Sexting My Ex’s Dad (Dirty Sexting #3)

Prologue Athena

I ran from the best man I ever touched, and the worst part is that I’d do it again. That probably says something terrible about me, but survival has never been a graceful skill.

“Mommy, it’s melting!”

I look up from my sketchbook and immediately understand the crisis.

Ivy’s strawberry ice cream has entered its collapse phase, the scoop leaning sideways while gravity does what gravity does best. Pink rivulets slide down the cone and onto her fingers, which are already sticky enough to qualify as biological glue.

“Hold still,” I say, grabbing a napkin from my tote next to me on the park bench. “Emergency intervention.”

She doesn’t hold still.

She twists, giggles, and takes a huge bite that smears ice cream across her cheek.

I sigh, wipe the pink streak off her face, and attempt to salvage the situation before the cone becomes a full structural failure.

“You’re supposed to eat it,” I tell her, my tone slightly dry.

“I am eating it.”

I raise a brow at her. “You’re wearing it.”

She meets me gaze for gaze, the gray of her irises catching flecks of the sun. “That’s also eating it.”

Her logic is aggressive and difficult to refute.

I laugh despite myself and toss the ruined napkin into the small paper bag beside me. The bench is warm under my legs, the late summer sun filtering through the maple trees that line the little park near our apartment.

Portland in the summer has this lazy kind of charm. The briny air somehow carries the mineral undertone of sunscreen. Gulls cry somewhere overhead, and a handful of families spread blankets across the grass while their kids terrorize the playground.

Ivy swings her legs against the wooden bench and leans closer to my sketchbook. “What are you drawing?”

“A rabbit,” I say.

It’s not a particularly impressive rabbit yet. Right now it’s a rough oval with ears that are slightly too big and feet that look suspiciously like potatoes.

“Make him happy,” she instructs, scrunching her face into a tight little frown.

“I always make them happy.”

“Sometimes you make them worried first!”

Can’t argue with that logic, but I try anyway. “That’s called storytelling.”

I add a curved smile to the rabbit’s face and shade one ear while Ivy studies the page like a tiny art critic.

Drawing has always been the one habit I never managed to break.

It followed me through college lectures, through the exhausting blur of grad school, through long overnight shifts at the hospital when the pediatric ward finally went quiet and the hallways stretched out empty.

Back then it was a coping mechanism. Now it’s also a side career.

Two of my small children’s books are floating around the regional publishing world, and if the current editor emails me back sometime I might even have a third.

“Mommy?”

“Hmm?”

Ivy tilts her head while examining the rabbit. “He needs a daddy.”

My pencil pauses for half a second before I add a second rabbit beside the first. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” she says confidently, leaning closer so her curls brush my arm and her sticky fingers hover dangerously near my sketchbook. “Because the daddy rabbit rescues everybody, and he’s the strongest one, and he’s the only one big enough to fight the dragon.”

I glance down at the page and start shading the rabbit’s ear a little darker. “That’s a lot of responsibility for one rabbit. He’s going to need a very good union.”

“He’s brave,” she continues, swinging her legs against the bench and watching the pencil move. “Like really brave, like he runs straight into the dragon cave even when everybody else is scared.”

“Good quality,” I say, sketching a slightly ridiculous chest puff onto the rabbit.

“And nice,” she adds immediately, leaning her shoulder against mine as if this is obviously the next requirement. “He has to be nice because the baby rabbits won’t listen to him if he’s mean.”

“Even better.” I add a tiny sword that looks more like a carrot.

“And he always comes home,” she finishes, saying it casually while licking a streak of strawberry from the side of her cone.

For a second my pencil slows against the paper, and I keep my eyes on the drawing because that feels easier than looking at her. Kids have a way of saying things without realizing they’re saying something important, and this one hits closer than I’d like.

I clear my throat and add a cape to the rabbit. “Superhero rabbit,” I say, angling the page toward her. “He saves everyone, attends all birthday parties, and probably pays his taxes early.”

Ivy studies the picture with deep seriousness, her brows pulling together in concentration while she takes another messy bite of ice cream. “He looks strong,” she decides after a moment.

“He definitely lifts,” I reply. “Very committed to leg day.”

That earns me a giggle, the bright kind that turns her whole face into a grin. She leans into my side while watching the pencil move again, her small shoulder pressing comfortably against my arm.

