Chapter Twelve #2
People say Bach wrote it to pay homage to his late wife, which used to bring me comfort. I’d listen to the rise and fall of the sounds, knowing that despite my inability to pick up a violin since my own partner passed, I could play alongside this recording by heart.
In the water, my fingers take on the movements with ease.
Evidence now suggests the tune was composed prior to learning of his wife’s passing, but it doesn’t mean we’re not brothers. I play the water for us, eyes closed, heart heavy, and I pay tribute to my lost love and his.
“Wow. Are you seizing?” Lemon drops her towel to the floor, inspecting my eyes.
Eyes that fall to the curves of her hips in the…
“Oh great, you’re back to normal.” She puts her finger under my chin and adjusts my focus back to her face.
“Sorry, Sour Patch, you are…”
“Hot as fuck. I’m aware. Still have eyes.”
She leans over the tub and flicks her fingers through the water, testing the temperature and studying me. I toss my headphones to a nearby deck chair and sit straighter, making room for her beside me.
“I’m relieved you’re not having a medical episode.” It’s genuine, and it digs at me that I’ve never paid attention to this side of her before.
I’ve seen this woman in a lot of ways. Most of them make my cock hard to even consider. But there’s more to Lemon Perkins than the party girl or the billionaire’s heiress.
There’s a selfless side, a caring one. The parts my most untrusting children trust. And even when I lost my mind about Cami, she didn’t inflate the issue. She swooped in where she was needed and painted nails with my girls as they celebrated a woman that isn’t her.
“I came about Bryar.” She lowers into the water, and her foot brushes mine.
Our eyes meet before she moves it away, and that single act twists everything inside of me. The absence of her body when it was just so close is taxing alone, but I inhale a defeated breath at the added mention of my teenage wild child.
“What’d she do now?” I hang my head, already exhausted by the same conversation I have with every nanny.
I find a little comfort, knowing this one won’t quit like the others, but I’m left wondering how true that is when she lifts a brow and remains silent.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” I rake my hand through my hair.
Lemon watches it fall back over my forehead, every inch.
I don’t want her to quit.
“It’s because we fought earlier. I’ll handle this.”
I move to stand, but Lemon shoots up before me and slams me back down, pinning me in place, as she straddles me.
“Absolutely not.” Her fingers press into my bare shoulders, her thighs squeezed around me, her center pressed against mine.
I clear my throat and concentrate on the conversation at hand, not on how my cock could be inside of her with a single thrust. “You will not handle this. You have no idea what you’re walking into. ”
“Whatever she did, I’ll talk to her. I know you don’t have much of a choice being here and all, so I’ll make sure you don’t have to deal with her issues too, while you’re here, at least.”
She shoves her hands into my chest and presses away from me.
“Her issues? Wow, Bryar’s right. You are delusional.
I thought maybe it was just my father with a penchant for misunderstandings, but you, my sir, take the cake with this one.
Emil Perkins might have found a way to sell me off with a million-dollar dowery to some old voyeur from his payroll, but you are much worse, Oliver Nashville.
You are the type who sees his daughter struggling, has every resource within his power to lift her up, even has the time now that you’ve been promoted.
And she wants to be lifted, for fuck’s sake… but you let her sink. All alone.”
Lemon springs from my lap and scrambles out of the water, wrapping her shaking body in a towel before lashing back.
“You know…” She looks at the stars. “My mother left me. Bryar’s died.
We aren’t the same, and I won’t claim we could be, because the difference is, at her age, I took that pain and loss and I harbored it in my soul, tearing others down so I could feel important enough that the thought of someone leaving me would be laughable.
Unthinkable. Until the memory of my mother was just a stack of stupid charms.” She shakes her wrist, and I look at her bracelets for the first time, considering her past. Like me, she’s felt loss and pain.
Maybe more than I imagined for the stuck-up heiress I thought I knew.
And maybe like me, she will always feel that pain. Yet here she is, going on. Shaking her wrists at a broken man.
“You jumped to conclusions. The moment you heard your daughter’s name, you assumed she did something wrong.
You know how many times that happened to me at her age and it was my fault?
The difference is your daughter wants to cheer others on.
She misses her mother, understands the weight of her loss.
Of all your losses. She started this memorial to bring awareness and donations to her coach. ”
She lets that sink, and the silence weighs heavily on my ears, but not as heavy as the rock that settles in my gut when I recall the card Bryar slammed on the table yesterday.
“Coach Jasmine.”
“Yep.” Lemon whips her hair over one shoulder, dabbing it dry. “Coach Jasmine Montell of Pine Forest High who is currently under treatment for melanoma. You’d know that if you approached your child with an ounce of respect instead of mistrust.”
“That’s what Lauren had. Melanoma.”
“Yeah.” She drops her gaze. “Bryar told me. She also told me she worries her sisters won’t know what love feels like because you’ve forgotten, too.”
“What?” I move from the tub now, too, whipping my towel around my body in a flash to meet her eyes in earnest. “She said that?”
Lemon nods. “Yeah, she did. And she’s known me for only two days, Oliver. You know that actually says a whole lot, right? She is not getting something she needs here. I hate to be the one to tell you, but maybe none of them are.”
“Of course I love them. They’re my girls. I—”
Lemon puts a hand up. “You don’t have to be perfect, Oliver.
At work or home. I may have just met your family, but I’ve known you a very large chunk of my life.
You want to act like you’re this impenetrable force of protection, but all you’ve done is paste on Band-Aids and throw up blinders, only ever homing in on what needs fixed.
What’s broken. But what about what’s working?
” She gestures into the house where the girls are sleeping.
“Look at your daughter, Oliver. You were in the wrong with that grounding. With your refusal to show up for your children at a memorial they are facilitating for their dead mother.” She shakes her head.
“Do you even hear how shitty that sounds?”
I do, I want to say.
But she already said it for me, and I don’t know what’s worse.
Lemon clicks her tongue. “Bryar was right. And I’m sticking up for her, not as your anything. But as her nanny. You need to see the strong young woman she is, not the kid you’re too damn cowardly to trust.”