Chapter 16 #2
“She was a mess, and so were we,” I whisper.
“We moved too fast. She wound up pregnant before I could blink. I thought we’d deal with it; we’d figure our shit out.
Only, she was hell-bent on chasing her music career—even though it was failing.
Kit was a happy accident. Best thing to ever come out of my time with her.
” I shake my head, hating how ugly it sounds.
“She just took off one day before Kit was a year old. I spent a couple years begging—fucking begging—her to come back and give us a chance. Just try. If not for my sake, then for her daughter’s. ”
“Holy crap. And she didn’t?”
“I kept promising a thousand different ways we’d make it work. I’d work to keep them up, whatever it took to keep her passion alive. But she wasn’t interested in Maine or me. She left me with a baby, a letter, and she ghosted my calls for months.”
I exhale, feeling that angry pit in my bones yawning, swallowing my vital organs.
Back then, I didn’t have a clue what to do with a baby, much less daycare when someone had to keep us up. Thank God my parents were around.
“A letter?”
“Yeah. Short, frigid, basically ‘I can’t do this, I’m not made for it, good luck.’” I’m so lost in memories I barely notice the way Cleo inches closer. “Like I said, I didn’t give up. I tried to bring her back. Did what I could to reconnect, but she bounced to Denver, then San Diego, and then…”
I stop cold. Hearing it out loud, it’s a miserable story, and I don’t want pity. That sadness in her eyes can’t undo anything.
Then Nile’s little hand falls on my arm, warming me.
“That’s so shitty, Holden,” she whispers. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. She came back eventually when she had no other choice.” Even after all this time, my heart sinks like a stone.
Fuck fate and it’s warped, sick sense of humor. I’ll go down cursing it until my dying day, but until then, I’ll live like it doesn’t matter. Like my life wasn’t the punchline to some cosmic joke.
Charli came back, all right. Not for me or Kit, who was too young to remember much. Small favors.
“She came home to die.” No point in leaving her in suspense. “Charli got sick and she didn’t have anyone else she could count on. By the time she limped back here on her hands and knees, she only had a few months. Stomach cancer.”
“Oh my God!” Her eyes are marbles as she stares at me, chewing her lip.
The only sane reaction.
“She didn’t last long. She never asked to reconcile or even spend much time with Kit.
Maybe she was embarrassed or weighed down with guilt—who knows—but I didn’t push her.
I didn’t chew her out. I just accepted the situation, hoping for the best. I did what I could to make her last days comfortable. ”
“Holy fuck. You… you had to be her hospice nurse? You?” Cleo whispers again in disbelief.
I laugh bitterly.
“Believe it or not, I can do more than chase kids and bark orders.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean it like that! I just—it’s a lot to take in. I had no idea, Holden. It must’ve been hell.”
“Without your gramps, it would’ve been,” I say.
“Leonidas was too generous by half, giving me paid family leave for a woman who took off without giving me the time of day. He hired two other guys to fill in while I couldn’t.
Didn’t expect him to take me back when it was said and done, but he did, and— Oh, no, Clee. No tears over this.”
I reach over, wiping her eyes as she smiles.
“Gramps was such a good man.” She pushes my hand off gently. “Does Kit know?”
“Some of it. She knows enough. Someday when she’s older, we’ll sit down and talk.
Until then—” I lift a shoulder. “It’s hard figuring out what you should tell your kid about her deadbeat mom.
I never got a chance to be angry at Charli while she was still alive.
In her state, there was no point. I never confronted her.
I guess that’s what makes it harder in the end. No closure.”
“Oh, yeah.” Cleo exhales. “I’d be livid, too. Actually, I know a thing or two about how it must’ve been for Kit.”
I wait for more, staring at her gently as she swallows.
“My mom died when I was little. This heart defect she was born with, it never affected her much, I guess, until one day…” She sighs.
“It was so fast and I was so young. I don’t remember much, honestly.
Just this smiling, pretty young woman who used to sing to me suddenly stuck in bed and sleeping a lot.
And Mom, she’d still smile every time I came in the room, and I didn’t get why Dad looked worse every time. ”
“It’s awful, even if kids are too young to truly get it,” I whisper.
