Page 57 of Reclaim Me

“Can we go inside?” Riley asks, her eyes wide, just like her mom’s.

I hold the keys out to Rae again, hoping she’ll take them. “Yeah, Mommy, can we go inside?”

Her hand trembles as she takes the keys from my hand, and I let out a shaky exhale when her fingertips brush the inside of my palm. Touching her is like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Even when it’s rare and fleeting, I take it as a gift, knowing that even ephemeral things deserve to be treated with reverence.

“I can’t believe you,” Rae is saying now, tossing her incredulity over her shoulder while she slides the keys into the lock on the front door. As soon as it’s open, Riley drops my hand and pushes her way inside. “Hey, say excuse me, young lady!”

“Excuse me!” She shouts as she runs down the hallway toward the back. If I hadn’t just done a walk-through of the space in anticipation of this very thing, I would stop her in her tracks, but since I know there’s nothing in here she can hurt herself with, I’m happy to let her explore. Her footsteps pound down the hallway as she flits from one room to the next, shouting her excitement just so she can hear her voice echo off the walls.

“Hunter, this is too much,” Rae says, pulling my attention back to her. She’s standing in the middle of her front room, which I assume she’ll use for reception, with a hand over her mouth and the keys to her dream dangling off one delicate finger. “I can’t accept it.”

“You can, and you will.” I close the space between us, needing to be in her orbit. “I don’t have any use for this building, so you’re going to take it and dedicate every square foot to your dream.”

“But what if?—”

My hand comes up, fingers acting on their own accord as they grip her chin and force her to keep her eyes on me. Rae pushes out a quivering breath, as overwhelmed by the sudden physical contact as I am, but she doesn’t pull away. I shake my head, not in the mood to hear Aaron’s doubts in Rae’s voice. “Don’t do that. Don’t think about everything that could go wrong before you’ve had a chance to acknowledge what is going right. You have the space of your dreams, so tell me what you’re going to do with it.”

She looks around the empty room, and I can see the wheels turning in her mind, ideas that I’ll go out of my way to make a reality taking root. I’m dying for her to share them with me, to give me another part of her to hold on to, but I also recognize that I can’t make her. We’ve come a long way from her running away from me, but there are still walls up between us. She keeps them there to protect herself, and I let them stand because I know if we’re going to have something that lasts this time, I can’t just force my way in. She has to invite me.

Rae presses her lips together, trying to hold back, but then she sighs and looks at me with excitement and hope in her eyes. She turns, walking over to the wall across from us that faces the door.

“The reception desk will go here…”

Rae, Riley, and I spend an hour in the building daydreaming about what it’s going to become, what we’re going to make it, even though, for some reason, Rae’s got it in her head that she’s going to be doing everything alone. Everything was ‘I should’ or ‘I’ll need,’ which made me angry for two different reasons.

Because, one, it drove home the fact that Aaron, for all his Rae and I this and my family that nonsense, doesn’t do a damn thing to support her.

And two, it doesn’t account for the fact that I’m going to be there with her every step of the way.

After Rae explained her vision for the space, I made a call to Archway Construction—Mallory’s brother, Dominic’s company—to have a team come out and build the desk and custom shelving she’d need in the reception area as well as cover the red brick of the exterior in a white, limewash paint to give it a charming refresh. Just like when I handed her the keys to the building, Rae stood there with her mouth agape, wondering why I was going out of my way to do things for her. I’d given her some speech about watching her chase her dreams being good for Riley, which earned me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, but the truth was something much simpler.

Something I can’t voice but will continue to act on because the alternative is to pretend like I’m not madly in love with her, and I’m just not willing to do that.

Because I am in love with her.

And I’ve been in love with her since the first day we met. Since she answered the phone and challenged me to live, since she kissed me in the middle of my kitchen and made me realize that, up until that point, I had no idea what it was like to hold the flavor of destruction and desire on my tongue. Since she introduced me to my daughter and made my induction into fatherhood easier than I deserved.

I don’t think I remember a time when I didn’t love her, when I didn’t want her, when I didn’t crave her heat and the sweetness of her scent that has always felt like home to me.

That scent clings to me now as I walk into the gym to pick Taurin up and take him home, competing with the smell of exertion and sweat, and I fight to hold on to it. To hold on to her because every day I say goodbye to her and Riley, setting them free to return to the cold confines of the home they share with Norman and Norma Bates, the harder it gets not to do something stupid like tell her I never want to let her or Riley go again.

Pushing all thoughts of things I can’t change to the side, I scour the first floor for any sign of Taurin. When I come up empty, finding it odd because I remember him specifically saying that he would be cleaning the locker room downstairs, I take the steps up to the second floor two at a time. My heart is in my throat, pumping out all my fears and anxieties at double speed. What if he’s using? What if he OD’d? What if?—

I stop short, and my thoughts come grinding to a halt when I pause outside of my office door and find it partially open with the sound of a teenage girl’s giggles filtering through the crack mixed with the exaggerated low rumble of T’s voice. The little relief I feel at knowing he’s not somewhere relapsing is quickly overtaken by suspicion and dread because I have no idea what he and this mystery girl are doing in my office.

Since I know waiting around to find out is only an act of delaying the inevitable, I burst through the door with a frown on my face that almost turns into a mocking smile that would most definitely feature a laugh when they both jolt with surprise and jump away from each other even though, from what I can tell, they’re not doing anything wrong except for being in my space without my permission.

The girl, who’s closest to the door and, therefore, my wrath, shrinks in her seat, her eyes wide as they take in the scowl on my face. Taurin puts his hand on her thigh and pats it reassuringly.

“Chill, babe, this is my—” He pauses, not knowing how to categorize our relationship. I don’t know how to either. When I told Rae about Taurin, I struggled with it the same way he is now. I’m more than his sponsor, but I’m not his friend, and I don’t think I do anything to qualify as a mentor. He’s not legally in my care, so I’m not even his guardian. We’re just us. “This is Hunter,” Taurin says finally. “He owns the gym. Hunter, this is my girlfriend, Alyssa.”

Alyssa stands, tossing her knotless braids over her shoulder and extending her hand to me. She’s a pretty girl with a sweet seriousness about her that I think is probably good for Taurin. When she stands, he follows suit, looking like he wished he had thought to stand when he made the introductions.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Hunter. Taurin has told me so much about you.”

I take her hand, admiring the firmness of her shake. “Just Hunter, and it’s nice to meet you too, Alyssa, though I would have appreciated it happening somewhere other than in my office.”

Since it’s not really her fault, I send my disdain in Taurin’s direction, and he looks appropriately apologetic as he watches me drop Alyssa’s hand.

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