The Cruelest Stranger

by Winter Renshaw

  “Yay!” Honor bounces in her seat before stabbing another forkful of mac and cheese. There’s simplicity and wholesomeness in being around her, and I get the impression those are exactly the kinds of things I’d been missing all my life. “I lovvvve Ms. Carraro so much!”

  I sniff a laugh before sipping my bourbon. “Me too, kid. Me too.”

  45

  Astaire

  “Ms. Carraro, guess what?” Honor says from the back of my car Tuesday afternoon. It seemed redundant to send Eulalia to take her home today since I was planning to come over anyway. “Guess what, guess what?”

  “What, what, what?” I match her excitement with my own, grinning back at her in the rearview mirror.

  “Uncle Bennett loves you!”

  I come to a hard stop at the red light ahead. I’ve worked with kids long enough to know that you never know what’s going to come out of their mouths.

  But I’ve also worked with them long enough to know that most of the time, they’re parroting something they’ve heard someone say.

  “Did you hear what I said, Ms. Carraro? Uncle Bennett loves you,” she says.

  “Yes, sweetheart. I heard you.” I grip the wheel at ten and two, heart racing. “Wh … when did he say that?”

  Everything’s happening so fast.

  “Last night. At dinner.” The zip of her backpack follows, then the rustle of paper as she keeps herself busy.

  “What did he say? Exactly?” I pull into the parking garage of his building.

  “I don’t know … I said I love Ms. Carraro and he said me too.” She states it as fact. “Do you love him?”

  The only other man I’ve ever loved was Trevor, and it took each of us a year to muster up the courage to say that word.

  Love isn’t a word I toss around lightly.

  It isn’t something I tend to try to rush either.

  “Do you love him, Ms. Carraro?” she asks again.

  They say the truest definition of love is wanting the happiness for others more than you want it for yourself.

  And if I’m being honest with myself, I can’t go more than a handful of minutes without my mind wandering to Bennett, wondering what he’s doing, replaying a sexy shared moment, daydreaming about his touch, counting down the hours until I see him again …

  Would I be able to walk away now and not miss him? Not feel a thing? Never look back?

  No. Not even close.

  I park the car and help Honor out, locking up as we head to the elevator.

  “Yes, Honor.” I press the call button. “I love him too.”

  “Uncle Bennett, we’re home!” Honor drops her bookbag by the foyer rug, kicks off her shoes, and dashes into the next room, her footsteps pattering around as she searches for Bennett.

  I slide his spare key into my bag. It was last weekend when he surprised me with it. The thing was shiny, pristine, clearly never used before.

  My head spins when I think about how fast everything’s moving, but as long as I’m enjoying the ride, maybe it doesn’t matter?

  Sometimes when you know, you know.

  “Uncle Bennett, where are you?” Honor trots across the foyer, going the other direction.

  “In the study,” he calls from the hall.

  I follow her to his leather, cedar, book-scented room and lean against the doorway, watching as she runs to his arms.

  “Did you have a nice day at school, Honor?” He’s so proper with her, speaking to her like a miniature adult and not in some cutesy baby voice I hear a lot of parents use.

  “The best,” she says. “And Uncle Bennett, guess what?”

  “What?” he asks, eyes lit.

  She turns to me, pointing, giggling. “Ms. Carraro loves you!”

  His amused expression falls. Heat singes my cheeks as his gaze searches mine.

  There’s always a chance children misinterpret what they hear or put things into their own words. I should have given her a vague answer, told her I would discuss it with her uncle in private, but I was caught off guard, distracted by this supposed revelation.

  Bennett rises from his desk. “Is that so, Honor? She told you she loved me?”

  “Honor, why don’t you go wash up and play for a bit before dinner?” I tell her.

  She skips out of the room. A moment later, her bedroom door opens and closes.

  “She told me you said it first,” I say. “But kids take things out of context sometimes, so …”

  “I said it.” He moves toward me. “And she didn’t take it out of context. Though I’d hoped you’d get to hear it from me first …”

  “You’ll learn quickly that kids repeat everything …” I chuckle.

  He closes the space between us, takes my face in his strong hands, and lowers his mouth to mine, bridging the painfully long forty-eight hours since the last one.

  I inhale his intoxicating scent, revel in the way it mixes with the scent of paper and leather and polished wood, and I melt against him.

  “I love you, Astaire.” His lips graze mine when he comes up for air.

  “I love you, too.”

  He wraps me in his arms, and I press my cheek against his chest. Trevor’s heart—Bennett’s heart—strums in perfect rhythm.

  When I was twenty-two, Trevor took me to my first theme park. I’d never been on a rollercoaster until that day, and he took me on this ridiculously extreme snake-themed hyper-coaster that went from zero to sixty in three seconds and had one of the world’s tallest peaks and steepest drops.

  I’d never held on so tight in my life.

  Screamed at the top of my lungs.

  And there were moments I was certain I was going to die before we got to the end.

  But when it was over, there was this rush, this sense of calm, this strange sense of accomplishment, like I’d conquered some insanely terrifying monster—and that it was never the coaster I was scared of because the coaster was perfectly safe … it was my beliefs about the coaster.

