Chapter 3 #2
It had been a week since I walked into that pool house bathroom and found Catherine Celia under the shower, naked and flushed, getting herself off.
A week of not sleeping right. I hadn’t known she was in there.
I hadn’t known what I was walking into. I had apologized.
I had left. I had done everything a decent man was supposed to do.
Except for the fact that I couldn’t help getting myself off in the shower to the memory of her fingers between her thighs.
Now she was walking toward us in cut-off jean shorts and a ribbed yellow tank top that fit her like it had been designed specifically to ruin my life.
The hem stopped high enough to reveal a strip of tanned stomach, and right at her navel was a tiny diamond piercing that caught the airport lights when she moved.
I had not noticed that at the barbecue. I had been too busy trying not to notice every other inch of her. My mouth went dry.
I looked away immediately, which was both obvious and useless.
“CC!” Mila launched herself at her sister. “I knew you’d make it.”
CC laughed and bent to hug her. “There’s my girl. I told you I’d get to say goodbye. Are you excited?”
“Yup.”
“Isla,” CC moved to next. “How’s my girl?” she asked and she bent to hug her like she had done with Mila.
Watching the affection, she had for my daughter wasn’t helping my attraction to her.
She hugged Jaden next, ruffling his hair even when he tried to dodge her.
Then CC’s eyes found mine. Everything around me blurred at the edges for half a second.
She froze almost imperceptibly. Not enough for anyone else to notice, but I noticed.
I noticed the way her breath caught, the way color touched her cheeks, the way her gaze dropped to my mouth before snapping back to my eyes.
“Hunter,” she said.
“CC.”
That was it. Two syllables from her, two from me, and somehow it felt like we had said too much. Isla, bless her oblivious little heart, threw her arms around CC’s waist. “CC, you’re coming to babysit me when I get back, right?”
CC blinked, pulled from whatever dangerous current had passed between us, and smiled down at her. “Of course. I expect a full report on camp too.”
The counselor arrived a few minutes later wearing a camp T-shirt and the bright, energetic smile of someone who had not yet spent six hours trapped with children on an airplane. She checked names, counted bags, reviewed the plan, and gave all of us the kind of reassurance that should have helped.
“You have your phone?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And the numbers on the paper I gave you in case it dies?”
“Yes.” My daughter grunted.
“And you’ll stay with Mila?”
“We’re in the same bunk, Daddy.”
“And if you need anything—”
“I tell my counselor.” She touched my face with both hands, her palms warm against my cheeks. “Daddy, I know.”
I swallowed.
She smiled, but her eyes were shiny now too. “I’m only gone two weeks.”
“Yeah,” I sighed.
“You can call Grandma if you get sad,” Isla suggested.
Mom would have loved that. I was glad she wasn’t here to hear it because she would have cried, and I would’ve lost it completely.
“I might do that,” I said.
“And Aunt Quinn.”
“I’m definitely calling Quinn.”
“You can complain to her for a whole hour.” Isla giggled, then wrapped her arms around my neck.
I held her tight. Probably too tight. She smelled like strawberry shampoo, sunscreen, and the gum she wasn’t supposed to chew before getting on a plane.
Isla was the one good thing that had come from the worst season I had ever lived through.
I had spent ten years building my world around her, and now she was walking away from me with a rolling suitcase and a best friend, telling me she would survive without me.
“I love you, Bug,” I said against her hair.
“I love you too, Daddy.”
The counselor gathered the girls and began leading them toward security. Isla grabbed Mila’s hand. She looked back once. I lifted my hand. She smiled. Then she turned forward and walked away.
Holland stepped beside me quietly. “She’s going to be okay.”
“I know.”
“It’s good for her,” she said. “Feeling independent, having adventures, knowing she can step into the world and come back to you. That matters.”
I nodded because if I opened my mouth too fast, I wasn’t sure what would come out.
Cole stood on my other side. “You held it together better than I expected.”
“Thanks, Coach.”
“Well.” Cole cleared his throat. “We’re heading to dinner. Come with us.”
I shook my head. “I’m good. I’ll head home and complain to Quinn on the phone for an hour.”
Holland turned to me. “No, you won’t. You’ll come eat with us,” she insisted.
“I don’t want to crash family dinner.”
“You’re not crashing anything,” Cole said. “You’re family enough to suffer through dinner with us.”
CC stood slightly behind Holland with her arms folded loosely over her middle.
She hadn’t said much since the girls walked away, but I could feel her there, which was insane.
I should not have been able to feel someone standing five feet from me in the middle of an airport.
My instincts told me to say no to dinner.
The less time I spent around CC, the better.
She was Cole’s daughter. My coach’s daughter.
I was already feeling guilty after the shower fiasco.
But I had my empty condo waiting in the city, quiet and clean and missing every sign of Isla.
No voice talking through movie scenes. No backpack dropped by the door.
No reason to cook more than eggs or pretend I wasn’t counting down the days until she came home.
Dinner with the Davises was safer than being alone with my own head.
The fact that CC would be there had nothing to do with it.
“Sure. Thanks, man.” I clapped Cole on the back because I apparently had a death wish.