She sucked in a breath and I’d never been so fucking jealous of air. It got buried so deep inside her, down where I wanted to be, the place where I wouldn’t have to leave.
She wanted this just as badly as I did. And it was even more reason why I shouldn’t.
I couldn’t have everything, but I could have this. Closing the distance to her mouth, I branded my lips against hers and kept her hostage. It wasn’t a kiss. It was a conquest.
I was the fucking King of this Cold Castle, living behind my fancy walls, wearing my crown of ice. And to make her understand exactly who had the final word, I held her head steady as my mouth carved my next words into her skin.
“No more questions,” I repeated back onto those same lips that had spoken them to me, forcing them to swallow their mandate.
When she jerked her head away just like she should have, I knew I’d won. I knew she wouldn’t trade her secrets for mine.
“What do I need to do?” her strangled voice asked. She wasn’t looking at me. I watched as she kept her gaze focused out the window that was half blocked by a giant ivy vine that had drooped. I refused to let the gardener cut them.
“Teach her. Whatever it is you do at the daycare, just do it here.”
She huffed, the simple sound teasing my arousal. “I understand that. But when? What days? Times? Am I going to have to quit my job? I mean—” She broke off with a strained laugh.
“Yes. Of course, you will be paid,” I answered her unfinished question first. “Whatever the daycare pays you, I’ll double it. Triple on weekends.”
“Weekends?”
“Is that a problem?” I raised an eyebrow. “Do you have a secret weekend boyfriend that you can’t get away from?”
“No,” she clipped and gave me her best scolding stare.
“I may not need you on weekends, but I just wanted to see what you’d say.” And now I knew that she was willing to give up her weekends for my daughter. Or for me. “I want you here every day. Just for a few hours—morning or afternoon, whichever you prefer—every day.”
“I-I’ll need a few days to give some notice,” she said. “If I’m cutting back my hours, I need to make sure that they have coverage. I can be here in the afternoon—that would work best.”
“Whatever you want,” I murmured, not ready to admit how relieved I was that she would be here for Lila.
I watched Tammy swallow nervously before she said, “I’ll start next week.”
I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement, so I nodded, lost in the moment of watching her respond to all of this. Her brain was flying through a list of a million things—a million ways to organize the chaos that I’d just dumped on her life. She was drowning in it and yet she still stood tall, breathing calmly as though each breath wasn’t taking her closer to her last.
She stepped toward the door. “I should go. I guess I have some things to prepare…”
“Whatever you need, I can give you my card to buy it.”
She nodded, turning to walk away before she stopped herself. “Nick.”
Fuck the way she said my name…
“W-what happened the other day…” She bit into her lip preventing the rest of the words from coming out.
“I know,” I rasped. To date, those were the hardest two words I’d ever said.
I knew that it couldn’t happen again.
I also knew that money didn’t grow on trees and that happily-ever-afters were only for fairy tales. But that didn’t stop me from wanting them or needing her.
She was good and perfect in the way that meant either she could heal me or my darkness would completely destroy her.
I held the door open as she walked out of my house for the second time in as many weeks, resisting the familiar urge to yank her back and carry her upstairs to my bed.
Fuck. I was as hard as a rock. Yeah, I needed her for Lila. But I fucking needed her for me, too. And now, more than ever, I couldn’t have her.
If anyone found out that I was fucking my daughter’s tutor, well, everything that I’d worked so fucking hard for would disintegrate into shit. They would take her from me, and I would be fucking trapped here forever.
I needed Tamsin Lucas. I needed her to save me.
JESSA
Dinner and a movie tonight at my place! No boys allowed.
ALLY
Where’s Chance?!
JESSA
He went with Channing and Wyatt into the city for some course and then to interview several candidates for other positions at the school. They are opening enrollment next month.
ALLY
Oh WOW! That’s awesome!!
JESSA
Earth to Tammy?
…
Did Frost freeze you again?
ALLY
LOL
Thirty minutes later
TAMMY
Sorry, I was in a meeting.
JESSA
At the doctor?
TAMMY
No… with my boss.
JESSA
Ok, you are coming over. I don’t care if I have to come pick you up and every freakin’ pillow on your dang couch.
TAMMY
If we could leave my pillows out of this, I will come willingly.
ALLY
ROFL!!!
JESSA
Come over whenever. I’m putting the food in now. It’s a surprise. Please don’t make me eat it all alone.
They could always make me laugh even when I wanted to cry. And they could still make me laugh even when I wanted to be mad at them.
I’d kept silent in our chat after what happened at Nick’s the other day. My stomach was rolling with the fact that they knew what losing Lila had done to me and they still hadn’t said anything. They’d let me suffer… thinking the worst…
Okay, I was being a bit dramatic.
I knew it wasn’t their secret to tell. I knew from the look on Nick’s face that hell would have been paradise compared to what he would do if they spoke a word. It made sense that I was left out. Ally and Jessa were dating his best friends; I was the odd one out. Still, it stung.
I didn’t know how to bring it up, so I kept to myself—which wasn’t that hard considering the new pile of chaos that had been dumped over my head.