  In my head, I’d convinced myself it was dangerous, that it could hurt me.

  Maybe this thing with Bennett is happening fast, maybe it’s terrifying, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s the best thing about it. And I’m willing to bet it’s just as paralyzing to him as it is to me—but as long as we have each other, we’ll arrive safely together in the end.

  The flames in the fireplace flicker, the mantel clock ticks.

  Bennett flicks a page in his book.

  Honor snaps a cardboard piece into her Dora puzzle, hair wet from her bath and smelling like vanilla and apricots and dressed in head-to-toe Minnie Mouse. It’s time to put her to bed, but I’m milking every last second of this moment.

  Bennett closes his book, watching Honor. I don’t think he realizes it, but he’s smiling.

  He does that a lot now—smiles.

  Before it was rare. Now it’s constant. It’s like this sweet little thing just waltzed into his life and put his soul a little more at ease, giving him a chance to make things right for Larissa.

  “This is what it’s all about,” I say. “Everyone always focuses on the big things. The huge events you can stamp a date on. Birthdays. Anniversaries. Graduations. Milestones. But this is what matters. The precious little moments between the big ones. Think about it. No one ever wants to relive their graduation or some arbitrary birthday. But I guarantee you, if you gave someone a chance to relive a perfectly ordinary day, they’d do it in a heartbeat.”

  He takes my hand and pulls me against him. He says nothing, and he lets my words fall where they may as he watches this new version of his life play out before him.

  “We should probably get her to bed,” I whisper.

  “Right.” He rises, places his book aside. “Honor, why don’t you put your puzzle away and meet me in your room for a story?”

  I make my way to his room to get ready for bed. Last weekend, he cleared out a few drawers for me as well as some space in his bathroom—that paired with the key he gave me, and he’s a
ll but asked me to move in with him.

  I don’t think I would, though.

  One thing at a time.

  I tie my hair up, wash my face, brush my teeth, and slip into one of his t-shirts before climbing beneath the cool, slick sheets of Bennett’s enormous bed.

  Less than five minutes later, he joins me.

  “She’s out.” He slides in next to me, drawing me into his arms. “Didn’t even get to finish the book before she was snoring. Didn’t think the book was that dull, though I will say it was noticeably repetitive in parts.”

  “Most children’s books are …”

  I roll to my side and hook my arm over his chest, inhaling the bleached cotton scent of his crisp t-shirt as it mixes with the faded cologne on his warm skin.

  “I don’t know how much time I have left, Astaire …” His chest rises and falls, and in the dark, I see the whites of eyes, gaze fixated on the ceiling above. “Could be a year or nine years or thirty-three …”

  “Let’s try not to think about that.”

  “We don’t have a choice, Astaire. We can’t ignore the fact that my … life … is a ticking timebomb.”

  I press my ear against his chest, close my eyes, and listen. The strong thump on the other side fills me with hope.

  “Before I met you, before any of this … it never mattered to me. The future never mattered to me. But now … it’s all I think about,” he says. “I want the fireplace and puzzles and bedtime stories. I want the meaningful little things. The quiet nights. My life was void of meaning until I met you, Astaire. I can never go back to that.”

  His heart beats faster now, trotting to a gallop.

  “I want to come home to you every night. I want to sleep next to you, always. I want to talk about our days. I want to teach Honor what love, real love, looks like. What it means to be a family.” He cups my face in his hand and tilts it upward.

  I open my eyes, breath catching with each inhalation. “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m asking you to do life with me, Astaire.”

  There’s no ring. He isn’t on bended knee. And there’s no mention of marriage. But in its own way, what he’s asking of me is so much bigger than any of that.

  “So what do you say?” He pulls me into his lap, sits up, and clicks the lamp on beside us. “Are you in?”

  His gaze surveys mine, his breath slow and steady, patient—unfitting for a man who doesn’t have all the time in the world.

  I don’t how this is going to end, but I can’t imagine walking away from the beautiful life we could have together, be it tragically brief or wonderfully everlasting.

  “I’m in,” I say through clouded vision.

  His mouth arches at the sides and he claims my mouth with a kiss that sends tingles from the top of my head to the bottoms of my feet. My lips part to accept his tongue, and I slip my hands over his shoulders. A moment later, he’s peeling his t-shirt off my shoulders. The outline of his cock grows harder, thicker as our mouths connect and I grind against him.

  Sliding the gusset of my panties aside, he slips a finger between my seam, teasing my clit before pushing it deeper inside me.

  But I want more.

  I want his heat filling the ache between my thighs.

  I stifle a moan before whispering into his ear, all but begging him to have his way with me.

  His kisses turn biting and greedy as he flips me onto my back and shoves my panties the rest of the way down. And his mouth grazes mine before he moves south, teasing a pert nipple with his tongue as his fingertips trail my inner thighs and stop at the apex.

  I pull him close, reaching for his cock and freeing it from the confines of his low-slung navy sweats. He fills my palm, hot and hard, pulsing with matched desire.

  “I want you so bad …” I grind beneath him, impatient and willing.

  Our eyes catch in the dark.

  “I’m on the pill …” I remind him.

