Chapter 11 #2
I make myself meet his eyes. “He’s powerful, with money and connections. I’ve got none of that. He’d point and I’d jump, every single time, right in front of my kid.” My voice thins. “You know what that does to a girl, watching her mother shrink into somebody’s puppet?”
He doesn’t fire back right away. “Is he that bad, the man himself?”
The question hits too close, and for one cold second, I wonder if he knows something. Then I tell myself it’s the same paranoia I drag everywhere I go, and I push it down.
My mouth opens on the old, easy yes. Then I look past him at nothing in particular. “I used to be certain he was. Lately I’m less certain.” The words scrape on the way up. “It changes nothing about the risk. I won’t gamble her on a maybe.”
He waits me out.
“There’s no one left in my whole world but Mia.” I hold his gaze so he can’t mistake me. “I’m not handing her to anyone. Not for any price.”
“What if her father could give her a good life?”
“I give her a good life.” It comes out with an edge I can’t sand off. “I work myself raw for that girl. Every hour goes to her. You think there’s some hole in her I’m too poor to fill?”
“I think you work harder than anyone I know.” His eyes go back to the girls. “I only wonder if she misses having a father in the picture at all.”
“Does Bella miss having a mother in hers?”
I expect him to dodge. He doesn’t even blink.
“Yes.” He doesn’t soften it. “She does. You haven’t seen how she tucks herself into you the second you’re close? How Mia does the exact same to me?”
I recall the conversation I overheard in Mia’s room, and heat climbs up my neck. “They’ll adjust. Children always do.”
His jaw tightens, and for a second, he looks ready to push, then chooses not to. “What happens when he finds out on his own? You don’t think he’ll be angrier you never came to him, not even once?”
“We’ll deal with it when it comes.”
“For what it’s worth,” he offers, watching the teacups slow, “if I were him, I’d want to know. Every day of her I could get, I’d take it.”
He doesn’t look at me while he says it, and I’m grateful because I don’t trust my face to hold steady.
He’s been circling this man for weeks now, my phantom ex, my untouchable powerful stranger.
I keep almost asking why a school director cares so much about whose blood runs in one of his students.
Every time I get close to the question, I make myself back away, because the answer I keep brushing is one I can’t afford to think all the way through.
The girls thunder back demanding food. My wallet’s barely cleared my bag before his is already open, and he buys them apples shelled in hard chocolate.
Bella throws her arms around his waist in thanks before she takes hers, and he ruffles her hair without looking down, the gesture worn smooth by practice.
Mia watches the whole exchange. I see the wistfulness in her eyes and lower my gaze, the guilt eating at me.
The two of them run off with their prizes at full tilt.
“Stay where I can see you,” I call after them.
“They’re fine,” he answers easily. “I can hear them from here.”
“Over all of this?” I wave at the heaving crowd.
“Easily.” He lifts his voice anyway. “Girls. Stay in sight and mind your mom.” It’s meant to reassure me. Instead it pricks at the back of my neck, the same as it did the day he stood close and told me he could hear my heart going fast.
A stall of homemade jewelry hooks me, small bright things laid out on dark cloth. One bracelet holds a pale stone set dead in the center, and I pick it up. The woman behind the table names a price that nearly drops me where I stand.
“You want that much for this?”
“It’s a beacon.” She’s perfectly serene about it. “Leads you straight to your one true love.”
I put it down. “Then you hang on to it. I’m not in the market for a true love.” True love is for people who never learned the hard lessons. I learned mine early, and a pretty rock with a story attached doesn’t unteach a thing.
I walk off. Glancing over my shoulder, I catch Marc bent low over the table, talking quietly to the seller. “Would you come on?” I call, crankier than the moment deserves.
“Coming.” He doesn’t move for a breath, and when I look again, he’s sliding something into his pocket.
“What did you buy?”
He holds up two braided friendship bracelets, one pink, one blue. “These. Figured the girls would like them.”
“Oh.” I can’t help but smile. “That’s kind of sweet.”
He keeps it up the whole way: more food, ring tosses, a wall of balloons begging to be popped.
At the ring toss, he loses spectacularly, then pays the attendant for the stuffed fox outright and hands it to Mia, straight-faced.
Bella demands one too, so he loses three more times on principle before the man takes pity on him.
Watching him drop forty dollars rather than admit he can’t land a plastic ring, a knot I’ve held in my chest for ten years comes loose.
When the rides lose their shine, the girls switch to games, and I take a turn at the cork rifles. Five tin ducks go down without a miss, and the boy working the booth gapes at me.
Marcus’s eyebrows climb. “Where did that come from?”
“One of the neighbors who used to watch me after school was a marksman.” I set the rifle on the counter. “He would teach me how to shoot in his yard. I go to the range every few months.”
“Should I be worried?” Marcus waggles his brows at me.
I widen my eyes at him. “Have you given me a reason to shoot you?”
He laughs, his head tipping back as he does. “If I ever hand you one, just promise to aim somewhere I can live with.”
On the swings, Mia kicks herself sky-high, fearless, shrieking for me to watch.
I watch. Marcus watches too, and when she sticks a jump off the moving seat, he whoops loud enough to mortify her.
She beams instead of dying of embarrassment.
I have to look away, a grown man that proud of someone else’s child.
We buy a cone of sugared almonds and pass it between us without a word. Somewhere in there, I quit tracking which hand is whose. He steals all the cinnamon ones. I let him. Between the duck booth and the lemonade cart, I notice I’ve become very comfortable with Marcus’s presence.
He bends down to tie Mia’s shoelace, and I put my hand on his back. It’s an unconscious gesture, and it shakes me. I quickly remove my hand when the sound of violins reaches me.
A small dance floor sits tucked off to one side, a man pulling slow notes out of a fiddle while couples turn through something close to a waltz. The girls take one look, then turn to each other, and I know that look. They’ve cooked something up between them.
“You two should dance,” Bella declares. “Me and Mia will go on the one right next to it.” The ride beside the floor is a little carousel, pastel unicorns bobbing on their poles, parked in the same quiet pocket as the music.
“I don’t think so,” I start.
“We’re big girls, Mom.” Mia plants her fists on her hips, and there’s a smirk on her face I fully intend to interrogate later. “We can ride by ourselves.”
“If you’re not comfortable with it,” Marcus offers, “we don’t have to.”
The escape hatch is right there. I don’t take it. “Fine. Mia’s responsible enough for one ride.”
“Good.” He puts his hand out. “Then let’s dance.”
“What? I didn’t say one word about us dancing.”
He tows me onto the floor before the objection can leave my mouth.
His palm settles at my waist, I bring mine to his shoulder, and we’re moving before I’ve consented to a step of it.
He leads me through the turns without a single stumble.
His hand is sure at my waist, his eyes steady on mine.
He turns me until the lights smear to ribbons and the crowd falls away.
I haven’t danced with anyone since before Mia was born.
I’d forgotten how it feels, being held this carefully while the whole world spins.