by Serena Bell
Chapter 22
Chase
“Daddy, wake up.”
I regain consciousness unwillingly. I am alone in my bed. Katie’s face is inches from mine.
My eyelids are gritty. My mouth is dry. My body feels like it’s been worked over by a sadistic massage therapist. And still, the very first thing I do when I remember is grin.
Wow.
Wow, wow, wow.
Also, I think I tweaked a muscle in my butt. But the expression on Liv’s face during the portion of the program that caused the butt injury definitely made it completely worthwhile.
“Daddy,” Katie whines, startling me. Apparently I have closed my eyes and almost drifted back to sleep.
“It’s too early, Katie,” I say, full of hope. Sometimes this tactic works.
“It’s seven thirty,” she says sternly. “You are going to be late if you don’t get up soon.”
I confirm this with the bedside clock, and groan. I don’t actually have to leave the house till 9:15, even when I’m opening. In a pinch, I can go from horizontal to sitting behind the wheel of the car in twenty minutes. Low maintenance, remember?
Just wait till Katie’s a teenager and likes to sleep in. Then I will have my revenge.
I groan again and drag myself to sitting. “Is Liv awake?”
“I’ll go wake her up.”
“No, let her sleep.”
I’m a morning person and Liv is not (Understatement alert! Understatement alert!). And while before this morning I might have preferred to give her a hard time about that fact, even going so far as to deliberately unleash Katie on her, this morning, I am grateful and fond and, basically, rendered harmless by sex hormones.
I head down to the kitchen and fix Katie breakfast, setting her up so she can pour herself a second and third bowl of cereal and milk if she wants to. Then I head back upstairs to shower.
I whistle in the shower. And as I shave. And as I remake the bed, which is no mean feat because the sheets and covers are everywhere. Which makes me smile.
And makes me hard.
We’re going to do that again. Tonight, if I have anything to say about it.
After the second round (which was, if you were counting, the third orgasm for both of us), we were both so blissfully wrecked that it would have been easy for us to crash out together in my bed. But we were both clear that we didn’t want Katie to find Liv there in the morning. Too complicated. So I walked Liv down the hall and tucked her into her own bed. Then I came back in here, collapsed on the bed, and slept until Katie woke me.
Now I head down the hall and knock gently on Liv’s door.
“Go away,” says a craggy voice, unrecognizable as Liv’s.
“I’m going to assume that greeting is about the amount of sleep you got and not about your feelings for me,” I call through the door.
“My feelings for you are that you should go away,” she says, muffled. “You can’t come in. I look like ass. My hair’s a mess. My makeup’s a mess. I have pillow creases in my face.”
“Let me see,” I say.
“No.”
“Please.”
After a long, long silence—I’ve become totally convinced she’s not going to let me in—she says, “Promise not to laugh.”
I open the door.
She’s sitting up, and she’s right, technically: Her hair’s a mess, her makeup is smudged, and she has pillow creases in her face. And it’s possibly the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen, because I know that no one gets to see Liv like this.
“You look beautiful,” I say, cupping her face. “I like you rumpled.” I kiss her.
My strategy, if you can call it that, is not to give her any time to doubt me or overthink this. And it seems to be working, because she’s kissing me back.
We tumble back into her covers. Her body is warm and limber against mine, and I’m hard against her thigh, her hands beginning to tug at my clothes, when I remember Katie. I break it off and stand up.
“You are evil,” she says, panting. “You shouldn’t start what you can’t finish.”
“Oh, I’ll finish,” I say. “Later. I promise. In the meantime, come downstairs. There’s coffee.”
“Coffee,” she murmurs. “That might be better than an orgasm right now.”
I check my watch, cross to the door, and jab the button in the center of the doorknob to lock it. I’ve got another minute or two before Katie finishes her breakfast, and a man can accomplish a lot in 120 seconds.
“Can’t have you thinking that,” I tell her.
Chapter 23
Liv
I’m kind of weirded out by how not weird things feel.
I mean, we crossed a big line, right? This should be awkward. Or, just wrong. But instead we’re sitting across from each other at the breakfast table, with Katie babbling between us, and it’s normal. Me. Chase. Katie. A meal.
My body’s still buzzing like crazy, because Chase made me come in about thirty seconds. I can’t even make myself come in thirty seconds. But he did this thing with his tongue that I can’t even explain, and—
Just thinking about it makes me hot all over.
Chase stands and clears his plate. As he does, his cell rings on the counter, “Ode to Joy.”
“Oh, hi, Em.” He paces while he listens. “Um, I can’t. Not today. I’ll be at work. Unless—?” His eyes meet mine. “Hang on a sec.” His arm, phone in hand, drops to his side. “I have a favor to ask.”
“Shoot.”
“Emily, Katie’s other grandma, has an old friend visiting her from the East Coast, and she was wondering if I could drive Katie down, or at least halfway, so they could have lunch with her. Halfway would be an hour’s drive; all the way would be close to two each direction. You could do some shopping or something while you wait for Katie to be done. I know it’s a lot to ask—”
“It’s fine,” I say, meaning it.