  Bennett slides his hands beneath my ass, pressing his hardness against my wetness, and flips us over, until I’m straddling him and he’s got the million-dollar view.

  “Show me how bad you want me.” There’s a glint in his shadowy eyes and a tease in his tone.

  I rock my hips over his throbbing erection, teasing him back, and then I slide myself over his length, slow inch by torturing inch, until he fills me to the hilt. His hands search my body before settling at my hips, and I rock back and forth, fully intending to ride this out to the end—in every sense of the word.

  I love this man.

  I love him, I love him, I love him.

  46

  Bennett

  “You sitting down?” My attorney asks Wednesday afternoon. “I’ve got some news.”

  “What’s going on?”

  James breathes heavy into the other end. “Your brother has filed a suit to establish paternity.”

  I sink into my desk chair, eyeing the drawer containing the stack of text transcripts. With everything going on this past week, I hadn’t had a chance to figure out exactly how I intended to use them, but now I know.

  “Thanks for the information.” I try to end the call, but James protests. “James, it’s fine. I’ve got this. I’ll call you if I need anything else.”

  I press the red button, pull up my contacts, and select Errol’s name. The line rings three times before the bastard answers.

  “Come over,” I say. “We need to talk.”

  “Thought that would get your attention.” Errol’s been standing in my doorway for a mere five seconds when I’m forced to restrain myself from knocking him to the floor. While I’d love to give him the beating he deserves, I invited him here for a discussion. For now, I’ll have to replay the fond memory of breaking his nose in the pool house back in high school, when I caught him trying to take advantage of some drunk girl from Worthington Heights High who was two seconds from blacking out and clearly unable to consent.

  Besides, I’m not in the mood to wipe his pathetic blood off my foyer floor.

  “Follow me. There’s something I need to show you.” I stride to my study, shoulders back, head high. My head swells with confidence because I’ve got the bastard and now he’s going to pay.

  “What? What’s this about?” Errol asks when he steps inside.

  I yank the transcripts from my top desk drawer and shove them at him. “Any of this look familiar to you?”

  He straightens the stack, eyes narrowing as they glide over the disgusting discourse.

  “What is this made-up garbage?”

  “This garbage is proof of the sordid affair you led with your adopted sister. And while it’s merely a snapshot of your disgusting perversion, there’s more than enough evidence to show you’d been grooming her, you psychologically and emotionally abused her, you manipulated her, and you knew damn well about the pregnancy.” I point to the stack. “I’m sure Beth would love to read the sweet and wonderful things you said about her when you were nailing your sister behind her back.”

  Errol stares at the papers, but his eyes stop scanning. He’s lost in thought, it would seem. His complexion tints a sickly shade of grey, his lips pressing flat, like he could be sick at any moment.

  I always knew my mother’s intentions in keeping Honor out of this family, but I realize now that I had it all wrong with Errol. He wasn’t trying to protect his marriage so much as he was trying to erase any and all reminders of the man he is inside.

  The sick, sordid monster of a man.

  The part of him he hates.

  And even if he were never to see Honor again (and he won’t), knowing that his younger brother is raising her, doing the right thing—would kill him. It would eat away at him, little by little, day by day.

  “Little backstory for you,” I say, relishing in the opportunity to kick the man when he’s down. “Since no one in this family ever thought to throw the poor girl a bone, I had the decency to at least provide her with a cell phone. For safety reasons. Since I owned the line, all it took w
as a few phone calls and the carrier was able to provide me with transcripts of every message—text and picture—sent between the two of you. It’s all here. Every twisted little secret you thought you could bury.”

  My words are ripe with self-righteousness, and I couldn’t care less.

  “I’ve got everything in an email. I’m literally a single click away from sending this to your wife, to our mother, to literally anyone who might find any of this salacious enough to write a cover story or make a newspaper headline out of it,” I say. “Your life, as you know it, would be over, Errol. No beautiful, loyal wife. No infant son. No check-writing mother to afford your cushy lifestyle. No robust social circle. No one buying your art. No more reaping the benefits of your last name. You’d be a laughingstock, a joke. For the rest of your life.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “I would.”

  “You’d do that to the kid? Put her through all of that?”

  “If it means protecting her from you and our mother, then yes.” I come around the desk, closing the distance between us, nose to nose. “I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

  “Speaking of heartbeats,” he says, squinting, “I hear you haven’t been doing too well lately.”

  My gaze narrows. “I know exactly what you’re getting at, Errol, and it’s irrelevant to this discussion. Do me a favor and let’s stay on track. I’ve got more important things than you to tend to this afternoon.”

  I check the clock. Honor and Eulalia should be home from school any minute, and I don’t want him near either of them.

  “So what’ll it be, Errol?” I ask. “Knowing that I can take your house of cards down with the click of a button, do you still feel the need to move forward with your ridiculous paternity suit? Or are you going to do the right thing for once in your pathetic life?”

  “Get over yourself,” he spits.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t stand there and talk like you’re that much better than me. You’re thirty years old, but you might as well be a miserable old man. You think saving this kid and giving her some privileged life is going to redeem you? Erase all the shitty things you’ve done? Not how it works, Bennett.”