CHAPTER 82
harley
Did I tell you I made a friend?” Aria asked loudly from the back seat. I glanced in the rearview, catching the giant smile on her face. “His name is Carson, and he’s quiet, but I said I can be loud enough for the both of us.”
I chuckled because I absolutely knew she could be. We sat in the drop-off line, and I sorely missed the ease of living down the block from her school. This was a new level of chaos that I didn’t want to get used to.
“You didn’t tell me,” I said.
“He’s so good at art,” she continued before I could say more. “Like so good at art, Daddy. He’s going to draw me a picture today, and he said that his uncle bought him a really cool drawing tablet, but Mrs. Welma won’t let him bring it to school. Or maybe his Mommy said that.”
“I can understand why she doesn’t want that. It’d be sad if his tablet were broken at school.”
“We’re the only ones in class who don’t have two parents. He’s got a Mommy, and I’ve got you, Daddy, and we thought maybe you two could meet.”
“Oh, really?” My chest constricted. While she was normally content with our situation, I knew sometimes not having a mother bothered her.
This was a first, though. Whatever I said next mattered.
“I’m happy you made a friend. I think that’s important, and I think it’s important that everyone has someone who understands them.
It sounds like Carson knows what it means to only have one parent. ”
“Yeah.”
“And I’m sure that I’ll meet his mom at some point because you two are friends,” I told her, “but that doesn’t mean that his mom and I will ever be together like that.”
“But you could,” Aria replied. The hope in her voice broke my heart a little.
“Daddy just isn’t ready for something like that, little love,” I said and hoped my honesty wasn’t too brutal for her. “It takes a lot to be in a relationship with someone, and I don’t know that I want that right now. You still have me, and you still have Holly.”
And I really needed that to make up for Vivienne wanting nothing to do with her own daughter.
“Yeah,” she whispered. She fell silent, her face pensive, and I let her have the moment she needed. When it was my turn at the front of the line, I hugged her extra tight. While it didn’t ease the guilt I had, I needed it probably as much as she did.
I tried to take the long way home by driving along the lake, but distracted driving was a bad idea.
And fuck, I was distracted. I pulled into one of the empty beach lots and parked in a spot closest to the lake.
Killing the engine, I didn’t get out of my SUV.
I just rolled down the windows for fresh air and sat there.
Aria’s voice replayed in my head. I couldn’t get past her excitement at the idea of me marrying some woman I had no idea existed until that conversation. To her, it was simple: she had a friend, that friend had a mom, and her dad was alone. Obviously, those pieces were meant to fit together.
A little part of me wished it were that simple.
I scrubbed a hand down my face and exhaled slowly.
I’d been alone for so long that the idea of not being alone felt foreign.
Since the day I kicked Vivienne out, every choice I made had been about Aria.
I wanted to create something stable and safe for her.
It was easier this way—just the two of us.
There were no unforeseen complications to compensate for.
The what-ifs were too many to count, and there were so many things to figure out about bringing someone new into a situation like this.
Admittedly, some nights, the quiet was too much, and I wanted someone there.
And that wasn’t to say I hadn’t gone out on a few dates over the years, but that was all they ever were.
I couldn’t make it any more than that. I couldn’t get past the idea of one day this person would meet my kid, and then what?
What happened to her? How did all of this work? What if they didn’t get along?
What if she got hurt?
What if I got hurt?
Like I said, I couldn’t get past the what-ifs. It became easier not to date at all than to deal with that.
My therapist had opinions on the issue—to no one’s surprise. She called it avoidance, and I couldn’t exactly blame her for that one because all of my dates had been with men. Maybe a part of me was avoiding facing decades’ worth of sexual identity confusion.
For most of my life, I’d convinced myself that attraction worked how everyone said it did—simple, immediate, and obvious.
You saw someone, you wanted them, and that was that.
Except, it had never worked that way for me.
Not with women, not with men. It had always been something quieter, something that showed up once trust and connection had taken root.
Once upon a time, only Maverick was on that list. Maverick-sexual, he’d joked once. It was just so stupid that I actually believed it for a while.
Eventually, August joined the list, and so did Lucas.
Suddenly, the stupid joke wasn’t an excuse, and it certainly didn’t explain anything either.
That was when the word demisexual first came up. The idea that attraction didn’t come as easily to me because it wasn’t supposed to—that it required emotional connection and trust first—felt both validating and upsetting because once that door opened, there was another truth that went with it.
All of the connections that had sparked some kind of feeling inside me had been with men.
Accepting it intellectually was one thing, but sitting with what it meant for the rest of my life was something else entirely. It poked at the decades of expectations and trauma I was struggling to unfold.
So yeah, avoiding was probably the right word for it.
It was easier to focus on Aria. It was easier to pour all my energy into being the father she deserved and the man I was trying to become.
It was easier to leave the rest as an abstract instead of stepping out into a world where I’d have to start figuring out what that part of myself actually looked like in practice.
Like how I’d explain that to my daughter.
She wanted a mother, and the most I could give her was a step-dad one day. I didn’t know how to tell her that.
My train of thought was interrupted by a dog barking, and I glanced up to see a brown dog barreling down the beach. Sand and spray kicked up as he went.
“Hey! Where the fuck do you think you’re going, you little shithead?” a man shouted—one I very quickly recognized. Looking the other direction, I saw Maverick walking after the dog. He dragged a massive piece of driftwood behind him. What the hell did he need that for?
The dog made a U-turn and hurried right back to Maverick, bouncing around with a kind of energy that rivaled Aria’s.
Maverick’s laughter was loud enough for me to hear from where I was parked.
I watched when I probably shouldn’t have, but I was so fascinated by him.
How free and happy he was. That smile of his was easy, and the tension was gone from his body.
And I realized as I watched him that I was happy for him. He deserved the kind of life where he was untroubled and carefree. Life had taken so much from him over the years. If anyone deserved a good life, it was him.
I sat there long after he disappeared somewhere down the beach, lost in my own thoughts.
Little memories from our past had ebbed their way to the surface.
For years, I’d packed those memories away like old photographs—something to be acknowledged every once in a while, and that was it.
I carried a lot of regrets about Maverick.
He deserved so much better than what my family and I had put him through.
So seeing him happy? That put to ease something inside me that I didn’t realize needed soothing.
A knock on the passenger door scared the shit out of me, making me jump in my seat. My head hit the roof, and I groaned. What the hell? Looking over, I saw Maverick leaning against my SUV with a smirk on his lips.
“If you’re going to stalk me, Harley, the least you can do is buy me breakfast,” he said.
“Uh…” I faltered, taken by surprise.
“Do you remember where The Boathouse is?”
“I do.”
‘Good. Duke and I will meet you there,” Maverick told me as he walked away. There was no room to argue with him, even if I wanted to. I watched him leave as I tried to justify why this wasn’t a bad idea.