Page 42

After we showered—separately, unfortunately, but Laura’s small shower couldn’t accommodate us both at once—she insisted on giving my beard a trim. She admitted with a grimace that she had never loved the clean-shaven look on me, but she offered to neaten it up a bit.

“I used to help Brett every now and then,” she said, maneuvering me to sit on the toilet in the small bathroom. “He always liked the way I did it, and … I dunno. It was sort of nice.”

I pretended to sigh wistfully. “It is my favorite thing to hear you talk about doing things with another man.”

She collected her supplies from the vanity cabinet and huffed a laugh. “It’s kind of hard to not mention him at all when he’s the father of my kids. We were together for years .”

“ We were a thing for years too. Does that mean you mentioned me to him?” I asked teasingly as she came to stand between my spread knees .

With a finger beneath my chin, she tipped my head back and looked into my eyes. “Of course I did.”

The sentiment made me feel both triumphant and sad. Sad for him, to be aware of the man who’d prevented her from loving him fully—or so she had said. That must’ve stung.

He must hate me , I thought. Doesn’t even know me, but he hates me .

Story of my life.

Laura lathered my neck, just beneath my jawline, and used a straight razor to meticulously clean up the edges. She patted my face dry with a soft towel that smelled like her and trimmed the scraggy ends of my beard with a pair of scissors. Then she cleaned it all up with an electric shaver.

Her eyes met mine every so often between moments of deep concentration, and she’d smile or sigh or blush, and every single time, I would be left with a disbelief that I was here .

Just a little over twelve hours ago, I’d been ready to end my life, and now I knew I was exactly where I needed to be. With her.

“So, can I ask you a question?”

I nodded, watching her as she ran the shaver over my beard with practiced precision.

“You keep saying you drink a lot … what do you mean by that?”

“I mean what it sounds like. I drink a lot.”

She tipped my head to the side to have better access to my jawline. “So, like … are you an alcoholic?”

“I don’t think so. ”

“But if you drink a lot, and you rely on it for whatever reason …”

“No, I get what you’re saying,” I replied. “But I don’t need to drink all the time. Sometimes, it feels that way. But usually, it’s just to quiet my brain.”

“And how often is that?”

I shrugged, and Laura sighed, nodding. My silence was answer enough, and just like that, I felt as though I’d disappointed her beyond repair—again. Once again a failure. A loser.

“I wasn’t drunk last night,” I quickly added, as if that made things at all better.

“Would you have gone to the bridge if you had been?”

I laughed and reached up to squeeze the back of my neck. “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably not though. Any other time I thought about offing myself, I drank until I passed out, so …”

Laura frowned, setting the shaver aside. She washed her hands quietly, not saying anything more, and when she went to dry her hands on the towel hanging beside me, I wrapped my hand around her wrist to stop her.

“What are you thinking?” I asked quietly, seeking her gaze and finding a tremendous sadness that seared my heart and made me wish I’d looked away instead.

“I hate that you wanted to die,” she replied simply.

I filled my lungs with air and exhaled, leaving me empty and deflated. “With you, I don’t.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not? ”

She ran her hand over my hair. “I don’t know that I’ll be able to let you leave.”

“So, don’t.”

Her gaze fell as she sighed. “Max, I—"

Her voice was cut off by the sound of people coming from downstairs. She turned her head abruptly toward the open bathroom door as a man called her name up the stairs.

“ Shit ,” she hissed beneath her breath. Bewildered eyes turned to me. “You have to get dressed.”

I glanced down at the towel I was still wearing. “Okay,” I replied, sounding clueless and confused, even as the truth drove itself home.

That was her ex-husband who’d called her name.

Those little voices shouting gleefully from the living room were her kids.

Her daughters . Fuck , Laura was a mother, and how stupid could I have been to even suggest I …

what? Stay here in her house forever? How did I know she was even ready for her kids to meet me, the man who had come before and after their father?

She has children with someone else.

In her room, I zipped my jeans and pulled on the shirt I’d worn to my parents’ house the night before.

I glanced in the mirror, checked my beard, and was impressed by the job she’d done on me.

I looked presentable, and foolishly, I wondered if Dad would’ve been such a dick had I shown up looking like this and less like I’d belonged on the streets.

Downstairs, I heard Laura shift gears. She was no longer flirtatious, coy, or sad. Now, she was loud and happy, greeting her girls with holiday glee, and they greeted her back with squeals and excitement .

Is there room here for me?

Butterflies the size of jets took flight in my gut at the thought of going down there and meeting them.

Shit. I had never been good with kids. I wasn’t sure I ever wanted them myself—God forbid I injected this blood into someone else’s veins—and interacting with others was typically awkward. How would it be with hers ?

There was no getting around it, no avoiding it, so after lacing up my boots, I headed down, keeping it casual.

The first head to turn was that of a man about my height but thinner.

