The Last Letter

by Rebecca Yarros

  Colt and Maisie are in the same kindergarten class. I know, I got a ton of crap about putting twins in the same class, and how it doesn’t let them cultivate their own identity, but those so-called experts never had to look at my blue-eyed heathens and listen to them refuse to be separated. And by refuse, I mean we tried. For the first week of school, I had to pick them up every day by nine a.m. because they kept leaving to go to the other’s classroom. Finally, we relented. You know the phrase “pick your battles”? It was more like “concede the war, you’re losing.” But fine.

  Anyway, there’s a little boy with a huge crush on Maisie. Cute, right? Not so much. Today at recess, he decided the whole class would play “kiss tag,” where I guess instead of tagging someone with your hand, you plant one on them. Nice, right? Maisie didn’t want to play, so the boy started chasing her anyway, eventually tripping her and kissing her despite her objections. Naturally, she shoved him off and decked him. My brother would be proud; she landed that punch just like he taught her.

  Colt heard the commotion and went running. When Maisie told him what happened, he kept cool, but the other little boy called her a not-nice name that rhymes with witch (according to Colt), and well…Colt went ballistic.

  The other boy has a black eye and a mouthful of playground sand. Did I mention I went to school with his mom? Super awkward small-town life.

  Colt has a week of detention, which Maisie is demanding she serve with him. They’re five years old. FIVE YEARS OLD, Chaos. This is kindergarten. How the hell am I going to survive the teen years?

  Ugh. That’s all for today. Parenting sucks.

  ~ Ella

  …

  My alarm went off, and I was up and running. Literally. I hit the six-mile mark along the Solitude grounds, showered, and went into work, which was now completely volunteer-based since I signed Donahue’s papers. There I ran Havoc through some drills and worked her on the rappelling harness.

  It was a pretty typical Friday.

  Except today was adoption day, and that changed everything.

  Jeff had signed the papers a little over a month ago, and we’d found out a few days ago that today was the day. Every day had been a grueling wait, but my insurance had let me enroll the kids based on the pending adoption paperwork, which meant in two weeks, they would be covered. And in a month, Maisie could get her first MIBG therapy.

  I parked the truck in front of the main house, and Havoc and I nodded to the new guests as we walked inside. The summer was bustling with business, and Ella was busy tending to customers and placating the picky ones. I guess the words “luxury accommodations” was the signal for assholes to emerge from the general population.

  Oh, look, she was dealing with another one.

  Havoc and I waited just inside the double doors as a woman in her midfifties was shaking her head at Ella.

  “And that’s just not what we were looking for. I specifically asked for lakeside, and we’re facing a very lovely view, but it’s certainly not water!”

  Ella looked over the woman’s shoulder at me midlecture, and I sent her a consoling look. At least I hope it was consoling, because she almost giggled.

  She motioned with her head toward the back, and I took the cue. I walked Havoc through the main house, spotting Hailey at the desk and Ada in her glory, putting fresh-baked cookies on the table. We made our way to the back and opened the door to the residence.

  “Beckett!” Maisie came running around the corner, and I caught her before she skidded into the wall. “You have to help me! Colt has the best hiding place, and I can’t find him! It’s not fair! He can run faster, and he knows it!”

  It was amazing what a month off chemo had done for her energy level.

  “How long have you been looking?”

  “Forever!” She dragged out the word to make sure I understood exactly how long forever was.

  I gave her a look, and she relented.

  “Twenty minutes.”

  “Man, that is forever,” I agreed. “Want to find him super quick?”

  “Yes!” She jumped up and down.

  “Ready?” I asked her as I stood.

  “Yes!” she repeated, still jumping. Man, if I could bottle that energy, I would be a very rich man.

  “Havoc, sit.”

  Havoc sat, looking up at me for my next command. She’d heard the tone and knew it was time to work. Plus, I wanted to experiment a little.

  “Seek Colt.”

  She was off like a shot, sniffing the ground around the living room, the dining room, and then bolting up the stairs.

