Chapter Fourteen
Christopher
I tossed and turned for what felt like a lifetime before I followed the urge to go into her room, to slip into bed with her, to breathe in her sweet scent, to feel the soft curve of her against me, then her tight walls around my fingers as I thrust them inside her.
I wanted more.
Of course, I did.
I’d been painfully hard ever since I’d taken myself to the couch to go to sleep.
But I couldn’t let that happen.
Hell, I shouldn’t have gone into her room at all. I shouldn’t have fingered her in the bathroom. Shouldn’t have had inappropriate thoughts ever since I’d been on my knees in her apartment, pulling her panties up her legs.
None of this should have happened.
I took my aching cock with me back to the couch, denying myself the relief, knowing I needed not to associate Alara with release any more than I already had been.
Because she was fucking off-limits.
She was Brio’s sister-in-law.
She was protected by the Family.
And, yeah, she was too young for me.
Not enough for it to be creepy, but enough that suggested I should keep my hands off of her and let her be with a man closer to her own age, in the same place of life as she was.
Not an older guardian of a tween and teen, all of us with a lot of grief and baggage, who was just starting over in my middle age.
I rolled onto my side, staring at the TV and its black-and-white cop show rerun, but not really seeing or hearing anything.
I focused on listing all the reasons I was no good for Alara. But they all eventually circled back to Brio. To what that crazy son of a bitch would do to me if he realized I put my hands on Alara without happily-ever-afters and rings in my mind.
Then, latching onto something that finally had my cock relaxing again, I imagined all the horrific ways Brio would torture me down in his little playroom.
I wouldn’t claim I slept like a baby, but at least I slept.
It was Liam and Tuna that eventually woke me up.
The teenager was still in his rumpled pajamas, his hair a mess, as he slipped his feet into sneakers and reached for Tuna’s leash.
Had the dog slept in his room?
“What time is it?” I asked, my voice sleep-rough.
“Six.”
“Char up?”
“Not yet.”
“Don’t go too far. I’m gonna get breakfast going.”
It would be good for me to have something to focus on so I could not fixate on Alara. On how the kids would be off to school eventually, leaving us home alone. With all the temptation between us. And nothing to stop us. Save for my increasingly shaky hold on my morals.
So I got up, cleaned up the bedding, and got the coffee started.
By the time Liam came back, I had a big bowl of pancake batter at the ready, bacon in the oven, and was cracking eggs into a bowl.
“Alara’s gonna be jealous about this,” I said, nodding toward where the dog was following him like a shadow.
“I tried to push him out last night so he could go see her. He just kept whining and scratching. Can I feed him?”
“I guess so. I don’t know his schedule yet.” But he did seem to be sniffing around.
“Thanks for walking him. You’ve really been stepping up a lot lately. I appreciate it.”
“I like it here,” he admitted. “Didn’t think I would when you were planning it.”
That made sense. Why he’d been so difficult. So distant. Not only because he lost his mom, but because he was being forced to leave behind his childhood home, his town, his friends. But also why he’d had such a dramatic change in the few weeks we’d been in the city.
“You don’t miss it?”
“The old house?”
“Yeah. And friends.”
“Didn’t really have a lot of friends. None of ‘em have texted me since I left. The house…”
“Is complicated.”
“Yeah. It was home, but…”
“Yeah, I get it. There were a lot of ups and downs there. Especially close to the end.”
There was a thunk from the bedroom, followed by a grumble and several clunking footsteps.
“Alara’s up.”
When I looked back at him, I noticed him watching me.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“No, say it.”
“What’s the problem?”
“The problem with what?” I asked as Alara’s door opened and she hobbled out. Her hair was a wavy mess around her pillow-creased face. Her eyes were swollen, and her bruises looked even darker than the day before.
“Not a morning person, huh?” I asked when she shot us a small-eyed look as she passed. She made some sort of noise that had a chuckle escaping me. “Did you just hiss?”
