I love toasted marshmallow. At the local orchard we visit around Halloween, they give you a marshmallow at the end of the hayride. I make Adrian go ask for extras. I’m pretty sure he slips the teenagers in charge an obscene tip because he’s always come back with at least half a bag. He thinks he can buy anything he wants. And why wouldn’t he? He can.
God, I was so impressed with that? And it never occurred to me that I’m a bag of extra marshmallows?
“Does that sound good?” Adrian asks Pearl.
She nods enthusiastically.
“How about you play while I make them?”
“Okay!” She squirms loose, clambering down him like a tree before he has the chance to set her on her feet. Instantly, she’s off like a shot, scaling a turret. When Lucian comes over, he shows her all these parkour-style moves, and she loves to practice so she can impress him. He says he’s teaching her how to get out of a tight spot and get the dropon her targets. I suppose the kidnapping made him as security conscious as Adrian and Logan.
Adrian turns to me. “Will you come sit with me while I start the fire?” He holds out his hand. I glare at it.
On the far side of the playset, there’s a fire pit on a stone patio overlooking the river. When we first moved in, after Pearl was born but before I got pregnant with Winnie, we used to share a bottle of wine out there in the summer sometimes while Vera watched the baby monitor.
More than a few evenings, he laid me down on his coat on the grass bank, and I’d count the stars as he fucked me. The flames from the fire would backlight his dark, brooding face, and I’d shiver, thinking I was so lucky that he was a good man because if he was a bad man, I’d ruin myself over him.
“Come on, Cora.” He gets tired of waiting and grabs my hand.
He leads me around the playset and down the gentle incline to where the fire pit patio is built into the side of the hill. Pearl’s castle towers above us. Adrian seats me in a chair facing the playset and proceeds to stack logs.
Winnie is squirming now, beginning to root. I reach behind my neck to undo the carrier and ease my arms free. Adrian stops building the fire to see what I’m doing. I expect him to glance away when he realizes that I’m going to nurse. That’s what he usually does.
I push my sweater and cami up and pop my boob out of my bra. He keeps looking. The air is cold on my achy breast, and my nipple puckers painfully tight as Winnie fusses. She doesn’t like to wait with a boob in view.
I maneuver her into the customary cradle hold. Usually, if I’m not in the nursery, I have a cover at hand, but my brain was so foggy this morning, I didn’t bring one, and I alsoforgot my jacket. Winnie gets to work quickly. She’s a good nurser now.
Adrian is still watching. Something clenches low in my belly.
“I brought her a bottle of your milk,” he says. “In case.”
“In case what?”
He shrugs a shoulder.
“In case what?” I repeat. I don’t understand what he meant, and I don’t like it. I don’t like any of this. He’s not this guy. He doesn’t pack picnics or hang out with his family if it’s not planned in advance with a firm cutoff.
For a second, I think he’s not going to answer. He picks up another piece of wood and considers where to place it. Then, while he’s studying the firewood, he says, “In case you didn’t want to nurse her in front of me.”
“It’s not sexual. I’m feeding her.”
“I know,” he easily agrees, which pisses me off even more.
“It’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”
“Yeah,” he agrees again.
“I don’t understand you.”
“These days, I find it’s mutual.” He has the audacity to give me a wry smile. Placing a final piece of wood, he stands and brushes his hands on his jeans. “Here,” he says, striding over as he slides off his jacket. “It’s cold.”
He places it over my shoulders and bends to touch Winnie’s cheek, tentative as always, like he’s dusting an eyelash away. If she were a boy, would he touch her more confidently, like the “involved” fathers you see at the farmer’s market and the library? Would he hold a boy and feed him? What would make that baby worth millions more dollars than this one?
I shrug his jacket off, letting it fall to the ground.
Adrian’s head turns, and he pauses for a second on hisway back to the fire. He raises a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “That was petty, don’t you think?”
“I don’t want your jacket.”