  “You’d better follow her, Maisie.”

  Maisie took off at a dead run just as Ella opened the door, quickly stepped inside, and shut it. Then she leaned back against the wood, letting her shoulders sag.

  “Was that my daughter impersonating a track star?” she asked, her tone more than tired.

  “It was. She’s with Havoc. Apparently she feels that Colt used his health as an unfair advantage in the hide-and-seek game, so I’m leveling the playing field.”

  Right on time, Havoc barked, and there was a small thud and a series of loud laughs.

  “Not fair! That’s cheating!” Colt yelled.

  There was an avalanche of footfalls down the stairs, and the three of them appeared in the hallway.

  “Good girl,” I told Havoc, who trotted over to accept the last treat I had in my pocket from our earlier session.

  “Can we go outside? Please?” Maisie asked.

  Ella bit her lip.

  “Please?” Colt begged, making it the longest word on earth.

  “Okay. Just stay away from the guests, and be safe,” Ella relented. “And take a hat!”

  “Havoc, stay with Colt and Maisie.” The trio ran out the back door before Ella could change her mind.

  “It’s like having her back,” Ella said with a sigh. “Off the chemo, she’s so energetic and happy and has a great appetite. With her levels up, she can just be a kid for a second. I’m glad we have this month before the MIBG treatment.”

  “Me, too.”

  Ella pushed off the door and walked to the window, pulling the curtain aside to watch the kids play in the field just behind the house. “I never worry about Havoc with them. Is that weird? I saw her go all growly on Jeff’s parents, and I still don’t worry.”

  I came up next to her, our shoulders touching, watching Havoc leap and chase the toy Colt had thrown. “I’d told her to protect them. Usually I say to stay with them, but we were on the street, and I said protect. She’d still kill anyone who messed with them right now, but not a kid or a guest or someone who didn’t have that tension she picks up on. When I say ‘protect,’ that puts her on alert. Right now, she’s just playing with them.”

  “She’s amazing.”

  “She’s changed a lot since we left the unit. While she was working, she was kenneled, trained, handled by me, but she didn’t really get dog time. Even on deployments, she slept with me, worked with me, and never left my side, but still, no real dog time. Here, she works, but she’s learned to be safe with the kids and the guests.”

  “She’s domesticating,” Ella said with a smile, then nudged my shoulder. “Like someone else I know.”

  I laughed. “You ready for this afternoon?”

  “Yeah,” she said with an enthusiastic nod. “How about you?”

  “Nervous, humbled, happy, in sheer awe of the level of responsibility that comes with tiny humans.”

  She looked up at me with tired but happy eyes. “Says every new father ever.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Me, either. Guess we’ll figure it out together. Hard to believe this was our home, I’m so used to living in the cabin now.”

  “Think you’ll return once it’s safe for Maisie?”

  “I honestly don
’t know. I really like living at the cabin and having that privacy, that line between home and work. Living here, I was always at work.” She rubbed her forehead with her fingers and then tightened her ponytail.

  “You okay? I mean, don’t smack me for male stupidity, but you look a little tired.”

  She turned around, sitting on the window seat. “That’s because I am tired. Maybe it’s because Maisie only has scans this month, so my brain can take a little break from the normal insanity, and everything else just catches up.”

  “What can I do?”

  “You’re adopting my kids today so my daughter doesn’t die. I think that fulfills every requirement you could ever dream up.”

  “I’m not just doing it for Ryan,” I started, but stopped when the door to the residence opened and Hailey raced in, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright.

  “Conner Williamson just asked me out!” she exclaimed.

  “No way!” Ella jumped up.

  “Right? I’ve only been crushing on him since when? The ninth grade?” She spun in the middle of the floor, her arms outstretched. “Conner Williamson asked me out!”

  Ella laughed. “I’m so happy for you!”

  Hailey ran over and hugged her. “This is it! I just know it! He’s going to fall madly in love with me, and we’re going to get married and have babies and it’s going to be perfect!”