She nods limply.
“Yeah. It was worse for Dad than it was for me. He always drank and partied too much, but when I think back, he went deeper in the hole after she was gone. It broke something deep inside him.” She looks at me knowingly, a shaky smile pulling at her lips.
“Her dying sapped the light out of him. After that, his art, his life, was more like going through the motions until he could get to the next bottle to take the edge off. It’s like he needed it to dull the pain, and nothing else was ever good enough. Not even me.”
No. No, woman, I won’t fucking hear it.
“Stop.” I take her hand fiercely, dragging it to my lips and kissing her delicate fingers.
“I really should. If it wasn’t obvious why I have so many daddy issues before… there you go.” She laughs bitterly.
“Shut it, Nile. I don’t see ‘issues.’ If I wanted that, I could find them with a hundred other women. If anything about your past, about who you are, freaked me out, we wouldn’t be doing this right now. I don’t see daddy issues. I see a smokeshow with history.”
“Oh my God!” She swats at me, shaking her head quickly even though she’s grinning now. “You’re sure you’ve been off the market? Could’ve fooled me. You’re good at telling a girl exactly what she wants to hear.”
“Like hell. I’m bad at talking. That’s why I don’t date much these days or do much of… this.” I gesture at her body, drawn out so beautifully in front of me.
Is it so terrible that I’m beginning to regret being a hermit dad?
She goes quiet, staring at her hand still twisted in mine.
I hate the silence, the way I can’t read it. I almost ask her to talk so we’re not suffering alone with our thoughts or the ugly secrets we’ve just spilled like a pact sealed in blood.
But then she looks up at me, her eyes lidded.
“This,” she whispers. “Girls like Charli. Like me. The ones who have a screw or two loose.”
“Fuck no.” My head snaps up. I gently grab her chin. “Woman, you’re nothing like her. Don’t think your moral compass will ever be broken enough to make you walk out on your own kid.”
“But my art—”
“It’s a part of you, your passion. Charli, she wanted music because she wanted fame.
Not art for art’s sake. She wanted to be the next big pop star, another Milah Holly, some small-town Maine girl making it big and launching into a new life.
But you, you’re fired up in a different way.
You’re still grounded. You haven’t lost your heart.
Nothing that happened with your parents took it away from you. ”
“How do you know?” She blinks at me slowly, her brows knit together.
“Because I see you right now, eyes wide open. You’re fighting for Leonidas’ legacy. Trying to do what’s right with that egg, treating the reward like an afterthought.” I soften my grip on her chin.
She’s so delicate, so fragile, so small compared to me, and fuck, it’s a turn-on. I never want to hurt her and I’m too aware how easily I could.
“That’s why we’re here, doing this,” I add.
“That’s why you slept with me?” She throws me a shy look.
“It’s why I wanted to, yeah.” I slide a hand around her waist, pulling her closer.
Her silky hair falls across my chest and she lays a hand above my beating heart.
“You just wanted to finish what I started.” This time she smiles up wickedly. “How long have you wanted it?”
“Long enough. Believe me.”
“Since New York?” She rolls closer, straddling me with the bedsheets between us, pinning me down. “Before?”
“I think you know.”
“I want you to tell me.”
“Before, damn you.” I harden under her, and she wiggles, encouraging my cock.
“When?”
“The jet ride over.”
“When I was asleep?” She tilts her head, surprised.
“I think it was the first time you let me help you without fighting back,” I tell her, pulling her closer. “A man’s allowed to like that.”
“Mm, a man who’s all papa bear.”
“That’s because you don’t let me do what I was made for very often. I want to protect you, Clee.”
She gives me a mock pout, but I see the way her eyes spark. She’s so flushed and beautiful, and I need that shirt off her.
Everything off.
I want to watch her ride me to the Moon and back before I lose my goddamn mind.
“I’ll let you serve me now,” she says coyly, pressing a finger against my lips.
All the permission I need.
I push her hand away and lean up, kissing her, dragging the hem of the t-shirt up, up.
She lets me, only breaking the kiss so I can toss it aside. Then she’s on me again, yanking the covers back so we’re skin on skin.
