Chapter 21 #2
I didn’t miss sex. I’d turned that part of myself off. Without difficulty.
Then came Hannah.
My iron-clad control shredded into tatters the moment she walked into my house.
But I managed to hold it together. Until the fucking night everything changed.
The night I let my beast out of the cage and changed everything between us.
I told her some of the things I wanted to do to her.
Not even half the things. If I had told her all the things I wanted to do to her, I’d scare her away. I scared myself.
I wanted to claim her. Own her. Fill her up with my cum until she couldn’t walk without it dripping down her thighs.
I wanted her on her knees, choking on my cock.
I wanted my face between her legs, devouring her pussy until she begged me to stop.
No, I didn’t say all the things, but I did say the things that had driven me crazy.
And her eyes had lit up, face flushed, pert nipples pushing through the flimsy fabric of her shirt.
She was sin embodied. Nirvana encased in a tight little package.
Clara was the only thing holding me back. Barely. I’d told myself the best way was to go back to my indifferent cruelty. But I couldn’t do that. Not to Hannah. Not anymore. It was a crime against nature. My body was unwilling to cause anything but looks of want or happiness on her face.
I only wished I could gaze upon it after I’d fucked her and satisfied her so thoroughly she could barely speak.
“Whoa, what did that grill ever do to you?” Elliot asked from behind me.
I didn’t turn to look at my fucking perpetually cheerful brother.
It seemed to come so easy to him. Happiness. The concept had always been so abstract to me. Until I held seven pounds, eleven ounces of pure happiness in my arms.
Not that being a parent was as simple as being happy. It was exhausting, complex, a total mindfuck. That was before the diagnosis.
I should’ve been happy. With Clara close to being in remission, a full life ahead of her. I was ablaze with it whenever I laid eyes on her, but it was like holding on to smoke. Happiness was not my natural state.
It was my brother’s.
Now that Elliot was married to Calliope Derrick, he was insufferable.
Though I caught a glimpse of who he might’ve been those three days in the hospital after she almost died, and as long as I lived, I would never truly resent my brother’s cheerful nature.
“You probably need this.” Elliot slid a glass on the counter beside me, the ice clattering.
I finished scraping the grill, grasping the glass and draining it in one sip. The whisky burned going down, doing nothing to numb the pressure in my balls. If anything, it loosened my resolve to keep my hands off Hannah.
Elliot raised his brows, holding a bottle of beer. “You want another?”
I shook my head.
“Fuck, okay.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I wish I could get you drunk for this conversation.”
I stared at him, my usually jovial brother seeming serious. Worried.
My stomach contracted, a familiar dread curling at the base of my spine.
“Is Calliope, okay?” I demanded. “Dad?”
“Everyone we love is fine.” He took a drink. “One person you used to love is not.” Elliot spoke slowly, carefully, not meeting my eyes.
It didn’t take me long to figure out who he was talking about, since the list of people I used to love had one name on it.
“Naomi?”
Elliot nodded, raising his head.
“She’s dead?” I didn’t know why this was my first guess, but it seemed most logical, given the grave look on Elliot’s face.
Another nod.
I searched for feelings at this news. Sadness…I was obviously a sick son of a bitch because I didn’t feel any. Had I loved Naomi? Once. But I’d loved the version of her she’d created to get her hooks into me. Manipulate me.
All my love for her died when our daughter was born, and Naomi showed her nothing but cold indifference.
No, not even then. Because I’d understood postpartum depression.
Read that new mothers might take longer than expected to bond with their baby.
Though I hadn’t been able to relate to that because the second I laid eyes on Clara, I was besotted. My whole soul belonged to her.
But I hadn’t had a huge hormone drop, didn’t go through over nine months of hell—Naomi had hated every second of her pregnancy.
I didn’t truly know what she went through, so I gave her space.
Naomi hadn’t wanted to breastfeed, so I fed Clara every night.
That didn’t bother me because it meant my wife could get sleep, recover, and I’d hold Clara in my arms, listening to the faint suckling sounds of her eating.
I’d get to kiss her head, feel her fall asleep in my arms.
Yeah, I was tired, but I’ve always been able to operate on little sleep. I’d had insomnia for as long as I could remember, essentially training my whole life for the newborn trenches.
Naomi hadn’t. She needed her sleep. Was a bear without it. We’d joked about it when we were first married.
So I waited. For her to fall in love with our daughter. But she never did. And she was never diagnosed with postpartum depression. She simply didn’t like her daughter. Or more accurately, she didn’t like the attention her daughter stole from her.
She’d said that. Out loud.
And all my love for her had died. My resentment was a physical thing as I mourned a life we could’ve had, a partner who loved my daughter as I did. Nights spent talking about the things Clara did and about her future, looking at photos.