  “Yeah, it is!” Ella agreed.

  I saw something twist in her face, like her joy had somehow morphed into a panic-laced sorrow.

  “Is it okay if I take off an hour early tomorrow?” she asked, pulling back with her hands on Ella’s shoulders.

  “Totally!” Ella forced a smile, and I might have believed it if I hadn’t seen her slip.

  “Thanks!” Hailey squeezed Ella again and danced away, spinning for good measure near the door and leaving.

  “Ella,” I said softly, stepping in front of her so she couldn’t run away.

  “What?” She shrugged and tried her damnedest to fake a smile, but her bottom lip trembled.

  “What’s going on? And don’t say nothing.” I gently took her shoulders in my hands.

  She shrugged. “I’m fine.”

  “Ella, in five hours we’re about to share children. And yeah, I get it. I’m not really their dad, just the insurance provider, but don’t you think we have to be able to be honest with each other? The good, the bad, the exhausted.”

  “She’s so excited.” Her voice was a whisper.

  “Yes.”

  “And I can’t remember what that feels like anymore. To get that excited. To be asked out on a date. I mean, it’s been seven years. Seven, Beckett.” She clasped my biceps, her nails no doubt leaving half-moons in my skin. “I’m pretty sure my virginity has regrown, that’s how long it’s been.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think that’s how that works…”

  “And I love my life. I love Colt and Maisie and this business. I’m proud of my choices, you know? I’m proud of them!” Her voice pitched upward.

  “As you should be.”

  “And everything with Maisie. That’s all I think about lately. I mean, it’s July, right? So it’s been nine months since she was diagnosed. Nine months. And I will do anything to make sure she lives—”

  “Like let me adopt her,” I interjected, thinking it would help.

  “Exactly! Like find the sexiest, most infuriating, addictive man I’ve ever set eyes on and then shove him not into the friend zone, but the brother’s friend zone, and then catapult him into the daddy zone, where, get this—he’s still untouchable.”

  A rush of heat slammed through my body. I’d done so well keeping my hands to myself since our almost-disaster on the couch. I’d run six miles a day, taken cold showers, swam in the lake, you name it, all with the intention of keeping my hands off Ella, and with one tirade, she had me teetering on the edge of self-control. It had been almost a year since I’d had sex, and my body was reminding me in a very hard, very painful way that the only woman I wanted was standing in front of me, complaining that I was in the friend zone.

  “Okay, stop. You didn’t shove me into the friend zone; I put myself there. And the daddy zone, too. That’s on me. Not on you.”

  “Then you’re stupid!” she yelled, her eyes alight with the cutest indignation. “I mean, the friend zone, not the dad stuff.”

  “You’re so cute.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  Oh damn, wrong choice of words.

  “Cute? I’m cute? No, that’s the issue. I haven’t had my hair cut in a year, do you know how that feels? It’s not the hair—I’m not that vain—it’s the time, Beckett. The time it takes to invest in yourself as a woman, and I’m not a woman anymore. I abandoned my makeup, my Sunday-night candle baths, I haven’t slept a full night since Maisie’s diagnosis, and I’ve been stuck wearing pants for a month because I haven’t shaved my legs.”

  “I like you in pants.”

  “That’s not the point! It’s July, Beckett! July is for shorts and hikes and suntans, and being kissed under the moonlight. And I’m in jeans with no kisses, and my legs look like a Yeti somewhere in the Himalayas lent me his coat!”

  “Wow, that’s…really visual.” Don’t laugh. Do. Not. Laugh.

  Oh yeah, those nails were leaving marks.

  “I’m not a woman anymore. I’m a mom. A mom who can’t be anything other than a mom because her kid might not live through the year.” She deflated like a popped balloon, her hands leaving my biceps and her head landing with a small thud against my chest. “God, I’m selfish.”

  I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her in tight. “You’re not selfish. You’re human.”