Gratitude shines in his eyes. I like being able to make Chase’s life easier, which is a funny thing, because so much of our friendship has been about giving each other a hard time.
Chase brings the phone back to his ear. “My friend Liv, who’s filling in as Katie’s nanny right now, can bring her.” They talk back and forth for a minute or two about locations and logistics. Then he hangs up and lets me know where I’m heading with Katie, and when.
“You’re going to have lunch with Grandma,” he tells Katie, and she claps her hands in delight.
After Chase has gone, I shower, then get Katie all ready for lunch. It’s nothing fancy, some pizza place between here and Olympia that Chase and Emily agreed would be a good meeting spot, but I get her dressed up anyway so her grandmother can show her off. Then we play a few games of Hisss and Slamwich and get in the car.
Katie is dozy in the car on the way down, so I sing along to the radio. And—because I can’t help myself—I relive moments of last night. It was so good. I want more.
Emily and her friend are waiting for us when we come in the front door of the pizza place, two older women in grandma jeans and T-shirts. Katie runs to the taller of the two and throws her arms around the woman’s legs. Emily bends down and hugs Katie from above. She has curly gray hair and is older than I was expecting, seventy at least, brittle and skinny as a spider monkey.
She introduces Katie to her friend Grace and then thanks me, formally, for driving Katie down to lunch with them. She still hasn’t introduced me to Grace. I’m familiar with the particular snub from nannying other times—people see you as not quite family, not quite a friend, just someone who moves the kid around for pay. And of course, that’s exactly who I am in this situation.
The thing is, it would be totally different if I explained that I was Chase’s friend first, and Katie’s nanny only temporarily, as a favor.
And totally d
ifferent, still, if I were Chase’s girlfriend.
But I’m not.
I squat to check in with Katie. “You okay with staying here with your grandma and her friend while I do a little shopping? And I’ll come back for you in an hour and a half?”
“Yeah!” says Katie.
I leave them alone and head to the mall for some window shopping—I don’t want to spend any money—and a quick lunch. Then I pick Katie up. Emily and her friend meet me in front of the pizza place. Katie is beaming. And bouncing.
“I had woot beer!” she tells me.
“Woot!” I say.
“And chocolate cake!”
“Woot, woot!”
Katie wrinkles her nose in confusion.
“I’m sorry to sugar her up and hand her back,” Emily says, making eye contact with me for the first time.
“It’s okay,” I say, shrugging. “I get to strap her into the car. By the time we get home, the sugar rush will have worn off.”
Emily smiles at that. Her face is creased and brown like a walnut, the skin of someone who’s spent a lot of time in the sun. Her lips are thin, but not harsh. From the strength of the bones in her face, and from how pretty Katie already is, I can guess that Thea was gorgeous.
“Katie says you’re her daddy’s friend.”
There’s a heavy emphasis on the word friend. My face colors. Emily shoots her visitor a glance, as if my blush confirms something they both suspected. “How long have you and Chase been together?”
“We’re not—” I stop. “It’s not like that. We really are friends, just friends.”
It’s the truth. And a lie.
“I should have guessed,” Emily says thoughtfully. “Chase doesn’t have relationships, does he?”
I shake my head. And for some reason, what pops into my head is Chase sitting on the side of my bed this morning, telling me I was beautiful with my hair a rat’s nest and my makeup a raccoon’s mask.
I felt beautiful.
“I keep hoping he will. I know it’s a strange thing for me to say, but I’ve always felt like Thea wasn’t very fair to him, and maybe that’s why he’s so wary.”
Emily’s friend says, “Emily, hon’—”
“Grace, I love—loved her, but it doesn’t mean I approved of everything she did.”
What I want to do, desperately, is ask her what she means. About Thea not being fair to Chase. But what I say instead—because it’s the only thing you can say to a mother who lost her daughter two months ago and still hasn’t settled into the past tense—is, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you, dear.”
Grace puts a hand gently on Emily’s arm. “We should get going.”
“Yes.” She turns to me, her eyes warm. “Thank you so much for bringing Katie. And I hope I’ll see you next time I get together with Katie and Chase?”
I’ll be in Denver, I think, but all I say is, “I hope so, too.”
Chapter 24
Chase
That night, we each read Katie a book. Liv first, then me. And we say good night to Katie together.
I try not to give it too much significance, but I can’t help feeling like it means something.
It’s the first time I let myself think that maybe Liv will change her mind about going to Denver.
When we’re both settled in the living room afterward, Liv says, “I wasn’t expecting Emily to be so old.”
“She’s sixty-eight.”
“I guess because Thea had Katie so young—”
I shake my head. “Thea was twenty-eight when Katie was born.”
Her startled eyes meet mine. “She was older than you.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know why I thought—” Her look surfs off somewhere in the middle distance, then she seems to come back. “Emily said something…” She bites her lip. “She said Thea wasn’t fair to you. And it surprised me. I don’t know why, but I thought it was simpler than that. I thought it was a one-night thing, you got her pregnant, you guys decided to go your separate ways…”
I laugh. Harshly.