He wore glasses and looked like he belonged behind a computer screen.

It startled him to see me standing there, and I didn’t miss the flash of hurt in his eyes or the way his nostrils flared as he looked me up and down.

Laura was kneeling on the floor with two identical girls with auburn pigtails, but when she noticed I’d entered the living room, she quickly stood.

“Um, Brett, this is my friend Max,” she said, clearly trying to not sound awkward, but failing miserably.

“Nice to meet you,” I lied, reaching my hand out to shake his.

He didn’t return the pleasantry, nor did he accept the gesture I was offering. Instead, he twisted his lips to one side, his head bobbing. “You’re him , aren’t you?” he asked quietly, so low that I wasn’t sure the little girls heard him.

“Brett,” Laura warned, “don’t start.”

He shook his head, shoving his hands deep in his pockets, making it clear he wasn’t going to shake my hand.

I lowered it to my side .

“I’m not starting anything, Laura. I just asked him a simple question.” He lifted his shoulders, assessing me. “So? Are you?”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I replied, but, oh, I knew.

“You’re him . You’re the guy my wife was thinking about when she should’ve been thinking about me.”

I squared my shoulders and tipped my head, studying him, as if to ingrain the image of his face in my mind. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand how that’s my problem,” I replied while being so aware that he did hate me, just as I’d expected.

He hated me, and he didn’t even know me.

Can I blame him?

Laura hurried to stand before me and held up a staying hand to Brett. “Thank you for dropping off the girls. I will talk to you later.”

“No, I think you should talk to me now ,” he said, his voice a low growl. “If you think I’m okay with my daughters hanging around this guy—"

“I have no problem leaving,” I interrupted, but that was a lie. It would be a great feat to leave Laura now after last night. But I would, if she asked me to. I would do it for her.

Brett thrust his finger toward the front of the house. “There’s the door, buddy.”

“Stop, stop, stop,” Laura said. “Brett, trust me enough to know that I wouldn’t put our daughters in any kind of danger, please. Okay?”

I glanced at the daughters in question, seemingly oblivious to the very grown-up problems happening in the same room they were playing in. They hadn’t even noticed me yet, a stranger in their house.

Maybe I really should leave , I wondered. Let them have Christmas. Let them enjoy their day.

Brett’s eyes flicked toward mine again before he huffed angrily.

He turned on his heel, crouched beside the girls, and kissed the tops of their heads.

He muttered his goodbyes and hurried out the door, slamming it loudly behind him.

The little girls startled at the abrupt noise and turned to face their mother, only to finally notice me—an unknown man—standing beside her.

“Mommy, who dat?” one asked, pointing.

Panic rose from my chest to strangle my throat as twin sets of eyes stared me down with suspicion and confusion.

Kids were excellent judges of character.

They could smell bullshit from a mile away.

I didn’t feel like a good person, despite what Laura wanted to believe, and there was a good chance these kids would agree with me—and then what?

There was no way in hell Laura would tolerate me if her daughters despised me, and I’d be back to where I’d started. On a cliff, waiting to fall off.

Or a bridge, if we were speaking literally.

Laura clapped her hands together and crouched to the level of her daughters. “This is my good friend Max. Max and I have known each other for a very, very long time, and I was thinking maybe you girls would like to be his friends too.”

“Do he like Santa?” the other little girl asked.

Laura shrugged. “Well, I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him? ”

The little girl got up from where she had been sitting on the floor to walk over to her mother.

My heart swelled three times its size at the sight of Laura acting as the part of mommy.

It was all at once bizarre and wonderful, and it did things to me I couldn’t explain.

It made me simultaneously jealous and so much more in love with her that I could hardly stand it.

The little girl leaned in to whisper something into Laura’s ear.

Then Laura turned to look up at me and said, “Lizzie has a question for you.”

“Oh,” I replied, then crouched down beside the woman I’d loved since I was eighteen years old to look into the eyes of her daughter. They were the eyes of another man … but that was okay. They were beautiful just the same. “Well, maybe I have an answer.”

That was when she pulled off the tiara she was wearing and held it out to me. “You wanna wear my princess crown?”

Everything about this little girl looked like her father, so much more than her mother.

We have that in common , I thought.

The shape of her mouth, the color of her hair, and the strength in her nose.

But deep beneath the color of her eyes, she held every bit of her mom.

The same compassion and acceptance Laura had had that first day in the high school cafeteria was looking right back at me now, and it took every ounce of willpower not to gather that little girl in my arms and hold on tight.

Because there was nothing impure about her, and if her eyes could look at me that way, then it must’ve been true. God, if I was going to do this, if I was going to take a chance on something real with Laura, I needed it to be true.

Without breaking eye contact, I nodded and said, “I would be honored to wear your princess crown.”

For this little girl, for both of them, and their mother … I would be honored to do anything.