Page 35 of Single Mom's Daddies
I want to touch her. Not for sex. Just to reassure her she’s not alone. But I don’t. I can feel how close she is to breaking. How much she’s holding back. So I give her space, and I give her silence, and I give her the choice.
After a moment, she turns back. Her eyes are dry again. Her face is calm. Too calm.
I’m starting to be able to see beneath her mask. No wonder she’s freaking out.
“I should go.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do.” She brushes past me. Not cold. Not distant. Justdone. Her body language is all retreat now. Not from fear. From guilt. From the weight of whatever we just unlocked.
I follow her down the hall just to make sure she’s okay.
She pauses at the threshold to the deck. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “This shouldn’t have happened.”
I lean against the wall. “Itdidhappen.”
She nods. “And it won’t again.”
I say nothing. Because I hope she’s wrong.
She disappears into the hallway and is gone. The house goes still.
I stand there for a long time, palms open, blood cooling, mouth still tasting her skin. I don’t go after her. But I want to. God, I want to.
Instead, I return to the kitchen. It’s a mess. Cups. Water. My shirt rucked halfway up. I press my hands to the marble countertop and stare at the spot where her legs were wrapped around me just ten minutes ago.
I got a glimpse of something real and fumbled it.
I get a rag, wipe down the counter. Run the faucet. Put the mugs in the sink. Fold my hands around the edge of the counter and stare out the window at the night.
This house keeps too many secrets. Tonight, it keeps one more. And I don’t know how long I can live with it.
9
SAFFRON
Nikolai kisseslike one of the men from that night.
It hits me the second I wake up. Not as a thought, but a memory—disorienting and hot, a flicker of bodies and breath and pleasure that doesn’t belong in this bed, in this cottage, in this moment.
But it’sthere.
And it’s the reason I bolted out of that kitchen like the place was on fire.
I haven’t had that dream in years. I haven’t thought about Halloween—not really. Not since Ivy was born. My brain packed that memory away in a locked box labeled “Mistake. Don’t touch.” But now the lock’s cracked. The memory’s leaking. And it’s his fault.
It was supposed to be one night. I was nineteen, stupid, newly heartbroken, and burning with the kind of hunger that doesn’t come from your stomach. They were masked. Three of them. Quiet. Sure-handed. Hands I remembered for months.
And then Ivy happened. And everything before her got stuffed into the “irrelevant” pile.
Until last night.
Nikolai’s kiss felt too familiar. Not just the pressure or the heat—but therhythm. The pacing. The way he gripped my thighs and pulled me closer. It hit like a flashbulb in a dark room.
So, I bolted.
Because the second I let myself sink into it, I was in two places at once—his hands on my waist, but someone else’s memory in my mouth. And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
