She again requested to speak to her at Calliope and Elliot’s—where our modest Christmas dinner was held.
And Clara had run into her arms a few days later, when she arrived home.
I’d been jealous. Jealous of my five-year-old daughter because she was able to hug Hannah, to show her affection without second thought. She’d claimed Hannah as hers because it was natural. It was meant to be.
That’s why it felt like having boundaries with Hannah was going against nature. It was wrong, not being able to brush hair from her face, kiss the spot on her collarbone dusted with freckles. To not fuck her until she screamed my name, taste her on my tongue.
My restraint was tested, almost entirely decimated at Calliope and Elliot’s wedding.
Hannah had been invited—not as a nanny, but as a guest. She’d been nervous about going, so I watched her. I knew she struggled to navigate large gatherings.
Fuck, before she arrived, I hadn’t attended those gatherings myself. Yet my brother was marrying Calliope Derrick, and apparently, that came with a whole brood of families.
Hannah enjoyed everyone’s company, greatly valuing her friendship with Lori. I also knew she felt on the outside, felt more comfortable with the children than the women.
I didn’t know a whole lot about her past, but she’d alluded to a lot when she’d told me about her piece of shit ex-husband. She had struggled, hadn’t been treated how she deserved. And she’d been left with plenty of scars that didn’t show on her creamy, perfect skin.
Kindness was a novelty to her. Aside from Cole, I didn’t think she’d been treated with it.
The thought made me want to breathe fucking fire. Especially because I’d been one of the people who hadn’t treated her the way she deserved.
I’d been planning on being delicate with her the day of the wedding. To try to help soothe her nerves.
Even though my own nervous system had been going fucking haywire. Clara… in an enclosed, indoor space with a fuck of a lot of people.
Again, she had been cleared by her doctor. Had received a second opinion. And a third, at Calliope’s behest.
But still, there was a chance she could get sick. There was always a chance.
That small chance had taken up almost every corner of my brain as I got ready for the wedding, cursing the fucking suit I had to wear.
I’d tried to chase away the whispers of dread and focus on the present. Especially when the present was my daughter, twirling in a dress that probably cost as much as a used car—Calliope had it custom-made inFrance—while rehearsing her “role” for the wedding and generally floating on cloud nine.
She adored Calliope. She already considered her an aunt, and since she didn’t know its origins in suppressing women and concreting property deals, the pageantry of the wedding was romantic to her.
I’d let her romanticize it. Until the day some unworthy fuck tried to marry her.
And then, I’d walk her down the aisle.
Because she was going to have a future, and I’d be there for every moment of it. Or at least I’d try to be, not living in imagined pasts where the disease came back and my world was reduced to cinders.
Clara stopped spinning, her eyes widening in the direction of her door.
“Hannah, you look like a princess!” Clara declared, rushing forward.
I stared at Clara’s bed for five seconds, steeling myself. Hannah would be wearing a dress. It was a wedding. It was required. Hannah would look beautiful, because Hannahwasbeautiful.
I lived with her. Endured every day in which I had to subdue every one of my instincts when I looked at the curve of her ass, the swell of her perfect tits, her smile, her lips.
I could handle another day of Hannah looking pretty.
On that thought, I turned.
And I was proved wrong.
The second I laid eyes on her, my breath rushed from my lungs.
Hannah did not look merely pretty. She was the most stunning fucking thing I’d ever laid my eyes on. Sin encased in a yellow silk dress that draped over her curves like a waterfall. It melted over every peak, every valley as if it had been made for her. The slope of her shoulders drew my eyes. Her porcelain skin was littered with freckles from long afternoons in the sun with my daughter. Sculpted into the perfect shape from lifting Clara, exploring with her, and planting flowers in my garden.
