Page 39 of The Vegas Rerun
I hope he doesn’t notice how my hands shake as I put my jacket on. My heart feels too full, too heavy, like I’m carrying the weight of everything I haven’t said. I know if we leave here tonight without me telling Joshua about Autumn that I probably never will. And I realize that I’m ok with that. Or at least as ok with it as I can be.
“Let’s go,” I say with a smile, and we head to the elevators.
We ride down and as the doors ping open, I see a man pacing back and forth across the lobby floor. The sound of his footsteps echo loudly across the mostly empty space, the sound followed by a jingle sound coming from the large bunch of keys he’s holding in one hand.
The building superintendent barely looks at us as he swings the door open, muttering something about faulty locks. Joshua and I both thank him as we pass him, and he mutters a you’re welcome before closing and locking the front door and disappearing back into the night without another word
“Friendly guy,” Joshua comments with a grin.
“We did get him out of bed in the middle of the night and have him come down here,” I remind him, although I can’t help but smile too.
Joshua and I step into the night, heading for the parking lot. The crisp night air bites at my skin, and I inhale deeply, trying to ground myself. I wait for regret to hit me over what we’ve just done, but it doesn’t. What does hit me is the need for more. I ignore that little voice and I tell myself what we did was a goodway to get him out of my system and that’s the end of anything between us. I don’t think I believe it even as I’m thinking it, but I tried.
"Where are you headed?" Joshua asks, turning to me as we reach my car.
"Home," I lie. "I’ll see you tomorrow."
He studies me for a beat, as if he can sense the falsehood in my words, but then he nods.
"Enjoy the rest of your night," he says.
“I’m pretty sure it will just be me crashing,” I say. Another lie. I get into my car before I can see Joshua’s expression to see if he has picked up on my lie once more. In hindsight, I don’t’ know why I didn’t just say I was going to my mom’s. I was afraid that he would ask me why the hell I was visiting my mom at four am, which is a reasonable enough question which is why I lied.
I guess it’s funny that I feel ashamed of myself for lying to him when it’s such a small, insignificant lie that makes no difference to anything in the big scheme of things, yet I have convinced myself that it’s ok to hide Joshua’s daughter from him. Yeah, I’m weird like that. Sue me.
The drive to my mom’s is quiet, the city lights blurring past me, my fingers tightening around the steering wheel with every mile. By the time I pull into her driveway, my chest is tight with a mix of exhaustion and an emotion I can’t name and don’t want to explore too deeply.
The house is dark except for the faint glow of the porch light, and when I slip inside, I move as silently as I can, my feet carrying me upstairs, avoiding the fifth stair that creaks, and then to the small room at the end of the hall.
Autumn sleeps curled up in her little bed, one tiny hand fisted around the edge of her blanket, her face peaceful in the dim, silvery light of the moon that shines through her curtains. My heart clenches at the sight of her, a fresh wave of lovecrashing over me so forcefully that it nearly knocks the air from my lungs.
She is everything to me, my whole world in this tiny package. She is the reason I breathe, the reason I keep going. And no matter how much I want Joshua, no matter how much I ache for him, I will always put her first.
I drop to my knees beside her bed, brushing a loose curl from her forehead.
"Hey, baby girl," I whisper, even though she’s fast asleep. "Mommy’s here."
She stirs slightly, sighing in her sleep, and I let my fingers linger, tracing the curve of her cheek.
Would Joshua see her and know? Would he look at her and see himself reflected back? Or would he only see obligation, responsibility and a life he never asked for, never wanted?
I can’t do that to her. I won’t.
I press a kiss to her forehead, letting my lips linger there for a moment before pulling back.
"I love you, sweetheart. So, so much."
And in its simplest terms, that’s why I can never tell him about her.
CHAPTER 27
JOSHUA
Over the next few weeks,I find myself playing a dangerous game that I like to call ‘get Molly to want me in the way I want her’. Catchy huh?
I flirt with Molly. Ninety-nine percent of the time, she resists flirting back with me, but I live for the one percent of the time that she forgets herself. And sometimes, even when she’s trying to resist, she’s not always successful. I regularly catch her watching me when she thinks I’m not looking, her gaze lingering on my hands, my mouth, my tie when I loosen it at the end of the day. And every now and then, I see this faraway look in her eye just after she’s been watching me, and I’m sure she’s thinking of how great we are together.
Playing the game is intoxicating, but it’s more than the thrill of the chase. It’s her. She’s intoxicating in her own right.