She said nothing as she closed the bathroom door, and it wasn’t until I looked back at Liam that I noticed I was smiling.
“With that,” Liam said.
“With Alara?”
“With you and Alara,” he clarified.
“There is no me and Alara.”
“Sure there’s not,” he said with an eye roll as he grabbed Tuna’s water bowl to refill it. “For the record, Char loves her. I like her. And we both know how much you’ve given up for us—”
“I didn’t give up shit for you. You’re what matters.”
“Still. We want you to be happy. So if it’s about us, don’t make it be that.”
Maybe the conversation would have gone on from there, but Alara made her way out of the bathroom with slightly less mussed hair and more open eyes.
“Coffee?” I asked.
“In a trough,” she said, collapsing onto one of the dining chairs. “Thanks for feeding him,” she said as she looked at Tuna.
“Liam walked him once already too. He got up early.”
“Every once in a while, the little jerk wants to be up at the crack of dawn. He usually sleeps in later. Was he with you all night?”
“He refused to be put out,” Liam said.
“He likes to sleep by someone’s feet. What?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at Liam.
“He slept tucked behind my legs.”
“You little shit,” she said, shaking her head at her dog. I brought over her coffee and got a Thank you. “So, you cook breakfast, huh?”
“When we don’t do something easy like bagels, yeah.”
“For the record, I’m okay with bagels. You don’t have to cook for me.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Liam, you wanna wake up Char?”
“I can do it,” Alara offered, likely feeling like everyone else was already doing too much.
I don’t know what made me hand the spatula to Liam and follow, but I got into the doorway just as Alara moved a stuffed animal out of her way and sat on the side of Charlotte’s bed.
Her hand went to Char’s hip, and her voice was softer than I’d heard it before when she said, “Time to get up, Charlotte.”
There was some movement. Then, sleepy, small, hopeful, “Mom?”
Fuck.
Alara stiffened.
I went to take a step forward, ready to try to smooth it over, when she spoke.
“No, sweetie. It’s me, Alara,” she said, her tone still coaxing as Charlotte finally rolled over.
I was close enough to watch the confusion morph into fresh grief that cracked my heart right down the center.
“Oh, sweetie,” Alara murmured as Char’s hands went to her eyes and a choked sound escaped her.
“I’m sorry.” She pulled her hand up and down Charlotte’s leg as a sniffle escaped her.
“It’s okay to miss your mom.” Charlotte whimpered and nodded.
“Do you want a hug? Or I can get your uncle or brother…”
Charlotte folded up, leaning into Alara’s chest and wrapping her arms so tightly around her bruised midsection that I knew it had to hurt. But Alara just wrapped her arms around Charlotte and held her as she cried.
“Do you want to talk about her?”
“Okay,” Charlotte said, still clinging.
“Tell me your favorite memory.”
“My birthday.”
“Which one?”
“Ten.”
My sister had been really stable for a short period that year, taking her meds, getting out of bed, trying to make up for lost time. So she’d gone big on the kids’ birthdays to make up for several years of ones I’d planned to various levels of success.
“What’d you do?”
“We went to the theme park.”
“That sounds like a lot of fun.”
“We rode all the rides over and over until Liam threw up.”
“Not you, though?”
“Nope.” She paused, lingering in the memory. “Mom was happy that day.”
“Yeah, I know she was sad a lot. That must have been hard, huh?” Charlotte nodded.
“I tried to cheer her up.”
She did, too. She was always bringing her mom special treats and gifts. She was forever climbing into bed with her mother and trying to tell her silly stories just to get a smile out of her. She was usually not very successful. But she never stopped trying.
“Of course you did. Because you’re the sweetest kid.
” Charlotte sniffed, reaching between them to wipe her eyes.
But not wanting to move away yet. “But it’s not your job to cheer up the adults, either,” Alara went on, repeating something I knew Char’s therapist had been saying.
“Sometimes those feelings are too heavy for a little girl to carry, y’know?
And it doesn’t leave a lot of strength left to hold your own feelings. And those are just as important.”
