Chapter 4 Caleb
CALEB
I’d punch Keller clean across the face if he wasn’t my boss.
This is a bad idea. And the look we just shared is gonna get me in trouble if Piper continues to catch my eyes the same deadly way she used to all of those years ago.
I look down at our two children, each with a different parent, and haunt myself with past memories.
I always saw Piper as a mother one day.
I only chose to remain in a relationship with Ellie’s mother because she was pregnant, and we both wanted children. Our relationship was in the trash, but we worked hard to rekindle it throughout the pregnancy for the sake of the unborn child we were about to share.
Or so I thought.
She ran away as soon as she gave birth, taking my daughter with her and ripping out my heart as she did so.
Finally alone in my room, I take out my phone and look forward to blanking out for the rest of the afternoon until it’s time to prepare dinner.
Me: Sorry, it’s been a busy shift. I haven’t been ignoring you. Promise.
This anonymous sexter is a mystery in all aspects. I don’t have much time to date with Ellie, but with Grace as a next-door neighbor who’s constantly asking when she can babysit Ellie—probably to get closer to me—I do now have opportunity
Only, this woman keeps refusing to meet.
Anonymous: Haha. No worries. Things have been chaotic for me too.
I don’t even know what she looks like, her age—nothing. But I can’t complain when I voluntarily signed myself up for anonymous online dating.
My cock twitches at her quick response.
God, I can’t remember the last time I went to bed with a woman. There have been several occasions over the past nine years, all in the city, but I find New York women to be much the same—chasing physical pleasure, never emotion.
I prop myself up against the headboard and stare at the message.
I’ve fought hard over the years to try and find something meaningful, searching high and low for a Piper Hart replacement who could fill the void. It took me a while to come to terms with reality. Piper Hart is simply one in a million, and it still pains me to have to let her go.
But my daughter comes first.
“Is this Mr. Rourke?”
I can still hear the underlying sadness in the police officer’s voice from the call I answered nine years ago—the one that changed everything.
“You are Ellie Harper-Rourke’s father, correct? I’m unfortunately ringing today to let you know about the sudden passing of her mother Holly Harper. She was in a car collision yesterday and didn’t make it. As it stands, you are her only parent, and have an important decision to make.”
Step up as dad. Or refuse, and send Ellie off for adoption.
My heart breaking for my child, and her mother…it was an easy decision.
To save my daughter from a system I know all too well myself.
A summer breeze blows in through the window and knocks me out of my trance. Downstairs, I hear my daughter giggling the carefree way a nine-year-old should.
It restores warmth to my chest.
Long Island was too busy for Ellie. She was only six months old when Holly passed.
We got along okay there for a few years, but bad omens clung to that place.
I was determined to get her out of Long Island.
We needed a fresh start. Ellie needed a new school.
The teachers never gave much of a shit about her, and a precious girl like Ellie deserves teachers who are interested in more than their wages at the end of the month.
New York is like that.
I knew Maple Crossing would be good for her.
And I wasn’t wrong.
Ellie has friends already, and her new teachers care just as much about her education as I do. Things were shaping up…
Until Hart sucked me back into her world.
I don’t know how long I’ll be able to fake that I’m okay with this. Especially now that she’s living under my roof with her son.
A son whose existence means she’s had sex with another man…
Anonymous: Since we’ve both had stressful days, how about a photo each? You first.
This is new. The woman never requests photos.
She tells me her pussy is wet, but I need solid proof.
Me: Why am I going first?
Anonymous: Because I have a feeling that you’re already hard. Remember that time you told me you were “packing” last week? Yeah…I’m gonna need to see evidence.
I was drunk with Marco and some other off-duty firemen at the time when I said a little more than I should have.
We’d only been sexting for a day at that point, but Marco insisted I drop that bomb to pick up the pace. If there’s one person on this earth more concerned about my sex drive than I am, it’s the officer I’m partnered with.
The woman has an intriguing air of confidence about her. I work up an erection even though I don’t even know her name, her face, or what she does for work.
But dry times call for desperate measures.
I navigate over to the camera app on my phone and begin to unzip…
There’s a knock at my door. Three soft beats. Each equally spaced.
“Ellie.” I zip up my pants in a hurry, discard the phone and leap off the bed. “What is it?”
She opens the door with a confused look written across her face. “How do you know Piper?”
