Your Hand in Mine (Blackbird Series Book 2)

by Lily Foster

  She takes in a shaky breath. I can picture what she looks like right now. I can see her twisting her hair like she does when she’s uncertain, can see her sad eyes, and I’m so angry with myself because I’ve done this to her. I’ve hurt her.

  “I’d like to keep my job if it’s ok with you.”

  “Of course it is. And you and me…Can we go back to where we were? I swear I’ll never cross that line again.”

  I feel sick having to say it again. To assure this girl that I won’t put my hands on her.

  “Yeah, Leo. We can go back to where we were.”

  “Maybe this trip to Florida is coming at a good time.”

  “Yeah.”

  I try my best to sound more upbeat, you know, more like everything is suddenly just fine and back to normal. “You’re coming over on Tuesday after your test, right? I mean, if you want to just get on the road that’s fine. I don’t need childcare that day, really. It’s just that Olivia’s got some big surprise for you. She’s taking the special person thing to another level.” I keep rambling. “I think she’s going to petition for it to be recognized as a national holiday or something.”

  “A surprise?”

  “Yeah.” I feel like I need to prepare her. “She made you a card and I think she wants to make you a cake…Like a quasi Mother’s Day thing. Is that all right?”

  A moment passes before she says, “Sure. Ok, so I’ll see you Tuesday.”

  “Thanks.”

  I’m about to tell her that I’m sorry again, but stop myself. I still wish I could go back in time and undo what happened last night, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to scare her off if I keep groveling and apologizing.

  And fuck me, I can’t stop thinking about it. Can’t stop replaying the things she said to me. You know every curve of my body.

  I feel like a sick man when I think back to that night last year, touching her without even knowing her name. Do you still think about how good it felt? I picture myself with my hand on a bible, under oath, having no choice but to answer that I do. Yeah, I think about it all the time when I’m all alone in that big bed. Fuck, that stung.

  And then I have to fully acknowledge that I am a bastard because the memory of our bodies pressed together along with the memory of her hand stroking me last night has me growing hard again.

  I call out to Olivia that I’m taking a quick shower, all the while knowing that I’m going to let myself live in that moment again, telling myself: Just one last time.

  As steam fills the room and the hot water pours down on me, I settle in and let my mind wander. I imagine Skylar’s face and the way she looked when I moved in close, the low moan that escaped when I touched her, her eager lips looking for mine to kiss hers.

  In the shower I don’t push her hand away when she touches me. No, I cover her small hand with mine and show her how to make me feel good. I kiss her, let myself taste what I’ve wanted for so long. And when she gets down on her knees in front of me, I watch as she wraps her lips around me and takes me inside. Then I can’t see anything, can’t feel anything but the firm grip I have on myself as I pump my hips pretending that it’s her mouth I’m moving in and out of.

  It doesn’t take long, and fuck it, this time I won’t let myself feel bad about it. I give myself permission to lose myself in it, to acknowledge that it feels so much better than good because this is the last time. I won’t let myself do it again.

  Go back to where we were.

  Yeah, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Skylar

  Go back to where we were. Where exactly is this fantasyland?

  I’ll never be able to go back to thinking of Leo as my employer, as Olivia’s father and nothing more. And while I know I’ll just have to suck it up and pretend, the foolish woman who lives inside of me doesn’t want to.

  I collapse back onto my bed after hanging up. I barely slept last night, and that call took every last remaining speck of energy out of me.

  He was right about one thing. Their trip to Florida and my trip home couldn’t be coming at a better time. Two weeks for this tension between us to ebb, two weeks to get my head back on straight, two weeks to forget about the possibility of anything happening where Leo is concerned.

  I’m pretty much exhausted by the time I pull up outside of their house. It’s only ten-thirty in the morning but I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in days—not since that disastrous, humiliating, oh so awkward exit I made on Friday night.

