Page 124 of The House Guest

“You’d better not, pretty boy. I’m serious.” He chugged the whiskey again.

Then we sat in silence for a bit. Casey looked into the fire, an eerie sadness on his face. Even though I was currently his worst nightmare, I felt a kinship with this man. He’d once taken Primrose from me, like I’d just done to him. We’d both experienced the same loss. The difference was, he hadn’t done anything to cause it. He didn’t deserve what my actions had led to any more than Primrose had.

The very least I owed Casey was to make sure I didn’t overshadow him when it came to his daughter. He’d taken care of the woman I loved all those years when I couldn’t. And he wasn’t standing in the way of my happiness now. That demanded my respect. It demanded that I look out for him, too. That had already started tonight.

He poured another glass. “Don’t worry. This is the last one.”

“It’s all good,” I assured him. “Just let me know when you want me to take you home.”

CHAPTER 37

Dorian

It was three months before I finally got the go-ahead to formally meet Rosie.

The day was today—a Saturday afternoon. Casey was taking a golf vacation with some friends and had given his blessing for Rosie to meet me. Primrose was bringing Rosie over to my place before we took her to the playground.

The now four-year-old daughter of Primrose and Casey had been through a lot of transition over the past few months, so I hadn’t been eager to complicate things even further. While Casey had now moved out of the house he’d shared with Primrose, he still joined them for dinner a lot on weeknights. Primrose and he had both tried to maneuver things so Rosie still felt like everything was semi-normal. The main difference was that Casey didn’t sleep there anymore. But he often went over there in the mornings to take Rosie to school.

I’d continued to rent the same house, though I’d been casually looking for a place I could call my own. Consultingwork, which I was able to do remotely, kept me busy most afternoons. It was rare that I got to see Primrose on weeknights. But the weekends were different, and I lived for them.

While Casey and Primrose didn’t have a formal custody arrangement, many weekend evenings, Casey took Rosie over to his new place overnight. He’d set her up with her own room there. They’d explained as best as they could to a four-year-old that her parents had decided to be friends but live separately. She was probably too young to grasp the full implications of that, but she seemed to be accepting it.

I was nervous as all hell to meet that little girl today, afraid she’d see through my guise of trying to play the part of a casual friend to her mother. Would she somehow sense that I was the reason her parents weren’t together? Would she blame me?

When the doorbell rang, my heart rate spiked.Calm down, homewrecker.

I put on my best smile before opening the door. “Hey!”

“Hey!” Primrose smiled, holding Rosie’s hand.

I looked down to meet Rosie’s eyes. “Hi.”

“Hi.” She held her hand up in a wave, her soft little voice piercing my heart.

“Rosie, this is Mommy’s friend, Dorian,” Primrose told her.

“Hi, Dorian.”

I knelt. “It’s really nice to meet you, little lady.”

I doubted she remembered our brief encounter at the supermarket, even if it played on repeat in my head whenever I thought about her.

“Can we come in?” Primrose finally asked.

Shaking my head, I waved them inside. “Of course. What am I thinking? Come in. Come in.”

Rosie sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?”

“It’s apple crisp. Have you ever had it?”

“Mommy makes it…”

Arching my brow, I turned to Primrose. “You do?”

She shrugged. “Might’ve been one of the ways I kept connected to you through the years.”

I smiled at Rosie. “Wanna piece?”