by Jo Raven
“Of course they do,” I snap. “People change all the time.”
I don’t know why I’m arguing with him. Maybe I’m just annoyed at Jessica for grabbing his attention while he’s here with me, for me. And he’s right. Stripped down to their core, people probably don’t change.
It’s the surface that changes—the daily thoughts, the everyday problems, the short-term goals. What you really want…what you truly need, that won’t change.
And how do you know what’s so essential? What will remain once you strip the veneer?
“There you go again,” Adam says as we slowly walk back. “So quiet. Still thinking about the future?”
He’s smiling. The moon is shining, I’m walking next to a cute boy and eating ice cream. It feels like a dream.
“It’s hard not to. Sometimes I wish… I wish I had the money to leave for college right now. Tonight. Other days I wish I’d already finished college and I were back for good, with a job waiting for me. Only I know that won’t happen that easily. And sometimes I wish…”
I wish I stayed here forever and never went off to college. Because what I really want… God, I wish I knew that, too.
He chuckles. “Such deep thoughts on such a warm night.”
“What about you? Do you think about the future?”
“Sure I do.” He stares up at the sky, munching on his cone. “And the past. It’s all linked together. One long road, and this is just a brief stop on the way.”
I look up at the few, scattered clouds, ghostly ships sailing into dark space. “Mom always says that the past doesn’t define us.”
“She’s wrong,” he says, his clear voice rising over the quiet of the street. “The past defines us all, and sooner or later it catches up with us.”
It sounds ominous, like there’s a story there, a scar, and I itch to ask about it.
But for some reason I don’t, instead watching the clouds sail away.
“I don’t want it!” Mary wails and stomps her small foot. “It’s not right.”
“Not right?” I look dubiously at her plate and try to figure this out.
I’m not a Michelin chef, but I can make mac and cheese with the best of them. Plus, I have Mom’s super recipe. Even when Gigi was going through her most difficult eating phase and wouldn’t eat almost anything else, she’d still finish up Mom’s mac and cheese without failing.
“It’s not cheesy enough,” Mary explains, her mouth trembling. She crosses her arms over her chest. “I won’t eat it.”
Cole shovels the macaroni into his mouth, staring at her sadly.
What’s going on here?
“You’ll be hungry, honey. And there won’t be any dessert if you don’t eat your food.”
Her eyes well up. “Grandma made it more cheesy.”
“Cheesier,” I say automatically.
Right?
Jesus, Octavia, who the heck cares right now?
“You lived with your grandma before?” At her nod, I sit down, thinking. “And why did you leave?”
“My dad is sad.”
Sad? Not angry and insensitive and near violent? But I don’t say that because I feel as if we’re finally getting somewhere. I’m finally stumbling over the bits and pieces of Matt Hansen’s truth.
“You left because your dad was sad,” I say.
Cole nods, too, stirring his macaroni. “Sad,” he says.
Unbidden, Adam’s words about the past catching up with us come to my mind. “And he’s not sad anymore?”
Mary bites her lip and lets her hands drop to her lap. “He remembers Mommy. I don’t. Not really.”
A lump fills my throat. Oh yeah, we’re definitely getting somewhere, and I have a feeling I know where this is going.
Please, dear God, prove me wrong.
“I was too little when she left us,” Mary says, her voice steady but resolute. “It’s my fault.”
“What is your fault?”
“That she’s gone.” Tears slip down her rosy cheeks, and my heart nearly breaks in two.
“Baby.” I open my arms and she hesitates—then slides off her chair and comes to burrow into me. Cole joins us a split second later, sniffling, too. I bury my nose in their silky hair and try to compose myself. “It wasn’t your fault. Didn’t anyone tell you? These things just happen.”
“I don’t want Daddy to go, too,” Mary whispers, and I hug her more tightly.
“Of course he won’t. He won’t.” I kiss her forehead and take a deep breath. “Where did your mommy go?”
“Mommy went to heaven,” Mary says.
I’d suspected it, but still a cold shiver travels up my spine. I hug her harder. “Come here.”
“And then,” she says, “Daddy went to hell.”
Oh God.
I believe it.
Chapter Thirteen
Matt
Another paper stuck to my door.
Another knife.
“Remember why you were in Milwaukee,” is printed on it in the same bold letters as last time.
Milwaukee.
“What happened in Milwaukee?” asks the cop. “Mr. Hansen.”
I blink. “I…” Focus, Matt. “I went there to work.”
There I met Emma. We got married, rented a house in a small town nearby. We had our kids.
She died.
“Where were you living before?”
“St. Louis. I’m from St. Louis.”
He jots something down in his notepad. His name is John, he said earlier. John Something. John Elba. “Anything happen there before you left St. Louis?”
I scowl at my hands. They clench into fists on top of my thighs. I’ve had to go to the next town to report the incident, and police stations make me itchy. “Nothing interesting.”
“Maybe not to you,” John says.
Yeah, I know. I know how experience warps perspective. How something you don’t even notice may be fucking huge for someone else.
Still. Can’t recall anything out of the ordinary.