  How exactly does one look their employer in the eye after groping his dick? That’s the question I’ve been pondering for the past couple of days.

  My tests are over with, papers handed in, so now I just have to get through the next hour or so before I can get on the road and let time start to heal this open, gaping wound.

  “Surprise!”

  I came in with my game face on, but just one look at Olivia with her big hopeful smile, and damn, I’m watering up again.

  Jeez, I never used to cry.

  I take in the room with the balloons, the flowers and the pink frosted cake, smiling as I wipe at those few stray tears.

  “What’s all this?” I ask her.

  “It’s my special person day!”

  I take a seat at the kitchen table and open my arms for her to climb onto my lap. “This might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.” I hug her close. “Thank you, Libs. You’re my special person, too.”

  I don’t see him standing there until he clears his throat and says, “Olivia, did you bring the card downstairs?”

  Her eyes go wide. “I be right back.”

  I want to squeeze tight and beg, Please don’t go, Olivia! but she’s already running up the stairs so I have no choice but to face him and face the music.

  “Hey.”

  “Hi. This is, um, really nice. Thank you.”

  “Libs basically did everything. I just drove her around and followed orders.” He shifts on his feet and swallows. “Listen, I just want to tell you again that I’m—”

  “Don’t say it again. You don’t need to. Let’s just do what we said we’re going to do…Move past it.”

  He lowers his head and nods.

  “You can go get some work done or pack or do whatever you need to do. I’ll hang out with Olivia for a while before I get on the road.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  He lets out a breath—relieved or sad, I can’t tell which. “All right. I’ll just be in the garage. Let me know whenever you want to get going.”

  But he lingers and watches as Olivia bounces back into the kitchen with her artwork.

  She hands it to me and then clasps her little hands behind her back, waiting on my reaction.

  It’s a picture of the two of us with her hand in mine. She’s taken care with it; this is more elaborate and detailed than the pictures she usually draws. My head is encircled in a halo of miniature hearts and she’s glued multi-colored glitter around the edges to make a special border. We’re both wearing smiles and there’s a big sun, so bright and yellow that I can almost feel the warmth radiating from it.

  I press it to my chest, careful not to bend or damage the paper in any way. “Olivia, I love it. I think this is my favorite of all the pictures you’ve ever drawn.”

  Her smile lights me up from the inside. “Really?”

  “Yes, really. I’m going to get a frame for it and hang it in my bedroom.”

  From the corner of my eye I see Leo slip from the room.

  “I frosted the cake myself. Daddy helped but I did it.”

  “It looks sooo delicious. Can I have a piece?”

  “Yes.” She walks over to the drawer and gets a butter knife, making a show of holding it the way I taught her, point down. “Let’s cut you a piece.” She’s role-playing, turning the tables on me and acting like she’s in charge. “Can you get two plates, Sky?”

  I set the knife she’s holding do
wn on the table. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Thank you. And Sky, do you want milk or water?”

  “Ooh, with cake? A nice cold glass of milk.”

  “Coming right up!” And I smile listening to her spot-on imitation of me.

  I get the glasses as she hefts the container of milk from the refrigerator and sets it on the table.

  “This is so nice,” I tell her as we cut the cake with my hand over hers.

  “I know. It’s a special day.” Her expression is serious when she adds, “It’s not mudder day.”

  I nod. “It’s a day for the other special people in your life.”

  She nods but I can tell she’s troubled. She lets it go, though, focusing on the giant mouthful of cake perched on her fork. And then she’s smiling again, with pink frosting caught in the corners of her mouth.

  “This is sooo good, Olivia. Did you know pink frosting was my favorite when you made this cake?”

  “I know pink is your favorite color.” I didn’t know that but l nod and just go with it. “It was my mommy’s favorite color, too.”

  “It was?”

  She bobs her head up and down with a full mouth. After a few chews she says, “She liked pink dresses and,” she points to her own hair, “pink clips.”

