Whatever Harley had going on these days—wife, house, work, the whole thing—it wasn’t my business anymore.
Before I could second-guess it, I went back to the first page of the file and adjusted the names:Harley & Holly Lowell. It was the right thing to do. There were no illusions of any kind of future with Harley.
He was married.
I had moved on.
And that was that.
CHAPTER 82
harley
Did I tell you I made a friend?” Aria asked loudly from the back seat. I glanced in the rearview, catching the giant smile on her face. “His name is Carson, and he’s quiet, but I said I can be loud enough for the both of us.”
I chuckled because I absolutely knew she could be. We sat in the drop-off line, and I sorely missed the ease of living down the block from her school. This was a new level of chaos that I didn’t want to get used to.
“You didn’t tell me,” I said.
“He’s so good at art,” she continued before I could say more. “Likeso goodat art, Daddy. He’s going to draw me a picture today, and he said that his uncle bought him a really cool drawing tablet, but Mrs. Welma won’t let him bring it to school. Or maybe his Mommy said that.”
“I can understand why she doesn’t want that. It’d be sad if his tablet were broken at school.”
“We’re the only ones in class who don’t have two parents. He’s got a Mommy, and I’ve got you, Daddy, and we thought maybe you two could meet.”
“Oh, really?” My chest constricted. While she was normally content with our situation, I knew sometimes not having a mother bothered her. This was a first, though. Whatever I said next mattered. “I’m happy you made a friend. I think that’s important, and I think it’s important that everyone has someone who understands them. It sounds like Carson knows what it means to only have one parent.”
“Yeah.”
“And I’m sure that I’ll meet his mom at some point because you two are friends,” I told her, “but that doesn’t mean that his mom and I will ever be together like that.”
“But youcould,” Aria replied. The hope in her voice broke my heart a little.
“Daddy just isn’t ready for something like that, little love,” I said and hoped my honesty wasn’t too brutal for her. “It takes a lot to be in a relationship with someone, and I don’t know that I want that right now. You still have me, and you still have Holly.”
And I really needed that to make up for Vivienne wanting nothing to do with her own daughter.
“Yeah,” she whispered. She fell silent, her face pensive, and I let her have the moment she needed. When it was my turn at thefront of the line, I hugged her extra tight. While it didn’t ease the guilt I had, I needed it probably as much as she did.
I tried to take the long way home by driving along the lake, but distracted driving was a bad idea.And fuck, I was distracted.I pulled into one of the empty beach lots and parked in a spot closest to the lake. Killing the engine, I didn’t get out of my SUV. I just rolled down the windows for fresh air and sat there.
Aria’s voice replayed in my head. I couldn’t get past her excitement at the idea of me marrying some woman I had no idea existed until that conversation. To her, it was simple: she had a friend, that friend had a mom, and her dad was alone. Obviously, those pieces were meant to fit together.
A little part of me wished it were that simple.
I scrubbed a hand down my face and exhaled slowly. I’d been alone for so long that the idea of not being alone felt foreign. Since the day I kicked Vivienne out, every choice I made had been about Aria. I wanted to create something stable and safe for her. It was easier this way—just the two of us. There were no unforeseen complications to compensate for. Thewhat-ifswere too many to count, and there were so many things to figure out about bringing someone new into a situation like this.
Admittedly, some nights, the quiet was too much, and I wanted someone there. And that wasn’t to say I hadn’t gone out on a few dates over the years, but that was all they ever were. I couldn’t make it any more than that. I couldn’t get past the idea of one day this person would meet my kid, and then what? What happened to her? How did all of this work? What if they didn’t get along?
What if she got hurt?
What if I got hurt?
Like I said, I couldn’t get past the what-ifs.It became easier not to date at all than to deal with that.
My therapist had opinions on the issue—to no one’s surprise. She called it avoidance, and I couldn’t exactly blame her for that one because all of my dates had been with men. Maybe a part of me was avoiding facing decades’ worth of sexual identity confusion.
For most of my life, I’d convinced myself that attraction worked how everyone said it did—simple, immediate, and obvious. You saw someone, you wanted them, and that was that. Except, it had never worked that way for me. Not with women, not with men. It had always been something quieter, something that showed up once trust and connection had taken root.