Charlotte nodded. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Sorry I cried on you.”
“Don’t ever apologize for that. Crying is good. Because if you don’t let yourself cry, you can get really angry. And no one wants that for you.”
I could hear the personal experience in her words.
Like she’d been someone who didn’t let herself cry.
Which made her clinging to me in her bathroom all the more meaningful.
“Is that pancakes?” Charlotte, always able to sniff out a sweet treat, asked.
“It is. Your uncle is making breakfast. Maybe you should go get washed up.”
“Morning, Char,” I said, rubbing her head as she passed me in the doorway.
At the sound of my voice, Alara turned.
“I probably should have let you handle that.”
“No. No, I think it was good that you did. She looks up to you. And she doesn’t really have any women in her life that she looks up to right now.
So hearing you tell her that her feelings are valid, and she should cry if she needs to, and that it’s not her job to regulate everyone around her, I think that meant a lot. ”
“I never stopped to think she might confuse me with her mom when she wasn’t fully awake.”
“It’s bound to happen here and there. It hasn’t been that long.”
Alara nodded, climbing off the bed and coming closer.
“Who told you that you weren’t allowed to cry?” I asked, my voice low.
She jerked back at that.
“No one.” At my brow lift, she shrugged.
“Me, I guess. My parents were already so overwhelmed that I didn’t want to make anything worse.
My mom was better at hiding her feelings than Charlotte and Liam’s mom was, but a kid can always tell when their parent is stressed or depressed.
No matter how well they think they’re hiding it.
And as I got older, it was easier to be angry at the guys who were making our life a living hell. ”
“The Polats, that was their name, right?” I’d gotten a quick refresher from Brio about his wife’s ex-husband and his brothers, who’d been extorting and abusing Ezzy and Alara’s family for years and years.
“Yeah. You couldn’t show them any weakness, or they were going to exploit it. So I learned not to be emotional. I was just… pissed. Around-the-clock pissed. Eventually, I just… couldn’t cry.”
Except with me.
Sure, she’d been attacked, traumatized, but still, it felt like it meant something.
“Which makes it even more impressive that you could give Charlotte that talk.”
“She’s a great kid. She doesn’t need to grow up angry. No one wants her to turn out like me.”
“Hey,” I said, grabbing her arm when she tried to brush past me after saying that bullshit. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“No? Because I could write you a list. Double-sided, single-spaced.”
“You went through some shit no kid should have had to. And you learned to cope the best way you could. That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. I know you tend to see yourself as someone hard or closed off, but that’s not who you are.”
“It kind of is.”
“No, it’s not. Someone who is hard or closed off wouldn’t buy a pawnshop because they want to help people keep their important items because they knew what it was like to lose theirs.
They wouldn’t offer to babysit their nieces and nephews even when small kids aren’t their favorite.
They wouldn’t adopt a dog and love it even when it doesn’t return the favor.
They don’t read teen books because they came recommended from an overzealous acquaintance.
And they don’t sit down and hold a crying kid and give them a pep talk when they’re not even related to them.
“Trust me, I’ve known a lot of hard people, Alara. I know what I’m talking about. You’re careful where you put your energy because you don’t want to emotionally invest in people who are only going to let you down. That’s guarded, not hard. And it’s not a flaw.
“For the record,” I said, ducking my head when she tried to look away, and running my thumb up and down her elbow, “I would have no problem with Charlotte turning out like you.”
Her eyes flicked up, something heavy there, a watery depth that she blinked back fast.
And because I could sense this was too much all at once, I ended on a lighter note. “Well, maybe minus the murder board, with your creepy ass.”
To that, she snorted.
I let her arm fall and watched her walk out of the room, only to turn and find the kids watching us.
In Charlotte’s eyes, there was something like hope.
In Liam’s, an understanding.
I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe they were seeing something I wasn’t letting myself see.
But things were already too heavy that morning.
So I walked over, took the spatula, and flipped the pancakes.