  “You look like your mom…A lot. She was really pretty just like you are.”

  “I know,” she answers without missing a beat.

  “So, you’re going away tomorrow. That’s so exciting, taking a ride on a plane.”

  “You ever been on a plane?”

  “No.” She looks at me with wide eyes. “Someday soon I will. Maybe I’ll take another trip to New York. I’ve been there before but my mom and dad drove us all the way there.”

  “I want to go to New York.”

  “It’s so much fun. When Sienna and I went with our parents we saw Mary Poppins in a big Broadway theater with red velvet seats. We ate in fancy restaurants and we rode in a carriage through Central Park, just like Cinderella. Oh, and we went to the racetrack and saw the horses run. They had the best hot dogs there. We ate ours piled with sauerkraut and mustard.”

  She scrunches her face up. “Mustard…Eww!”

  I dab a bit of leftover pink frosting on her nose. “Different strokes for different folks.”

  As she wipes the frosting off her nose and licks it off her fingers, I’m overcome for a moment there, just taken by how sweet and loving a gesture this was. Looking around the kitchen again, I’m amazed that she did all of this for me.

  The realization strengthens my resolve to make it work. I’ll suck it up for Olivia’s sake and for Leo’s. He’s been through enough.

  I don’t know what Maureen was going on about the other night, but I can’t take what she said to heart. Doesn’t matter if they had a perfect marriage or an imperfect one. At the end of the day, he lost his wife and the mother of his child. I need to remember that.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Leo

  I hang back, not wanting to interrupt the moment the two of them are having.

  When I heard mention of Olivia’s mother I stood down, kept to the garage but left the door open. Out of curiosity mostly. I don’t seem to have a clue as to how to talk to my daughter about her mom, so maybe if I listen in I can learn something.

  My heart feels like there’s a weight on it listening in as Skylar tells Olivia about her own mother. About the way she’d set her hair in rollers and put make-up on before she went out on Friday nights with her father. She makes it sound special and glamorous, and to a kid that’s how your parents seem when they dress up and hit the town.

  Skylar goes on to her all about the trip to New York she took as a child. And I know that if I peeked my head in, I’d see my daughter sitting across from her idol transfixed.

  I could never could put my finger on it, the reason I liked listening to her talk myself, but now I realize it’s because she seems to inject everything with life.

  Sky doesn’t just tell Olivia that she took a carriage ride on a snowy winter night. She makes the image come to life imitating the clop-clop sound the horses hooves made on the ground as they pranced through Central Park, the fancy top hat the driver with the big red nose wore, and the carriage blanket that reeked of wet hay and possibly manure. I almost laugh out loud at Olivia’s reaction when she learns the meaning of that word.

  Nearly twenty-two and she’s never been on a plane. Olivia’s still a few months shy of her fifth birthday and she’s jetted back and forth to Florida more times than I can count.

  For a hot minute I entertain the idea of taking them both to New York for Olivia’s birthday in September. We’d cut the six-plus hour drive she took years ago to an hour and twenty on a plane. I could get tickets to a Broadway show, take them on a boat tour up the Hudson like my parents did with me, have high tea at The Plaza like the character in Olivia’s Eloise books. Dirty water dogs from those sidewalk carts? Not a chance. I’d take her—I mean them—to upscale spots and places that would blow their minds.

  I shake my head, knowing I’m playing a fool’s game. Knowing I’m weak when it comes to Skylar. I just vowed that I was going to shut this ridiculous bullshit down, and here I am daydreaming about being the man who gets to show her things, teach her about all the world has to offer, treat her the way she deserves to be treated.

  When I walk into the kitchen, ready to wrap this up out of my own selfish need for distance, I stop in my tracks when I hear Olivia ask Skylar about Mother’s Day.

  Skylar sees me and then turns back to Olivia. “I was just telling Libs that this Mother’s Day is special in my family because it’s Sienna’s first one now that she’s a mom.”

