“She hurt you?” Clara asked. “Mothers do that?” My throat closed at that innocent question.
Hannah smiled the saddest fucking smile I’d ever seen. “Sometimes, Blueberry. Because they’re in pain themselves, and they don’t know how to heal.”
My pulse quickened as my breathing shallowed. Fucking Hannah. Giving her mother the grace I suspected she didn’t deserve while gifting my daughter with a perspective that was priceless.
Clara straightened, a serious expression on her face as she shifted to face Hannah fully. “Do you think that’s what’s wrong with my mom? Daddy said she wasn’t ready to be a mother.”
Hannah frowned, so much love in her hazel eyes it hurt to look at her. “Some people aren’t meant to be mothers, but she was meant to bring you into this world, to your Daddy, to Elliot, to your grandpa, to Calliope and…” She cupped her cheek, kissing her forehead. “And to me.” She spoke so softly, it was almost too quiet for me to hear.
My throat felt drier than sandpaper.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Clara whispered.
“You can tell me anything,” Hannah replied without hesitation.
Clara leaned in. “I wish you were my mom.”
Knife. To the fucking heart.
Hannah’s eyes widened a little, then she smiled again. “Can I tell you a secret? I do too.”
On what felt like wooden fucking legs, I walked away. Because my heart couldn’t handle a second more.
Because I wished, more than anything, that Hannah was Clara’s mother too.
eleven
HANNAH
The dinnerI had planned with Lori couldn’t have happened at a better time. I needed space. Needed to clear my head and remind myself I wasn’t part of their family. I was a single woman. In the eyes of the law, I technically wasn’t, but I wasn’t going to think about my estranged husband.
I was going to remind myself that I was in my early twenties, that I was allowed to have fun, and that I was not going to be attached to a grumpy, almost forty-year-old man and his wonderful five-year-old daughter for much longer.
Beau had the night off. He knew I was going out for dinner with Lori and didn’t seem to have an opinion on it one way or another. Why should he?
It was not his business.
I was not his business, I reminded myself as I swiped mascara on my lashes.
I pulled on a pair of heeled boots that I’d been proud to pull from a sale bin. Supple leather, thin heel. They seemed grown-up, elegant, fashionable. I hadn’t had an occasion to wear them, looking after a five-year-old. But dinner and drinks with a new friend was the perfect opportunity.
I’d paired them with a knit dress that fell just below my knee and piled my hair up in a messy bun. My earrings were handmade by Clara.
My heels clicked along the floor as I walked down the hall, grabbing my purse and coat from the hook at the front door.
Beau and Clara were reading on the sofa. He was wearing his reading glasses again. And Beau had an e-reader. It was not something I had noticed before, but it was something that seemed at odds with the grumpy, borderline hermit. I figured him for afuck technology, progress and corporationskind of guy. It seemed laughably small in his large hands.
His eyes were not on the Kindle, though. They were on me, from the second I emerged from the hall. He kept his expression bland, even, as he had since Cole had left.
But I saw him visibly swallow, and his eyes did not dart back down to the book. They stayed on me. Though I had no visible reason to feel heat from his gaze, my body pulsated.
“Hannah! You look so pretty,” Clara exclaimed, looking up from her book. “Iloveyour boots.”
I tore my eyes from Beau. “Thank you, sweetness.”
Thank goodness for Clara, her presence ensuring that neither Beau nor I ventured into dangerous territory. Even if he was interested in me like Cole said, it was not something that could ever end well. And did I remember the first few months here? He was horrible to me. There was no excuse for that.
“You’re going out with Lori?” Clara put down her book.