I add a few finishing touches to the baby rabbit. “That’s a very cute baby,” she announces immediately. “And the dragon tries to take him, but the daddy rabbit comes and saves him.”

“That dragon is making very poor life choices.” I add a pair of dramatically angry eyebrows to the dragon in the corner of the page.

“He’s misunderstood,” she corrects, pointing decisively at the drawing. “Dragons are sometimes lonely.”

I blink at her. “Are they?”

“Yes,” she says firmly. “But the daddy rabbit still has to fight him because the baby rabbit is important.”

I shade the edge of the page while she keeps narrating the story, and somewhere in the middle of her explanation I feel the familiar tug in my chest that shows up every time she talks about fathers like they’re a normal part of the world.

“Mommy,” she says suddenly, nudging my elbow.

“Hmm?”

“You’d be a good rabbit mommy.”

I glance down at her and smile before I can stop myself. “That’s good,” I say, flipping the pencil between my fingers. “Because I hear rabbit children love to be around their mommies.”

“They do,” she agrees solemnly.

Then she finishes the last bite of her ice cream and beams up at me, strawberry smeared across her cheek and sunlight caught in the dark curls that refuse to behave no matter how many times I brush them.

Storm-gray eyes blink slowly at me.

Those eyes get me every time.

Sometimes I can pretend I don’t notice the resemblance, sometimes it slips past me in the middle of a busy morning or a bedtime story, but other days it shows up in small quiet moments like this and refuses to leave.

I lower my gaze back to the page and keep drawing.

The pencil moves automatically now, filling in little details while Ivy leans comfortably against my arm and narrates an increasingly complicated adventure involving the rabbit knight, the dragon who turns out to be misunderstood, and an entire kingdom of animals who apparently rely on this one extremely hardworking father rabbit.

She talks and I listen, and the park breathes quietly around us while the breeze moves through the trees and children shout somewhere near the swings.

While she explains how the daddy rabbit saves everybody in the end, a quieter thought sits in the back of my mind.

Her story has a father who always comes home.

I glance sideways at her. Storm-gray eyes, dark curls that never cooperate with a hairbrush, and a grin that appears suddenly and takes over her entire face.

Sometimes the resemblance sneaks up on me and sometimes it punches me directly in the lungs.

Today it’s more of a quiet ache.

Ivy leans against my shoulder and watches the page fill with quick lines and silly expressions. “What are you going to do at the hospital tomorrow?”

“Probably the same things I always do.”

“Which are?”

“Coloring,” I say. “Talking to kids. Explaining scary machines in ways that make them less scary.”

“Like when you told me the MRI was a donut camera.”

“Exactly like that.”

My job description technically says Pediatric Child Life Specialist, which sounds extremely official and slightly confusing to most people.

In reality it means I spend my days helping frightened children cope with hospitals, needles, surgery, and the strange parade of adults in scrubs who keep asking them to hold still.

Sometimes we draw.

Sometimes we build blanket forts.

Sometimes we just sit quietly while they cry.

It’s not glamorous, but it’s meaningful, and after Boston imploded around me I learned to appreciate work that helps people breathe a little easier.

“Mommy?”

I look up again.

Ivy’s staring across the park toward the swing set, where a man’s pushing his son while the kid laughs so loudly that half the playground turns to look. She watches them thoughtfully for a moment before she turns back to me. “Do you think my daddy would push me on the swings?”

Children notice patterns long before adults admit they exist. I close my sketchbook slowly and set the pencil across the page. “I think,” I say carefully, “your daddy would probably love pushing you on the swings.”

“Really?” The joy in her tone makes my heart lurch.

“Really.”

She considers this. “Would he like ice cream?”

“I imagine so.”

“Good,” she says decisively. “Because strawberry is the best one.”

I smile and wipe a smear of pink from her wrist.

“I have no doubt you’d convince him.”

Satisfied, Ivy hops off the bench and runs toward the grassy field where a chaotic group of kids are attempting to organize a game of tag. Her yellow skirt flashes through the sunlight as she darts between them. I watch her for a while.

Six years.

Six years of building a life from scratch in a city where nobody knew my history, nobody spoke my name in hospital hallways, and nobody made my nervous system react the way Ivy’s father did.