  “Hair doesn’t matter. Not on my legs or on my head. Not when Maisie doesn’t even have any. I told you, we get a month of downtime, and my brain just runs amok on crap that doesn’t matter.” She mumbled the words into my chest.

  “It matters because you matter. You know when you’re on an airplane, and they tell you to put the oxygen mask on you first before your kids? This is that. If you only put the oxygen on your kid, then you pass out and can’t help them. Every once in a while, you have to take a breath, Ella, or you’re going to suffocate.”

  “I’m okay. I just needed to get that out.”

  “I know you are, and I can take it.”

  She pulled back an inch and gave me a sexy-as-hell smirk.

  “What?” I was almost afraid of her answer.

  “Oh, nothing. It just doesn’t feel like I’m in the friend zone.” She shrugged.

  Oh shit, I was hard, and I’d yanked her right against me.

  “I never said I didn’t want you, Ella. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure I said the opposite. Nothing’s changed.”

  She blew a long breath out through her lips, moving a strand of blond hair that had slipped free of her ponytail. “Yeah, and it doesn’t matter anyway. Hairy legs and all.”

  “You’re killing me.” I took her hand and turned around, then left the residence with her in tow, winding our way to the front desk where Hailey was handling paperwork of some kind. “Hailey.”

  “Beckett,” she said in a mock-serious voice.

  “Take Ella right now to get her hair cut. Get her a massage, a seaweed bath, or whatever it is you girls like to do. Paint toenails, get new clothes, all of it. You have five hours, and then I need her at the courthouse. Can you do that?”

  “Beckett—” Ella objected.

  “Stop,” I pleaded. “You’re giving me the gift of your kids. Let me give you a few hours. And afterward, we’ll go out. To an actual restaurant with actual menus and no crayons on the table. No lawyers. No kids. Just us. And you’ll feel as pretty as you always are to me.”

  “Ella, if you don’t jump this guy, I will,” Hailey stated.

  Ella silenced her wi
th a glare. “Hailey has to work.”

  “I’ll handle the phones and guests,” I offered.

  “You will?” Ella scrunched her mouth to the side just like Maisie. “And you won’t kill anyone who annoys you?”

  “I will do my best to leave your business intact.” I pulled out my wallet and then handed Hailey my credit card. “Don’t give this to Ella, she won’t use it. Please go make her feel like a woman.”

  “This is going to be so much fun!” Hailey skipped out from behind the front desk. “I’ll grab my purse, and then we’ll go!”

  “And I’ll keep an eye on the littles,” Ada chimed in, having caught the end of the exchange. “I’ll put them to bed, too. You kids stay out as long as you like.” She shouted the last part as she walked back toward the kitchen.

  “Are you sure?” Ella asked me.

  God, she was so beautiful. I took her hand and pulled her into an alcove just off the front hall. “You’re stunning. You don’t need makeup. There has never been a moment since I met you that I saw you as anything less than an incredible, exquisitely beautiful woman. But I understand that you don’t feel the way I see you. So yes, I’m sure.”

  “You’re always taking care of me,” she whispered.

  I gave in to impulse, letting my thumb slide across the soft, flawless skin of her cheek. “That’s the idea.” We were too close, the air too charged, and I loved this woman too much to keep a cool head. Before I inevitably pinned her to the wall and proved to her that virginity didn’t just regrow, I needed to let her go. “I’ll see you at the courthouse at four thirty,” I promised. Then I lifted her hand, flipped it over, and pressed a long, soft kiss directly to the center of her palm, wishing more than anything that it was her mouth.

  Her breath caught as I closed her grip, like she could hold on to the kiss.

  “What was that for?”

  “To prove that I don’t give a crap about hairy legs. Plus, now it hasn’t been seven years since you’ve been kissed.”

  Her lips parted, and her gaze dropped to my mouth.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  I wasn’t sure need was even the appropriate word for how badly I wanted Ella anymore. It was a constant ache that simply existed as my normal. Before I could do anything else I might regret later, I stepped out into the entry hall.