I didn’t get any of that with Naomi, but I got Clara. That’s all I cared about.
And now, I had Hannah. Who routinely sent me photos of Clara along with texts about cute things she’d done in her day. Hannah, who cuddled on the sofa watching movies, braided her hair. Who threw her birthday parties, made her believe in magic.
Not because she was Clara’s nanny. Because she loved her. It was plain to see. Hannah didn’t hide it or mask it because she couldn’t. Because that was Hannah.
What would life be like if Hannah were swollen with our child? Glowing, full? With our baby in her arms?
I wouldn’t wish away the past because it gave me Clara. But I had some fucking dangerous—downright destructive—wishes for the future.
I ground my teeth together, staring at my brother who was watching me carefully. He was worried—that much was clear. Because he was Elliot, and he loved differently than me. Felt differently. Had more empathy, more hope.
If our positions were switched, if Elliot’s narcissistic ex-wife had died, he’d be able to gather up some pain, some tears. I could not.
“How did it happen?” I didn’t care much about the answer, but it felt like the right question to ask.
Elliot blew out a heavy breath. “This is the part I was worried about telling you.”
My brother’s obvious nerves confused me. I wasn’t sure why or how he knew about Naomi dying before me.
“I considered lying. Overdose, car accident.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Calliope suggested not telling you at all.”
“Calliope?” I repeated.
He nodded. Curiosity trickled up my spine, wondering what in the fuck his wife had to do with this. Calliope was the one who found Naomi and dragged her to Jupiter with a black eye. Calliope was the one who got Naomi to consent to the bone marrow transplant that saved Clara’s life.
I hadn’t known all of this at the time. My brain had been swimming in dread, making preparations for death.
Clara’s. For my own. I didn’t have reason to believe, to hope.
And I didn’t have the energy to question why Naomi would come out of the woodwork and decide to care about her daughter without asking for anything in return.
I had been too busy waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the transplant not to work, for Clara to be taken from me.
Then came Hannah. Bringing light and warmth into my life when there was a chance to hope for Clara being healthy, living a long life. There was a chance for me to live again.
So no, I hadn’t put much thought into where Naomi had gone.
“She wanted to tell you herself,” Elliot explained. “Well, she didn’t want to tell you at all. She’s very protective of you, you know.”
“She doesn’t have to worry about protecting me,” I grunted. “She needs to worry about herself.”
I would never get the image of Calliope’s lifeless body out of my brain or seeing my brother at her bedside, a shell of himself. I saw our family being ripped apart again, and it terrified me.
Elliot’s features sagged as if his thoughts mirrored my own. “That’s my job, though. Don’t tell her that.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, I value my balls, so I’m not going to tell Calliope Derrick she needs anyone, especially not her husband, to protect her.”
Elliot took a sip of his drink. “Well, in her quest to keep everyone safe, she didn’t tell anyone—me and her family included—about the trouble she was in last year.” Elliot’s eyes still filled with dark shadows at almost losing his wife.
“It’s a long story, and I know you’re anxious to get home, so I’ll condense it and say a dangerous man was fucking with Calliope. He was the one who found Naomi in the first place.”
“He was the one who gave her the black eye.” I mindlessly wiped the counter.
Elliot bobbed his head in confirmation. “And he was the one who killed her. In an effort to threaten Calliope.” The words were tight, coiled.
I was digesting this. It was all a lot for me. I was a simple fucking man, wanted to live a quiet life with my daughter. I was ignorant of the kind of world Calliope must’ve lived in. And Naomi had gotten tangled in that world. Killed.
Elliot had known this for a while. And it had been haunting him. I knew my brother. The believer in all things good, the man with a strong moral compass. It had probably been eating him alive.
“Okay,” I said after a long silence.
He stared at me. They remained silent, waiting. “Okay?” he eventually asked. “That’s all you’ve got to say?”
“I mourned the person I thought Naomi was a long time ago,” I told Elliot. “And I mourned the kind of mother Clara would never get.”
“You don’t think that she could’ve changed?” Elliot had probably been running that over in his head, too. Hope that Naomi might’ve reformed, come to her senses, come back to Clara.
“No,” I stated with certainty. “She never would’ve changed.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “Let go of that weight you’ve been carrying. I know now. I appreciate you telling me. I’ve got to get home.”
Elliot was gaping at me. He’d obviously been nervous to tell me. I was unpredictable at the best of times. Usually a grumpy bastard. Had been my whole life. Elliot might’ve been expecting a fight.
My days of fighting over Naomi were long gone.
Her death was a shock, to be sure. The pain I felt, dull as the blade of a butter knife, was only from knowing I’d have to tell Clara one day.
“That’s it? You’re going home?” Elliot was still wide-eyed.
I thought of what was waiting for me there. Who was waiting for me there. “I’m going home.”