My body was still recovering from the anxiety over meeting with Cindy to let her know that I was going to have to cut back my hours for the foreseeable future. I looked at Open Hearts as a part of me; she looked at me like another employee—albeit ‘one of her best.’ I always struggled to accept when others didn’t care like I did. I just wasn’t sure if that was my failing or theirs.
The rest of this week had been a whirlwind getting through the hurdles of cutting back my hours.
Hurdle number one: Without giving her all the details—and fudging some of the ones that I did—I told Becca that Lila’s dad had reached out and asked me to privately tutor her part-time during the week. She’d been both sad that I wouldn’t see her as much and thrilled that I’d finally gotten not only closure but an opportunity to still work with Lila. She was the reason I’d picked afternoons to be at Nick’s; the daycare was more manageable in the afternoon for Becca to handle on her own.
Hurdle number two: My appointment with the oncologist had mercifully snuck up on me with everything else on my mind. Chemo, surgery, maybe more chemo. I had papers and schedules neatly organized for me of the battle plan against my revolting body. Weekly appointments would be on Thursday mornings. Surgery would be scheduled in six weeks if I survived working at Nick’s for that long. I managed to hold it all together with my patented brand of emotional duct-tape and the fact that I was more concerned about Lila than I was for myself.
Hurdle number three: Telling Cindy. This—thankfully—had been the easiest. I told her about my diagnosis, the treatment, and the gist of my immediate future. Strangely, revealing all of that felt less intrusive than explaining the responsibility I felt for Lila—and definitely less than the unquench
able need I felt for her father.
“Hello,” I called into the Ryder house.
“We’re back here!” Jessa yelled.
As soon as I stepped through the door, the scent of her candles assaulted me. Vanilla and lavender. The house had changed since Jessa and Chance began living here; it began to feel more like a home—a quality that was lost incrementally after the Ryders left with Ally, then Chance disappeared to Los Angeles. Now, it felt whole and home again. I wished I could remember to light candles more often. Maybe that would help me feel at home in my body once more.
“Hey,” I greeted as I set my bag down on the countertop.
“I made lasagna!” Jessa exclaimed as she opened the oven and a whole new scent overwhelmed me—the sweetness of tomatoes mixed with warm, bubbling cheese.
“Oh my God, Jess, I’m drooling over here,” Ally chimed in as she came over and gave me a hug. “Please teach me how to make this. Emmett would die.”
“I’m pretty sure you could feed that man rocks and he would still think that you hung the sun.”
Ally rolled her eyes, but the flush in her cheeks said how right Jessa was.
“Alright, Tam. Spill the beans.”
I felt like that kid who’d copied the answers to the math homework from someone else and was now being called on to explain them. I’d never been that kid, but this is what I imagined it felt like.
“About what?” I asked nervously.
She paused from cutting up the lasagna, steam puffing from its surface. “You said you had to meet with the oncologist this week? What did you think?”
Busted.
“Right.” I sighed. “Let’s start there. The rest needs to wait until after I eat.”
I needed to talk to them about Lila. Even though I knew why they’d kept this from me, I needed to hear from them.
“Ooo. Oh man, please tell me you got Frosted again!” Ally exclaimed, taking her plate from Jessa’s outstretched hand.
“No. I mean… No, I didn’t.”
“Crap, now I’m so curious. But yeah, you need to tell us about the doctor’s first. We’re all in this together. Let us help take care of you.”
It was no secret that I’d claimed the responsibility of being the caretaker of the group, like when I cleaned up after them, when I made sure to drive them home even if they only had one drink, when I made sure that Ally didn’t kill herself on the mountain, and when I made sure that Jessa always had a lunch to take with her to work.
“Thanks,” I murmured, taking my plate from Jessa. We all took seats around the island and dove into the most delicious, melt-in-your-mouth lasagna we’d ever had. Good food made life a little easier.
As succinctly as I could, I filled in my girls about what Dr. Rohatgi had said and what was next for me.
“If you are doing the chemo first, will they still have to do surgery?”
I nodded. There was no escaping surgery at this point. “I’ll find out in the next week or two the exact date my surgery is scheduled for.” There was a slim chance—less than five percent—Dr. Rohatgi had said that he may not have to take out everything down there. I wasn’t fool enough to hang all the weight of my dreams on such a thin strand of hope so, I buried that fact from myself and from them, too; they would cling to it for me. I didn’t want my body to let everyone down again.
“I’ll take you to the doctor on Thursday. I finish early,” Jessa said, taking my empty plate with hers over to the sink.
“You don’t have—”
“Wasn’t a question, Tam,” she cut me off sweetly.
“Alright, so what else? What happened with Frost?” Ally pressed.
My gaze fell, the unwelcome sense of betrayal calling like an obnoxious telemarketer refusing to take ‘no, thank you’ for an answer.
“Uh oh…” Jessa said, grabbing a can of La Croix from the fridge and sitting back down.
“Can I have one?” I asked, licking my lips.
“Sure—pineapple strawberry or lime?”
“Lime.”
