys hungry? I’m starving after all that reading,” I say.
“I’m hungry!”
“Me too!” Arron says.
“Well then, let’s go cook,” I say, looking at Selene with a smile on my face.
She frowns again, still searching my face as though she’s looking for something.
I decide to ignore her distrust. If anyone has the right to be distrustful, it’s me. Not her. I never lied to her about who I was. I never stole our children and hid them away.
I never pretended to be in love just to spy.
Arron is still in my arms as I walk towards the kitchen. When I get there, I set him down in the high chair at the counter. “Do you want to help me cook?” I ask him.
“Really? Am I allowed?” he asks, knotting his brows.
“Have you never cooked before?” I ask, confused.
“No way, we did not allow in the kitchen ever!” Solenne says dramatically.
I glance at Selene, who has followed us in and is standing in the far corner, out of the way but watching.
She says nothing.
“Well, you are allowed in this kitchen whenever you want, as long as you stay safe. So, who wants to learn how to cook?” I ask again.
“Me!” Both of them shout at the same time.
“Shall we make pasta?” I ask.
They nod.
“Alright. You two are going to learn how to make sauce and how to cut tomatoes,” I explain.
“Simon,” Selene says nervously. “The knife…”
“The knife is very, very sharp,” I say to the kids, hold ignoring her as she has ignored me. “So, we have to be very careful with it and treat it with respect, not like it is a toy, okay?”
“Ok,” Arron says sternly, taking it from me as though it’s made from glass.
I wrap my hand around the back of his hand. It’s a small, serrated knife, and it’s perfectly safe for him to use as long as he’s careful and I keep an eye on him. I show him how to keep his fingers out of the way while he slices slowly over the tomato.
Solenne is not interested in cutting things. She wants to stir things.
Cooking with the children is more fun than I anticipated.
Yes, there is flour everywhere, and tomato paste is on the sides of the cabinets. And there is uncooked pasta on the floor. But I’m having more fun than I have had in a long time.