“She’s…a friend I knew a long time ago when I first visited here.”
Ellie lingers at the door like she normally does when she’s not done talking. “She’s pretty.”
“Yes,” I say in an attempt to shut down this conversation as quickly as possible, without realizing what I just said. “Yeah,” I repeat, clearing my throat. “She is pretty—”
She’s nine, I remind myself. Not nineteen.
“Be respectful, okay?” I warn her. “Piper won’t want her hair braided twice a day like your dolls. She’s an adult, not a friend.”
Ellie trots off, leaving the door wide open.
As I close it, I catch sight of her. Piper. Taken aback as our eyes accidently meet. And linger.
Her brunette hair is undone, and the natural curls cascade down her shoulders the same way they always used to. The V-neck tee she’s wearing slouches over one shoulder, and my eyes dart over to the naked patch of skin.
She sheepishly readjusts the shirt and continues downstairs.
Lord, help me.
We haven’t really spoken since I invited her to stay. She and Sonny were both exhausted, and so was I from having to keep it in my pants for so long.
I huff. Guess I’ll have to keep it in a while longer and press pause on the sexting until tonight.
I head downstairs and enter the kitchen.
Piper plucks a glass from the cupboard and fills it up with water. Cowering into the corner like I’ve scared her away, she raises the glass and asks, “I hope this is okay?”
“Sure,” I say. “Make yourself at home.”
Tension lingers between those words as we both dissect the deeper meaning.
“So…” She clears her throat, setting down the glass of water she has barely sipped from. “You have a daughter. Around Sonny’s age.”
Is that her indirect way of enquiring about Ellie’s age?
“Yes,” I reply. “It sounds like the two have already been acquainted.”
“Hm.” Her eyes trail up to the Victorian ceiling that I still haven’t gotten around to painting. “They’re not the only ones who have been previously acquainted.”
“Hart.”
She folds her arms over her chest and asks, “You said you’re single, so where’s her mother?”
I could ask her the same about Sonny’s father.
“She passed away in a car accident,” is all I choose to say. Explaining the rest would be too complicated.
“Oh.” She sighs. “I’m sorry.”
I dismiss her apology. “Don’t be. It was a long time ago and—” I cut myself off before I slip into a tangent about mine and Holly’s relationship. Or lack thereof. “It was a while ago.”
“How long ago?”
“Too long ago for Ellie to remember her mother, fortunately.”
“How old is Ellie?”
I tense up and get this over with. “Nine and a half.”
“Nine…” Piper trails off, giving herself a minute to catch up. “Hold your horses. You’re telling me you had an infant daughter when we met. When you came to town for six months and—?”
“Shh. Keep your voice down. And yes.”
Piper tosses a frustrated hand through her hair to make sense of a situation that is already fucked. I stare at her with the same yearning in my heart from all of those years ago, except this time it tears apart the organ even more than before.
“You had a…?” She swallows thickly and tilts her head back up to the ceiling to gather thoughts that will probably be all over the place for quite some time.
I can guess the rest of that question. “No, Holly’s mother and I were separated at the time.”
Piper’s eyes are full of both tears and amusement. “And you just…forgot to tell me about your daughter?”
Speechless, I keep my lips firmly pressed together and look her dead in the eye for an explanation I could give her, but won’t. It’s better this way. Less complicated. Opening up emotionally to Piper is the worst thing I could do.
I can almost imagine her face as I tell her the real reason I left—softened. “I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions,” she would say, after the initial blowup for me not telling her the truth sooner.
It’s better for both of us if she hates me. It creates distance, which is what the pair of us need right now seeing as we’re living under one roof.
Luckily, the house is big enough for us to keep our distance, and my work will further contribute to that distance since we have very different schedules.
But as I watch her now, leaning over my countertop to deal with the bomb I’ve just dropped, I feel that unrequited yearning again as she plays out the fantasy I always had in my head.
Soft, brunette curls fall lazy over her shoulders as she walks around the kitchen—our kitchen—in domestic clothes, worn only in front of me. These are the kind of clothes you only show to the people you live with.
And living in the same house creates intimacy…
I stare once again at the naked skin of her shoulder—enticing in a nonsexual way. My arms want to snake around her waist, and my nose craves that refreshing, floral scent unique only to her.
I’ve been without it for far too long.