I tear my gaze from the University of North Carolina sweatshirt I definitely thought I'd lost and meet her gaze. Her eyes are red and have tears in them, and when I look at what’s in her hand, I see the last picture she and her father took together just hours before he was killed.
“Fuck.” I’m through the door, slamming it behind me and pulling her into my arms, and the dam fucking bursts. “I’m here, baby. I’m sorry.” All of my thoughts from earlier go out the window, and all I care about is comforting her however she needs me.
“You said it would get easier,” she cries into my chest.
“I know, I’m sorry.” I pick her up in a bridal carry hold as she continues to sob into my neck and hold her tight against me because it’s been years since she cried like this. She cried the majority of the year he died, but it was like once she turned five, her heart hardened, and it was rare that she’d shed tears to this extent. So, for her to be sobbing uncontrollably, I fear some of this has to do with my telling her “no” to continuing our carnal tradition tomorrow. Like I’m somehow abandoning her. It was as if what we did somehow shielded her from the pain, and my saying no just reopened the wound. “Please stop crying,” I tell her as I sit on the couch, keeping her on my lap. “Talk to me. What’s this about?” I wipe her tears from her face and drag my nose across hers.
She doesn’t say anything at first. She just looks up into my eyes as I rub her back gently, trying to coax the words out of her. “I hate that I’m a burden to you.”
“What?” I ask, shocked because that’s the last thing I was expecting her to say.
“That you feel like you can’t move on because of what we’ve been through. That you can’t think about pursuing anyone because every October seventh, I need you.”
“Hey.” I lift her chin to meet my gaze. “This is not us. We don’t do that. You know that you are absolutely not a burden to me. Just like you knew I’d eventually show up here tonight, you know that on any given day, any given moment, you’re what’s on my mind. Even with a country between us, even though we only see each other once a year, you’re here.” I hold her hand over myheart. “You know how much I love you.” She goes to speak up, and I cut her off. “Ah-ah, don’t try it.” I glower at her. “Not just like a sibling.” I hold her tighter. Of all the ways I love Halle St. John,like a siblingis at the bottom of the list. I love her in so many ways and in so many roles, and they are all connected in confusing and taboo ways, in ways no one would approve of.
“I don’t know how I’m ever going to give you up,” she whispers as fresh tears stream down her face.
“Who said you have to?”
“We always say we can’t do this forever.” She sniffles. “But I don’t know how to exist in a world where you and I aren’t doing this. Where you’re not this person for me.” She bites down on her bottom lip. “I’m scared no one will ever love me as much as you do, and I’m even more scared I’ll never love anyone as much as I love you. I don’t know how I’ll ever be happy with someone who isn’t you.”
I swallow, hearing her voice the same thoughts I’ve had a hundred times over. Thoughts that I know are very real, because while I’ve learned to live with it, there’s a constant dull ache in my chest with every day that goes by when I don’t see her.
“I have these dreams,” she continues, “dreams about Dad…” Her eyes well up again. “I have a baby, and she runs toward him as she knows him despite never having met him, and when he picks her up, he points toward me and asks who I am, and she screamsDaddy!and then I realize they’re talking about someone behind me. Any guesses who it might be?” She looks up at me, and I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me at the thought of being the father of her baby.
I know about every single one of Halle’s dreams. I used to sit up with her and decipher them. Ones that were flashes of the day it happened. One of her killing the man who did this to our family. Trivial ones like showing up on the first day of undergrad in her pajamas, or when Rachel Green fromFriendswas somehow in her statistics class, or the hundreds of sex dreams she had about me.
But this one is new.
“Me?” My voice is hoarse with emotion and lust, and my dick hardens when she gives me a slight nod.
“I can’t picture anyone else as the father of my children. It’s just you. It’s always been you. I know you’ll protect them and keep them safe because you’ve done that for me my whole life.”
I move her to straddle me so she’s seated directly on my cock, and instantly she moves to get comfortable, rubbing herself against me, and a whimper leaves her lips. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper when she drops her forehead to mine. “Every day I wake up and wish you didn’t have to live with this.”
“Knowing I have you makes it bearable. Slightly,” she whispers back, and her words hit me square in the chest because I’ve been able to make the worst thing in her life slightly less painful just by loving her the way I have for twenty years.
Loving her is the easiest thing in the world, and somehow it eased the hardest thing she lives with.
“You’ll always have me, baby. You know I’m always in your corner,” I tell her, rubbing my nose along hers as her lips move even closer to mine. I know it’s only a matter of time before our lips touch and will remain that way for the better part of the next twenty-four hours.
“I want more than that,” she whispers against my lips, and I know she’s already succumbing to the high of us. She’s much less understanding about why we can’t be together once I’ve rubbed my dick against her a few times. “Take me to bed,” she whispers against my lips. “Please, I need you. I love you.”
“I fucking need you too, Saint,” I tell her as I press my lips to hers.I’ve kissed Saint countless times, yet it feels like that first time in her bedroom. Shaky hands brought on by anticipation, and our hungry lips moving against each other. I run my handsup her back, beneath my sweatshirt, and begin rubbing circles gently into her skin. A soft sigh leaves her lips that makes my cock twitch.
Twenty Years Prior
Halle: 4 Years Old
Sebastian: 5 Years Old
“DADDY!!!!” I hear screaming from the top floor of the house. I turn up the volume on my iPad because you can hear Halle from any room in the house. “Can I come, can I come, can I come?” She bounds down the stairs, and I frown, wondering where they’re going.I want to go too.I peek my head up over the couch to see my stepfather picking up my stepsister just as she makes it to the bottom and carries her to sit on the counter in the kitchen.
“I’m just going to the store. You sure you want to go, Princess? Sara said you guys are going to the park in a bit,” he says, talking about my mom as he puts her shoes on and begins to tie them.
“I can go when I get back! Daddy, please.” She puts her hands under her chin like she’s saying her nightly prayers and squeezes her eyes shut. “I want a popsicle!”
“Okay, come on.” He tightens both of her pigtails and presses a kiss to her nose.