John is watching me. He’s young, Hispanic, his eyes darker than mine, intent and focused. “Anyone out there who has a beef with you, Mr. Hansen?”
God? Fate? The world? “No.”
“Are you sure? He mentions Milwaukee specifically. Why did you move there in the first place?”
This is starting to feel like I’m the one under investigation. Gritting my teeth, I say, “Because a friend of mine got a job there, and got me one as well.”
“Who was your friend?”
“James McConaghue.”
“Tell me about him.”
What’s to tell? “We were at school together. He only stayed for a yeah in Milwaukee, then moved on.”
John nods. “And back in St. Louis? Anyone who might hold a grudge?”
After all these years? I shake my head. “My parents and my brother. I had a girlfriend. But I broke up with her months before I left. Last I heard she moved away.”
“And you’re here with your family?”
“My kids. They’re home with their nanny.” She’d looked at me funny when I told her to lock the doors and not let them out today.
Fuck, I need to tell her about this. I hope she won’t freak out and quit.
“What about your wife?”
“She passed three years ago.” Funny how I can say it without breaking down.
Then again, I never did break down, not in the ways others could see it.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I say nothing. He’s just being polite, following the police conduct manual, and I’m sick and tired of fake sympathy and empty words.
“Look,” he says. “I can’t promise you anything. I have very little to go on. Any fingerprints on the knife are now overlaid by yours, so even if our guy was in the system, that’s a bust. I don’t suppose you asked the neighbors if they saw anyone sneaking about.”
I shake my head. “Can you post someone outside, just in case the nutcase returns?”
&nb
sp; “I’ll send an officer over to ask some questions, but to be frank, I don’t expect anything to come out of it. Unless you have nosy, bored neighbors who like sitting at the window, controlling everything that moves outside. And without an eyewitness, we have nothing to go on.”
Right. At least he’s honest. I shove my hair out of my eyes and get up to go.
“Listen, Hansen.” He gets up, too, resting his knuckles on his desk. “It’s probably nothing to worry about. Kids playing a prank, by my guess. There are other kids on your street, aren’t there?”
I give him a long, flat stare.
“Or maybe you talked to someone about your time in Milwaukee? Maybe some guy at the place where you work had a look at your resume and decided to scare you off.”
I frown and scratch at my beard. “Ross,” I whisper.
He’s such an asshole I wouldn’t put it past him. Could it be him, attempting to make me uneasy, getting back at me for spoiling his fun with Octavia the other day? I’d thought it weird he didn’t come after me right away.
“Who’s Ross?”
My shoulders are all tensed up, my jaw so tight it hurts. “Owner’s son at the garage where I work.”
“Where?”
“Jasper’s Garage, in Destiny.”
“Had a run in with him?”
I shrug. “He was being an ass.”
His look tells me he doesn’t necessarily believe me. I know I look rough with my unkempt beard and hair, and my wrinkled clothes. People naturally assume I go looking for fistfights.
But the only fight I have is with myself.
“Okay, fine. We’ll look into it.” John shuffles the papers on his desk. “Meanwhile, any new incident, message, or phone call, or anyone hanging around your house, give me a call. Here’s my cell phone.”
He passes me his card, and I take it without glancing down at it.
“And what about Ross?”
“I said we’ll look into it. You stay out of it, Hansen. Unless there’s evidence pointing at this guy, let’s not go creating trouble for no reason.”
“You’re shitting me.”
But he’s not.
What a fucking waste of time this has been. Then again, if the culprit is Ross, well… At least I know who to watch out for. Octavia didn’t mention him harassing her since she came to work for me, but it’s not like we talk.
Not like it’s any of my business. And my blood shouldn’t boil at the thought of him near her, touching her, hurting her.
Fuck this.
Time I took matters in my own hands. No one fucks with what’s mine. If that son of a bitch, Ross, as much as shows his fucking face in my neighborhood, I’m gonna rip him a new one, and my job be damned.
Octavia unlocks and opens the door as soon as I ring my doorbell. I’ve never been happier for the sound of a heavy bolt dragging on metal as it’s being pulled back.
Or hell, for the lack of a threatening note on my door. My heart is still banging around in my chest, the shot of adrenaline I got when I found the piece of paper earlier still pumping through my veins.
And then she’s there, and seeing her relaxes something inside me, turning my knees weak. Pleasure, and relief, and pure fucking lust that has my dick hardening, and Christ, I’m so screwed up right now.
Can’t trust myself for shit with her, not on the best of days and certainly not after the day I’ve had. Not when she’s standing there, all pretty and damn hot in her soft blouse and jeans, a hint of cleavage torturing me, the dip of her waist turning my breathing shallow and my balls heavy.
“Matt?” She’s giving me a quizzical look, and I curse inside.
Brushing past her, I step inside. “We need to talk.”
“Who are you,” she says, closing the door, “and what have you done with Matt Hansen?”
I blink stupidly at her, standing in the middle of the living room. The sun casts golden squares on the dark carpet.
“I mean, you never want to talk, so…” She shakes her head, and looks away, giving me a faint smile. “Never mind. I figured something happened when you said to lock the doors.”
