Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
That night, Colin was cleaning up the kitchen while Maren got Juni ready for bed. He kept going back over the day. Not the memories so much as the feelings.
Juni climbing into his lap that afternoon had felt like the most natural thing in the world. Her arms around his neck, her face pressed against his shoulder.
That should have been my life for the last four years.
He gripped the edge of the counter.
If Lindsey hadn’t—
Stop.
Colin forced his hands to unclench. He picked up the dish towel and wiped down the counter that was already clean.
This was why he didn’t do assignments with kids.
All they did was pick at the scarred-over wounds his heart carried until it fell apart all over again.
He’d avoided his sister and her family for three years because seeing her son—his nephew—felt like staring at the future that had been ripped away from him.
Down the hall, he could hear Maren running Juni’s bath. Juni’s voice, bright and chattering, asking if Pretzel knew how to swim. Maren’s laugh, warm and patient, saying she wasn’t sure but they could ask Uncle Kyle tomorrow.
The anger sat in Colin’s chest like a stone. Not Maren and Juni, who’d been lied to as much as he had been. No, he was angry at what had been stolen from him.
And now here he was, obeying tea party rules from a preschooler and pretending his heart wasn’t breaking every time she called him one of her grown-ups.
Colin folded the dish towel with deliberate precision as he practiced four-square breathing, and set it on the counter.
Colin and Mac had flipped a coin for the spare bedroom and Mac won.
He’d offered to take the couch anyway since Colin had been on it the night before, but Colin refused.
So Mac was in his room. The safehouse was secure.
Maren had Juni handled. Colin closed his eyes and braced himself against the counter.
I should do another perimeter check. Clear my head. Get my professional distance back before—
He felt a tug on his sleeve.
“Colin?”
Juni stood beside him in her pajamas, hair damp from the bath.
“Will you tuck me in, too?”
Colin looked at her watching him with the absolute certainty that he’d say yes. He tucked the anger away where she’d never see it and let her pick away at his scars.
“Yeah, Junebug. I can do that.”
Juni grabbed Colin’s hand and pulled him across the kitchen. “Come on. You have to read me a story first.”
“Of course I do,” Colin muttered, but he followed her down the hall.
“Juni?” Maren stepped out of Juni’s room and spotted them. She looked at Colin. “Oh. I thought she was just getting a glass of water—”
“Colin said he’d tuck me in, too. And read me a story.”
Maren’s eyebrow rose. “Did he?”
“I—”
“He did, didn’t you?” There she was, looking up at him again, this time there was just the hint of please go along with this in her eyes.
They’d reached her room. Colin shrugged at Maren. “She’s the boss.”
Juni’s room was small and neat. The bed was made, with the covers already turned down—Maren’s work, he’d guess.
Mr. Kibble was propped against the pillow on one side and the Blue Fairy tucked in on the other.
Snoopy sat at the foot like a sentry. Juni climbed under the covers and rearranged her stuffed animals with the same serious focus she’d used pouring invisible tea.
“The Blue Fairy Book,” she announced, pointing at the nightstand.
Colin looked at Maren—silently asking for permission or a reprieve, he wasn’t sure which. She merely raised an eyebrow in return as the corner of her mouth quirked up.
“Like you said, she’s the boss,” Maren told him. She lay down on the bed beside Juni opposite from Colin.
“A Blue Fairy’s Treasury of Tales it is.” Colin picked it up and studied the old binding and worn edges. The pages were soft from years of handling. The book had obviously been loved hard by more than one kid.
He sat on the edge of the bed, opened it, and started flipping through, already familiar with it.
His sister had loved this book growing up.
She had carried it everywhere when she was Juni’s age, and insisted their mom read the same three stories every night until Colin could recite them from memory.
He’d teased her about it back then, called her a baby for needing the same stories over and over.
He’d been nine and an idiot.
The pages blurred slightly. Colin blinked and kept flipping.
At the back on the endpapers, was a pencil sketch.
He stopped and studied it. A hammock stretched between two trees.
Lilac bushes framed one side, detailed enough he could almost smell them.
Two little girls were curled up together in the hammock, one reading aloud while the other listened.
Their faces weren’t detailed—just suggestions, really—but the closeness was obvious.
“Did you draw this?” Colin asked, looking up at Maren.