She’s already soaked, hot and wanting against my cock, rubbing her tight pink pussy against it.
“You want me,” she whispers raggedly, like she needs to hear me say it.
“So fucking badly. I want to make you come a hundred different ways. I want to ruin you. I want to rattle your bones and leave you hoarse. I’m that fucked up. Do you understand?”
She answers with a kiss, messy and needy, and everything dissolves into a lustful desire that’s new and intoxicating.
Her hair brushes my shoulders.
Her mouth feels soft, too, but her tongue is hot and wet and wild.
I reach down to grab her ass, urging her to let go, to grind on me to her heart’s content.
I’m already drunk on the sounds she makes—little gasping moans when I touch her just right and the head of my straining cock slides against her clit.
If we had the luxury, I wouldn’t leave this room for a week.
I’d bolt us in here, exploring her body again and again, until I branded every inch of it into my brain.
“Holden,” she rasps against my mouth.
Yeah, little girl. I know.
I reach between us, finding her clit.
She lets out a long, shuddering moan as I smother it with my thumb, and fuck me, her pussy grinds my cock until I groan.
“Can’t believe you haven’t done this for a long time,” she whispers frantically, grabbing me and pushing my cock to her entrance.
“Doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it plenty.”
“With me?”
Before I can answer, she arcs down, engulfing me.
I grip her hips until I know it hurts.
I don’t care, and neither does she.
We need this.
We need the white-hot pleasure so intense it’s blinding.
“You already know,” I snarl. “I’ve imagined all this with you.
I’ve had to jerk off in the ice-cold shower ever since we shared that damn bed and I woke up with you in my arms. I can’t stop wanting you, Clee.
You’re mine in every crazy, warped sense of the word.
Later, you can tell me I’m crazy. But right now… ”
I don’t finish that sentence.
Not with words.
“Yes. Fuck me like you mean it.”
Happy to oblige.
Taking her hips, I hold her, invading that sweet pussy like I’m going to rearrange it so it’ll never fit another man.
She cries from the slow, rough friction.
Her hands brace against my shoulders.
I get one split second to think how glad I am that I sent Kit away for the night, and then I’m pushing inside her again, hell-bent on hearing her scream.
This time, louder.
“I own this,” I tell her, thrusting harder, deep into what was always meant to be mine. Her tits bounce, two soft pendulums delighting my eyes, driving me on like a bull. I just need to fuck her in broad daylight next time. “And you feel so good. So tight.”
“Touch me.” She digs her nails in, matching my rhythm.
I reach down, thumbing her clit until her eyes roll.
I frig her little bead as we fuck, good and slow, both of us sinking into the delirium like a warm plunge pool.
Goddamn, I want to use my mouth again. I want her to come on my tongue, but that would mean ruining this rhythm, and that feels like a crime against nature right now.
“Tell me what you like.”
“This. You. Everything!”
Under five minutes in and she’s on the verge of coming.
Fuck, I don’t know how long I can hold back when her pussy grips like a glove, fanning the inferno in my balls.
I try to calm down, to slow her, to ease myself, moving from small circles to just side to side.
“This?” I growl.
“I—” Her eyes glaze and her mouth forms a pink ring. “Yes. Yes, Holden.”
Fucking gone.
I take her little ass with both hands, the better to break her.
The mad, desperate noises she makes in the back of her throat tell me I’m not going to last very long, but it doesn’t matter.
As long as she comes on my dick when I fill her.
As long as we come together.
I’m on her like a freight train, hips crashing into hers, flinging her up and down until she screams and her sweet cunt clenches my cock.
The ride of her life.
The storm, the passion, the obsession.
And when she does come, her pretty lips peeling open in a messy broken gasp, I go manic.
I pound her little pussy until it feels like my heart will shatter if our bodies don’t first.
We break together.
My spine ignites.
Growling, I hold her down, filling her with seed so hot I feel like a human candle melting.
And I keep my cock rooted for a while, so deep, madman that I am, jealously holding it inside her until I’m forced to pull out.
When we’re truly done, I get up and clean her with a towel from the bathroom before I pull her head under my chin.
We drift off wrapped in secrets and warm skin.
We share the same shock and awe in our dreams.