Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 137077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 685(@200wpm)___ 548(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 685(@200wpm)___ 548(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Or weave your hand into it and grip those ridiculous pink tresses in your fist.
Thankfully, it’s neither of those things on Grace’s phone, but rather a funny video of a lady singing a silly song with her baby. “This is big, big, big… this is small, small, small…”
“I want to do this with Emmett when I go to Uncle Cole’s and Aunt Janey’s next time,” she explains.
I nod, touched. “I’m sure he’d love that.” I don’t know if Emmett will actually care, but if Grace wants to sing and play with him, I’m sure it’ll be welcomed.
“Awesome! I’m going to text them and see when I can go over, ’kay?” She stands, leaving a too-small space between me and Riley, and I start to rise too.
“I’ll come up to tuck you in,” I offer, mostly to save myself from the dangerous thoughts running through my mind.
And through your dick.
“That’s okay,” she says quickly, holding out a hand to stop me from standing. “I can do it myself, Dad.”
My heart stutters in my chest. This is another one of those moments I’ve known is coming, but I thought I had more time before she’d be ready to end our bedtime routine. Thankfully, she does lean toward me for a kiss. It’s the most important part of our tradition, so I’m glad she’s at least still okay with that.
I press a kiss to her forehead, inhaling her shampoo smell. I miss when she smelled like baby powder, but the perfume scent of her head now is something else I’ve memorized. “Goodnight, honey,” I say around the knot in my throat.
“’Night, Dad. ’Night, Riley.”
She slides the door closed behind her, and then it’s just Riley and me, sitting too close, with my hand dangerously tangled in her hair.
I should move, put at least the distance of business-class seats between us, because this feels dangerously intimate. Polite and professional is how I prefer my relationships with the nannies to be, I remind myself. And my dick, who laughs at the very idea.
Hell, that’s how I like all my relationships—everyone at arm’s distance, not up in my business, and definitely not roughing up the perfectly smooth edges I’ve honed so that everyone slips off and away. It’s better that way, for me and them. But after only a short time, Riley’s attacking me with sandpaper and roughing everything up, sticking herself in nooks and crannies I didn’t know still existed. And I can’t say I hate it. I should, but I don’t.
So I don’t move at all.
“You okay?” she whispers, turning her head toward me. The small movement makes her hair brush over my fingers, and I can feel her watchful eyes dropping over me like she’s reading all my thoughts through the set of my jaw. She’s probably actually able to do that, along with all her other surprising skills. “That’s a hard hit to a Daddy’s heart.”
She understands the magnitude of what just happened. Over the years, there have been nights when I didn’t tuck Grace in, but it’s because she was spending the night at my parents’ or at a friend’s house, not because she simply didn’t want me to do it, so tonight is a threshold I knew was coming but was altogether unprepared for all the same.
All that aside, what catches my attention, drawing my focus away from Grace, is Riley calling me Daddy. There’s only one woman who’s ever called me that, especially in relation to Grace. And suddenly, it’s not only the two of us on the patio.
There’s a ghost here with us. And I’m in a position that I shouldn’t be in—sitting in the dark with an attractive woman at my side, with an erection trying to rise again, and my always dependable logic getting hazier with every drink.
I wait to be assailed by the guilt that used to come when I’d think of a woman other than my wife, but after so long, it doesn’t. I’ve dated over the years. Nothing serious, and certainly never anyone I’d introduce Grace to, but I’ve had a few dinners here and some casual fuck fests there. I’m not a saint or a monk, and I’ve needed companionship, especially in those early days when I wanted something—anything—to make the loneliness go away for even a second.
But that acute sense of pain and loss has long since subsided.
It’ll never go away entirely. It’ll always be deep in my heart like a dark, shadowy haze that covers the good times. But I’m alive again, or I thought I was. Until Riley showed up with the magic she says she doesn’t possess and started making me wonder if there could be more. Or fuck, downright showing me that there could be, if I’d open myself up to it.
But I shouldn’t. I can’t. Not with her, not with anyone.