It’s not at all what I actually wanted to say, but Ames was already moving her to the table. To the head of the table. To my spot. The trio seemed to realize it, too, when they glanced at each other, then at me.
“I can sit here,” Lenora said quickly, placing a hand on the seat to the left.
“No.” I moved to the spot that had been my grandfather’s, then my father’s before becoming mine and pulled it out. “This is yours.”
She hesitated. Glanced at the other two nervously before accepting.
I didn’t speak throughout the meal. I watched and listened, assessed the dynamic I had walked into. I saw the way they were with her. The little gestures that passed in the blink of an eye.
Ames scooped all the tomatoes out of her food while she chatted about the garden. Eliah moved the wine away and placed two glasses of water next to her plate. In return, she watched them like they hung the sun and the moon. Every word had her focused. Enraptured. They could announce cheese was falling from the sky and she would have agreed.
She loved them.
Not with subtle indulgence, but a blazing passion I could feel on my skin.
I blow out a breath and open my eyes.
The memory of that afternoon continues to swallow me up. Gnaws at my soul. I barely got seven years with them. seven years of building … something. A bridge of straw. So tenuous and fraught, but layer by layer every day.
I engrossed myself in their passions. In the little things that made them each their own person. I listened to Eliah describe the different layers of green in a single blade of grass. I went hand to hand on the mat with Ames. At dinner, I consumed every word they spoke like it was gospel. I stopped going on trips. I unpacked my bag and dedicated my time to forging a bond with my boys.
And it was working.
I was so close…
Curled against my ribs, Lenora stirs. Her quiet exhale washes across my chest. Her silhouette is tucked beneath my sheets, body fitted perfectly along the length of mine. I try not to think about how we fit. How good she tasted. Felt.
How right.
I try not to think about how I had betrayed my sons’ memories by taking their woman before they were even cold. It doesn’t matter that I hadn’t meant for it to happen the way it had. It doesn’t matter that I’d been pacing my room like a caged animal, fighting the onslaught of darkness pressing down on me, the waves of grief and madness threatening to swallow me whole. Every fiber of my being had wanted to pace the corridor between the solarium and the gym, to check all their favorite places in case … in case it was all a nightmare and they’d be there.
Eliah spattered in paint, grinning with the sun tangled in his eyes and Ames bent over one of the machines, sweat slicking his hair back.
Twenty-seven years.
God gave me two and a half whole decades to be in their life. To be the father they deserved and I…
“Ames?” Lenora’s fingers glide across my ribs, down my stomach. Her face turns into my skin, and she nuzzles before lifting her head. “Eliah?”
I know even before she comes fully awake that her heart’s about to break all over again. And I’m proven correct when she glances from me to the space behind her and not finding what she was looking for. I feel it in the hitch, the catch in her chest as it all comes back to her.
I say nothing when gathering her up into my arms. When I crush her against my chest like that might keep us both together.
“I know,” I whisper into her temple as she circles my neck and squeezes so hard I almost can’t breathe.
Her sobs run through her and burn through me. Each wheezing heave of her back only twists the knife in my gut deeper. No amount of useless assurance is going to fix either of our pain. There is only one thing we both fucking need and it was already a fully-fledged mission before she ever asked.
“I will make this right,” I promise when her desperate, howling wails are no longer carving into my soul.
“All of them,” she snarls against the hollow of my throat. “Promise me. All of them.”
I nod. “All of them.”
Her small, damp face cradles perfectly between both of my palms and I search the deep pools of chocolate brown begging me to put our family back together.
Her tears burn my skin. They mark the very foundation of my soul. I would cut out my heart to stop them, but all I can do is hold her and wipe each one away while she watches me with those doe eyes.
“Can I stay with you today?” she asks softly. “I don’t want to be alone.”