  Olivia looks to me with a very serious expression. “And she gonna go see her own mom.”

  “I’m going to see the stone Garth made for her,” Skylar clarifies. She stands and starts to clear the plates. I don’t even realize she’s talking to me when she asks, “Remember the diner I sent you to when we visited the baby?”

  “Yeah,” I recover, still confused.

  “The hardware store where Garth works is right across the street.”

  “I remember seeing it.”

  “Garth’s boss, Mr. Roberts, is a great guy. He worked as a mason before he opened the store and he’s a stone engraver too. He’s been teaching Garth how to do it. Apparently it’s a decent side gig and Garth is always looking for ways to make extra money. So his first job,” she bestows on me the first real smile I’ve seen in days, “that he’s not making one penny on, was to make a headstone for my parents.”

  “She’s gonna put flowers there.”

  “Yep. And I was telling Libs that my mother’s favorite color was purple so I’m thinking of planting a few small hyacinths around the stone.”

  “Cause they smell good.”

  She looks to Olivia with wide eyes. “They actually smell so sweet you’d think they were candy.”

  “Really?” Olivia is mesmerized.

  “They really do. I’ll bring one for you to plant in the backyard when you get home from Florida.”

  “Ok.”

  Now Olivia is back to sporting that same look. The troubled look she has whenever Carrie or the mention of mothers in general come up.

  Skylar reaches down and pulls Olivia into a hug, whispering in her ear that she’ll miss her but she’ll see her soon.

  “Remember what you have to do?” Skylar asks as she gathers her things getting ready to leave.

  Olivia nods dutifully. “Tell Mickey and Minnie Skylar says hello.”

  Skylar nods the same way, as if this is truly serious business. “You might even run into Elsa. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”

  I’m about to tell Sky that I’ve already got it covered, that I went and booked some princess brunch package that sounds absolutely brutal. I want to pop an aspirin just thinking about the inevitable sea of screaming little girls packed into a dining hall with their families eating crappy buffet food. And I also shelled
out for the most expensive hotel just because it’s rumored that a character from Frozen makes an appearance at eight o’clock to read a bedtime story. But that’s a surprise I have to keep to myself for now.

  “You love Elsa, too.” Olivia is full on pouting now. “I wish you could come.”

  When I start thinking about how much more fun we’d have if Skylar did coming along, I shake my head in an effort to shut it down. I realize too late that Skylar sees the gesture and mistakes it for something else.

  The hurt look is gone in a flash, though, replaced by the sunny smile she typically sports. “That’s on my bucket list, Libs. I want to see a blue-footed booby in the Galapagos Islands,” this gets a giggle from Olivia, “walk the cobblestone streets in Croatia and pretend I’m Arya Stark from Game of Thrones,” that earns one from me, “ride a camel at sunset around the pyramids in Giza and take pictures with my favorite characters in Disney World.”

  After one more quick hug for Olivia and a quick, Have a great trip, aimed at me, she’s off. I call after her, offer the Mercedes, but she just shakes her head and keeps on walking down the driveway.

  Everything about this is wrong. I feel like everything I do is a misstep, and everything I say comes out sounding so awkward that it’s misconstrued.

  I’m getting everything wrong.

  Chapter Thirty

  Skylar

  Looking at him in disbelief, I ask, “What has it been, three weeks? I can’t believe how big he’s gotten!”

  James is standing on my lap as I hold him steady, pushing off with his legs and bouncing. And he obviously finds this new superpower hilarious because he’s smiling and giggling with every blast-off. My nephew is so freaking adorable.

  Sienna laughs and covers her face. “I asked the doctor about it last week. Told him James was three months old and standing already, and then asked if it was normal.” She’s smiling shaking her head. “Yeah, he schooled me.” Pointing to James, she says, “That doesn’t constitute standing or even being able to bear weight on his legs at all. I felt like such a new mom.”