Maren craned her neck over Juni. “No. Mira did. I totally forgot about it.” She sounded surprised. “We’ve just been reading the book straight through. I didn’t even think to look through the book.”
Juni was riveted. “Mom drew this?” She reached out carefully, like she was being allowed to touch the Mona Lisa. Her fingers traced the lines reverently.
Colin watched Maren’s face go tight, just for a second. Then she smoothed it away.
“Is this a picture of fairyland?” Juni asked, still tracing.
Maren chuckled then smiled, soft and a little sad. “Fairyland? Nope, that’s Iowa.”
“Where’s Iowa?”
“Far from here. That’s where your mom and I grew up.
We had a hammock just like that one in the backyard, strung up between two big oak trees.
And the lilac bushes—” Maren touched the sketch lightly.
“Those were real, too. They smelled like heaven in the spring. We’d lie in that hammock for hours reading this exact book.
Every summer until we all moved to San Diego when your Uncle Reid went into the service. I was barely ten years old.”
Juni studied the drawing. “What happened to the hammock?”
Maren tilted her head, thinking. “I don’t know, now that I think about it. Maybe it got lost in the move. Or left behind. We never had it in San Diego.” She looked at Colin, then back at Juni. “But we never forgot it, either.”
Two little girls in a hammock. One of them gone, the other raising her sister’s daughter and trying not to break every time that daughter asked about her mother, never realizing how much she’d come to mean to her. Mira was Mom, but when Juni needed her—really needed her—Maren was Mama.
It hurt Colin just to think about it.
“Can you read a story now?” Juni asked, settling back against her pillows.
Colin cleared his throat. “Which one?”
“The next one.” Juni pointed at the bookmark just peeking out of the top of the book. He flipped the book open to the story of Rapunzel.
Colin sat on the edge of the bed and started reading.
He’d forgotten how the story went beyond a princess trapped in a tower and the bit about the long hair and the prince who climbed it.
As he read, he learned that Rapunzel was not a princess, but a common girl who’d been sold before she was even born so that her mother could fulfill a fucking craving.
She was taken away from her parents, her father pleading with the witch to let them keep her.
“She was promised to me, said the witch,” Colin read, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “And so you shall never see her again.”
Colin buried his emotions until he was carried along by the rhythm of the story, the way the words built toward the tower and the long golden braid and the witch hiding Rapunzel from the world.
And the prince who wouldn’t give up until he found her and saved her at last.
Juni’s eyes got heavier with each page. By the time Rapunzel’s tears healed the blinded prince, Juni was asleep.
Colin closed the book carefully. He leaned over and kissed Juni’s forehead lightly.
He looked across the bed at Maren in time to see a tear slide down her cheek. She wiped it away quickly and gave him a small smile.
He stood up slowly and rounded the bed to her. Colin took Maren’s hand in his, gently pulled her up, and led her out of the room.
“She’s good,” he whispered. “She’s safe.”
Maren nodded and wiped her eye with the heel of her hand before another tear could fall. “Are you all right?” she asked him. There was a moment there, while you were reading—”
“I’m fine,” he said too quickly. No way was he going to burden Maren with his own pain. It would pass. It always did. Mostly.
Maren sighed. “Thank you,” she whispered. “For—” She gestured back toward Juni. “For all of it.”
“No need to thank me. It’s my job.”
There. Distance. That’s what they needed.
The look on Maren’s face hurt more than reading the story and Colin immediately wished he could take it back, pull her close instead, tell her he thought she was kind and sweet and brave.
They stood there in the hallway, too close and not close enough, and Colin felt the day catch up to him all at once.
Juni had claimed his heart. But he’d let her keep it. Maren was standing six inches away looking at him like he’d just given her something she didn’t know she needed and then taken it away again. And he realized he was in danger of giving his heart completely to her.
Mac was right. She was worth the risk. They both were.
And he was…not.
“I should—” Maren gestured vaguely toward her room.
“Yeah. Get some sleep.”
She didn’t move.
Neither did he.
Then Maren stepped back, gave him one more soft smile, and disappeared into her bedroom.
Colin went to the bathroom, changed into sweats, brushed his teeth, then went to the couch and lay down in the dark.
Sleep was going to be a long time coming.
Colin had been staring at the ceiling for at least an hour when Maren’s door opened.
He didn’t move, just tracked the sound of her bare feet on the hardwood floor as she came down the hall and stopped at the edge of the living room.