I’ve had dates since then, but they’ve mostly been well-meaning experiments in forgetting someone who proved extremely difficult to replace.

Running was the only option I had back then. Some days I still believe that.

Other days I wonder what would have happened if I’d stayed.

I look up just in time to see Ivy sprint across the grass like a small chaotic missile, her arms pumping and her sneakers thudding against the dirt path as she races toward the playground.

“I’m watching!” I call.

She leaps onto the lowest swing with the grace of someone who has never once worried about gravity or dental insurance, then twists her body sideways and begins pumping her legs.

The swing climbs higher and higher.

“Look!” she yells.

“I see!”

“You’re not looking!”

“I am absolutely looking!”

A dad nearby glances over with an amused smile while his toddler investigates a sandbox like it holds state secrets.

Ivy kicks harder, the chains creaking as the swing arcs forward and back, and the wind pushes her curls away from her face while she laughs like she just invented joy.

It’s loud, reckless and perfect, and for a while, it soothes my heart. I watch her until she tires of the swing and comes to join me.

The park begins to empty slowly while the sky softens into that pale golden color that means dinner time is approaching, and eventually Ivy stretches her arms above her head and announces that she’s tired in the dramatic tone of someone who has been awake since approximately the invention of daylight.

“Alright,” I say. “Let’s head home.”

Our apartment is only a few blocks away, so we walk.

Ivy skips ahead on the sidewalk, and I carry the blanket and the bag while pretending not to notice that she keeps hopping over the cracks like they are lava.

By the time we reach our building, the sky has shifted from gold to dusky blue. Inside, the evening routine unfolds like it always does.

Shoes come off.

Hands get washed.

Ivy insists on helping me feed the neighbor’s extremely judgmental cat who lives in the hallway and believes we are all beneath him. Dinner for her is leftover pasta in a meat sauce and a handful of baby carrots that Ivy eats reluctantly while explaining that carrots are suspicious but acceptable.

Afterward we end up on her bed with one of her favorite books, and she curls into my side while I read the story of a bear who is very bad at hibernating. Her eyelids start drooping halfway through. “Mommy?”

“Hmm?”

“You forgot the voices.”

I sigh and perform a dramatically terrible bear voice that makes her giggle. The giggle fades quickly into a yawn. By the time I carry her to bed, she’s half asleep with her cheek pressed against my shoulder.

I tuck the blanket around her small frame and smooth her hair away from her face.

Storm-gray eyes blink open for a second.

“Love you,” she murmurs.

“Love you more.”

“Impossible.”

“Scientifically proven.”

She smiles and drifts off. I linger in the doorway for a moment after the light clicks off, listening to the soft rhythm of her breathing while the apartment settles into quiet. I close her door gently and head to the kitchen.

Dinner for adults happens late in this house, mostly because I like having one small pocket of the day that belongs only to me.

Tonight’s luxury is pizza from the place down the street that pretends to be artisanal but absolutely knows it’s selling comfort food. I grab a slice and settle onto the couch with the box balanced on my knees. The first bite is excellent.

The second bite is even better.

I’m halfway through the third when someone knocks on the door. Something in my stomach twists immediately. Which is ridiculous, people knock on doors all the time. Neighbors forget their keys, delivery drivers get confused. These are all normal things.

Still, the feeling lingers. Something about the rhythm of the knock feels odd in a very familiar way. I set the pizza down slowly. The apartment is quiet except for the distant rush of traffic from the street outside.

I wipe my hands on a napkin and walk to the door. The strange tightness in my stomach grows with each step. It makes no sense, because nobody here knows me well enough to make me nervous.

Nobody here knows anything about the life I left behind.

I open the door, and Nathan Clarke stands on the other side.

For one suspended second neither of us moves. Then his gaze shifts past me toward the hallway behind my shoulder, toward the small girl who just wandered sleepily out of her bedroom rubbing her eyes.

The recognition is instant. Storm-gray eyes lock onto storm-gray eyes.

Nathan’s entire body goes rigid. Fury flashes across his face so quickly that it steals the air from the room. “Athena,” he murmurs in that deep, silky, dark voice of his. Even now, the way he says my name makes me weak in the knees. “We need to talk.”

His gaze snaps back to mine. “Now.”