Taking the can from her, I toyed with the cap. “When were you going to tell me that Nick had a kid?” The sound of their hearts stopping was like a screeching attempt to avoid rear-ending someone on the highway. Too bad they’d already hit me in the back. “When were you going to tell me that he’s Lila’s father?”
“Oh, Tammy,” Ally said with a strangled sob. “I’m so sorry.”
“How could you have known this whole time—”
“We didn’t!” they rushed to exclaim at the same time.
“We only found out the day that… Chance found out that I’d lost our baby,” Jessa explained calmly even though I could see she felt just as horrible as Ally sounded.
“He said we couldn’t tell anyone. He hadn’t planned on telling us. But he showed up with Lila one day and he didn’t know that Jessa was living here and he didn’t know that I was coming over to pick up stuff. It was all by chance, I swear,” Ally rambled as tears overflowed from her eyes.
Immediately, I began to be able to breathe again, hearing that they hadn’t known for that long—that they hadn’t been purposely brought in.
“You haven’t said anything about Lila recently,” Jessa continued. “I know you had a lot going on, but I assumed that Nick had someone call and tell you that she was fine. And then Chance said Nick might be asking you to tutor Lila anyway, so I didn’t say anything.”
“I see.” I popped the top on the sparkling water.
“We’re really sorry, Tammy. I didn’t realize…” Jessa trailed off, reaching for my hand. “You have to know he also said it was a matter of her safety. And if you saw how he looked that day, you would’ve believed him, too.”
I nodded because I had seen it. Earlier, underneath the hard anger on his face lay raw fear for his daughter.
“It’s okay. I just… I just needed to know. I know it’s not any of my business. But I felt like I was carrying this huge weight, thinking that you guys knew this whole time…”
“Oh, no,” Ally swore. “We had no idea either. I still can hardly believe it.”
“Tammy, how did you find out?” Jessa asked as I took a sip of the citrus water. “Did… did Nick ask you to tutor her?”
Wouldn’t quite call what he did asking…
I swallowed. The answer was obvious before I spoke it. “Yes. Well…” I paused. “He did, but that’s not how I found out.”
And then I told them about all the laws and moral codes that I’d broken in one fell swoop—finding her papers, going to their house, letting myself inside. It spilled out of me because I had no idea how I was going to be around Nick three days a week and keep to the silent agreement that we’d come to.
Ally, of course, looked at it in the way that I was trying not to. “Oh my God! Well, that is going to be convenient to get Frosted!”
“Can we please not call it that?” I groaned, trying to hold back a smile.
“Would you prefer I use the other F-word?” she returned, and I rolled my eyes.
“Do you not want to?”
I shifted in my seat. “I want Lila to be okay and I want her to not be taken from her father and I want to not have cancer or have to go through surgery, and I want to have kids. What I want doesn’t matter. My life is a mess and it seems like so is his. I’m not going to complicate it more with him, especially since I’m now working for him. I can’t sleep with my boss.”
“Oh, sure you can. It’s Nick we are talking about.”
“There are still rules, Al,” I said sternly.
“And rules are meant to be broken, Tam. It’s okay to have a little fun—to go after what you want. And I’m being totally serious right now. I know I joke about the Frosting and all, but you should see your face when you talk about how much you shouldn’t want him… it’s like you’re trying to cage your soul.”
Heaven forbid that I tell her that it felt like it, too.
“Tam,” Jessa said, squeezing my hand. “I think what sunshine
over here is trying to say is that you never let loose. You are always taking care of and looking out and being responsible with all the rules. Finding out you have cancer—even if it isn’t life-threatening at this point—is not something that you just manage lightly. There are things in life—like when I lost my and Chance’s baby or like when Ally lost Dylan—that change you. These things shake you so deeply, they crack through the layers that hurt and loss have built around you so thoroughly that it allows parts of you that should be allowed to breathe to finally surface.”
I tried to take in all of her words, my heart hammering not only for my own trials but at the mention of her miscarriage or how Ally had lost her first boyfriend, Dylan, to a surfing accident in Florida just before she moved back to Aspen.
Jessa’s voice pulled me from my thoughts as she continued to speak, “I know that whatever you do, you are going to do it carefully and thoughtfully because that’s who you are. But don’t suffocate a part of you that needs to breathe right now. Because it’s usually the part that can bring you back to life.”
I was speechless, so Ally added softly, “Do what you want, Tam. But don’t be afraid.”
Air rolled down my throat like it was going over speed bumps to make it into my lungs. The next thing I knew, both my girls’ arms were around me and even though I had no idea what I was going to do about my attraction to Nick, I knew that they would be behind whatever choice I made.
“But,” I said shakily between their shoulders. “You guys know that r-rules control the fun, right?”
We all chuckled and then Jessa retorted, “Whatever you say, Monica.”
Monica Gheller.
Saved by the reference, we ambled into the living room and Jessa started what would turn into a Friends marathon.
If TV characters could be role models, Monica, the rule-loving, clean freak, OCD chef, was mine. And if I wasn’t careful, the next line I would be quoting from her would be, “Hey, check me out! I’m a slut!”
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