“No, huh?”
I shake my head.
“You want to tell me about it?”
“No.”
“Will you tell me about it?”
I’ve never told anyone this story, not from the beginning. Obviously various people know bits and pieces of it—who Katie’s mom was, the fact that we were never married. Brooks maybe knows the most, but even he doesn’t know how it all started.
Somehow, though, I find myself telling Liv.
“Thea worked for my parents in Austin. She was their head of marketing. She was four years older than me. Polished, competent, confident.
“And I was—I already told you how I was. I’d just had that conversation with my father where he told me he wasn’t leaving me the business, and I was in the process of self-destructing, like I was trying to prove him right.”
She makes a sound like she’s trying to contradict me, but I shake my head, and she nods, letting me continue.
“Thea came to dinner, and, like I said, she was so put together—I don’t know if I was trying to stick it to my parents or if I wanted to see what she’d be like when she wasn’t so in control, but I decided I was going to get her in bed.”
I cast a look in Liv’s direction, expecting to see judgment on her face, but she’s listening patiently. And I realize that that’s one of the things I like most about Liv, that she doesn’t judge. She just takes it all in.
“Thea had just come off a serious relationship—I think he’d been about to propose, even—and she was going through some stuff of her own. And for some reason she dug the whole bad-boy thing. Or maybe it was the lure of sleeping with the bosses’ kid; I don’t know. She was on the rebound and she wanted to do something crazy, and I was offering the chance. So there we were, and that was all it was supposed to be, except for me, it wasn’t.”
Liv’s mouth is open, a little. She closes it, then opens it again to say, “You fell in love with her.”
“I fell in love with her.” I shake my head. “Dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Hey, now. None of us falls in love with the wrong person on purpose.” She gets a faraway look on her face, and there’s sadness, too. Regret.
There’s a story there, I think. I’m about to ask her about it, when she says, “And then she got pregnant.”
“Well, no, that’s not exactly how it happened. Not from my perspective.”
She raises her eyebrows.
“She quit her job and moved to Seattle. Made it clear that she’d thought the whole time we were both having fun, taking a walk on the wild side. She didn’t exactly say she’d been slumming it, but I knew that was what she meant. She broke my heart. Or, I thought she had. You know the punch line, though, so you know that wasn’t the worst of it.”
“So you let her walk away?”
She still hasn’t gotten it. “She’d broken up with me. Told me she didn’t have feelings for me. That was all. I couldn’t change her mind.”
The light dawns, her eyes widening. “Oh. God.” She puts a hand to her chest. “She didn’t tell you she was pregnant?”
“She didn’t tell me,” I confirm.
“How did you find out?”
“About eight months after that, my mother was at a conference in Seattle and saw Thea with Katie in a front carrier. My mom wasn’t close enough to talk to Thea, but she was close enough to be sure of what she’d seen. My parents never found out I’d been with Thea, so it didn’t occur to my mom, when she told me she’d seen Thea with a baby, what a shock it would be. I lost my shit, freaked both of us out.”
“God. Chase. That must have sucked.”
I don’t let myself think about the way it felt, gett
ing hit with the truth. I make myself remember like I’m looking at the past through the wrong end of a telescope, remote and unconnected to me. “It did.”
“Did you confront Thea?”
“I figured out where she was working and flew to Seattle to talk to her. I was as calm as I could be, and I asked to meet Katie, and then I asked Thea if she’d ever planned to tell me and she said no. And I asked why, and she wouldn’t answer.
“But she didn’t have to. I knew. She’d grown up with a dad who was a drunk and a deadbeat, and she’d told me, more than once, that it would have been better to have no dad at all.”
A look of horror freezes on Liv’s face. “She couldn’t have been thinking that about you and Katie—”
It’s funny what a relief it is to see the anger and the hurt I felt back then reflected on Liv’s face now. Like, there was no one to feel it for me or with me when it happened, but now there is, and that takes some of the pain away.
Liv shakes her head. “Even if she thought she didn’t want you in their lives, she must have seen she was wrong. As soon as she saw you with Katie.”
I shrug. “Yes and no. She came around, for sure. I moved to Seattle to be close to Katie, and that softened Thea a bunch. And I got the job and cleaned up my life and did everything I could to be a good dad, and it made a difference.”
“But?”
“But it was still tough to get time with Katie. I was supposed to have her Sundays and Mondays, and half the holidays, but I swear at least sixty percent of the time there was something in Katie’s schedule that Thea couldn’t work around. Thea wanted things exactly her way all the time. She thought Katie needed structure and consistency, and she didn’t think I had anything to add to the life that she was making for her.”
“Did you ever think about getting a lawyer?”
“Everyone I talked to said that it would take years and a fortune in bills, and that at best I’d carve out a little more time. And in the end, I felt like I couldn’t do that to any of us, but most of all Katie. That money that I would have been spending, that money was Katie’s. And as she got older, she would have known. That we were fighting over her.”