Jesus, she’s so fucking pretty. It’s a subtle beauty, though it hit me from the first moment I saw her—the way her lashes curve, the clear blue of her eyes, the plump upper lip and the softness of her cheeks. The line of her neck, the roundness of her tits, the delicate shoulders, fuck…
Swallowing a groan, I sink down on the sofa and run my hands over my face. “The police think it’s probably a prank, but yeah. There was a message stuck to the front door today, and it wasn’t the first time.”
“A threatening message?”
“Not exactly.” I glance at her as she wanders closer. “But it was stuck to the door with a goddamn kitchen knife.”
“Oh.” She sits across from me, and I need her closer with a sudden visceral urge I do my best to battle. “Wow. Any idea who it might be?”
“About that…” I glance up at a noise from the stairs and find Mary and Cole at the top, staring down at us. They stay a moment longer, then they disappear again. “Have you seen Ross around?”
“Ross?” Her mouth falls open. “You think he’d come here and put a knife into your door?”
“You tell me. I got the impression you’ve known each other for a while.”
She nods. “You could say that. We went to school together, like everyone in this town. He’s a bully.”
“He bullied you back then, too?” Anger sweeps through me like a wildfire, setting my heart off again until it’s booming in my chest. “I’m gonna wring his fucking neck.”
Her smile catches me by surprise. She turns her face away, but not before I see the pretty flush on her cheeks. “You’re crazy.”
Yeah, that’s for damn sure. Off my rocker. So fucking hard I can’t stand it anymore.
Hard for my eighteen-year-old nanny who probably goes out for ice cream holding hands with her pimply boyfriend and wears PJs with teddy bears on them when she crawls into bed.
Dammit, I’d tear off her PJs, punch her boyfriend out of the way, and as for the things I’d do to her in her bed…
Getting to my feet, I start toward the stairs, hoping she hasn’t noticed the fucking tent I’m pitching in my pants. “Gonna check up on the kids.”
I don’t wait for her to join me.
“Be good, okay?” Octavia kisses Mary on the cheek, Cole on the forehead, and he throws his arms around her neck. “Aww, sweetie. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
I’m watching them from the bedroom door, rubbing a hand over my chest. The kids really like her.
But they can’t love her. Right? They barely know her. She’s not their mom.
She can’t replace her. Nobody can. My kids can’t love her like they did their mom.
And why am I thinking of this now? Nobody said anything about replacing anyone. She just works for me. It’s good the kids like her, that they feel comfortable. That they have no problem with her.
No, the one with the problem is me. I need to get my head out of my ass and my mind off my dick. Then everything will be okay.
Thing is, I’ve wanted her since the moment I laid eyes on her and fought it ever since. Haven’t been able to keep her out of my house, or my mind.
What am I supposed to do?
She comes out and I follow her down the stairs. She stops at the door, turns to look at me.
“Take care,” she says.
Take care. Just two words, and my throat closes. Dunno what the fuck’s the matter with me today. Too much tension, I guess.
“Matt…” She’s still there, pinning me with those clear blue eyes. “Anything else I can do?”
Yeah.
“No.” I struggle to gather my thoughts, regroup. “Be careful.”
“Is it dangerous, you think? Ross wouldn’t hurt us. Not physically, at least.”
That’s good to know, although I won’t forget the way he gripped her arm that day at the garage. Maybe Ross changed.
&
nbsp; But I don’t want to scare her more, so I leave it at that and wait until she sighs and walks out the door.
Then I lock and drag the bolt home before I check every window and every door in the house to keep my remaining family safe.
Chapter Fourteen
Octavia
No more messages appear stuck to Matt’s door in the following days—as far as I know, though why would he keep that from me? The rest of the week goes by pretty quietly. Even Adam isn’t around. He said he had to go visit his sister in Springfield.
No more ice cream strolls.
Then I realize there’s no reason why I have to wait for him to go for ice cream. And it’s not as if he’s my boyfriend or anything.
So I grab Gigi and we set off toward the main street under the cloudless evening sky with a promise to Merc who’s playing video games with a friend of his to return with a tub of mint with chocolate chip for him.
That kid’s obsessed with mint. Mint soap, mint chocolate bars, mint donuts, mint brownies. He says it’s a genetic thing he got from his father.
That’s a topic we never touch at home.
Our father.
Mom refuses to talk about him. Says he skipped town ages ago, right after we were born. But if that’s the case, why can’t I remember him? I was four when Merc was born. If our dad left us right after, why wouldn’t I recall a single thing about him?
“So… you and Adam,” Gigi says, cutting through my thoughts. “You guys are so cute together it’s disgusting. Are you two an item now?”
“No.”
“Wow, that was vague.” She sticks her tongue out at me, all mature. “Not sure I got it, try again.”
“We’re not dating.”
“Woo. Goosebumps. That was clear all right.” She drags her fingertips along the rotten fence of Mrs. Koontz’s house. “Why the hell not?”
“Because.” I rub my arms, wishing I’d brought my light cardigan with me. “We just aren’t.”
“Lack of chemistry, huh?”
I shrug.
“Has he kissed you?”
“What? No.”
“So maybe that’s the problem.”
