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“What she needs is to be loved.” Her hands fisted on the pillow.
I stumbled back, her words impaling me like blades.
“Are you capable of that?” she pushed, refusing to back down, peering into me as if she could see every sin I’d committed branded on my insides.
Kimberly’s face flashed through my mind. Her joy and her hope and the love she had for the little girl who would never know the fierce, full, unrelenting love of her mother.
Grief slammed me on all sides, stoking the rage and confusion and loss.
Hands curling into fists, I battled to get my shit together. To rein the emotions and come up with an acceptable response when there really wasn’t one to be found.
Because she didn’t understand. Didn’t get it.
I rubbed my fingers over my lips as the deluge of emotions rained down.
Regret.
Fear.
The barest of hope that only burned at the edges of this reality. A reality painted in desolation.
“I don’t know if I am.”
I didn’t know if I was capable of loving anyone again.
Loving someone today?
After what I’d caused?
Agony clawed at my throat, pacing like a caged animal searching for a way out.
“So, you hire someone like Ms. Sandberg to watch her?” Paisley’s face twisted in revulsion. “Could you have picked anyone colder?”
I exhaled. I’d picked Ms. Sandberg because she’d seemed the most organized. Practical and trustworthy. It’d quickly become clear she might not be the best candidate.
“As I said, I have no idea what I’m doing.”
The truth of it barreled into me. I had no idea what I was doing. Had no business raising a child.
Pain cinched down on my heart, unwilling to fathom a different outcome.
I couldn’t turn her away.
Couldn’t do that to Kimberly.
A soft rush of air left Paisley’s nose, and she slowly nodded as if she were processing the sincerity in my words.
“I’ll do it,” she finally whispered.
Relief punched from my lungs on a rush of heated air. “Thank you.”
Choking out a laugh, she hugged the pillow tighter. “I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for Evelyn. But if you so much as look at me wrong, Mr. Greyson, I’m going to have Evelyn’s horse do the honors of junk punchin’ you.”
“That seems excessive and cruel.” The hint of a smile threatened at the edge of my mouth.
“Cruel? What’s cruel is having to deal with your grumpy ass. Now get out of my house. Must sleep. So tired.”
That she slurred, like the second the serious conversation had ended, her intoxication had taken her over.
She flopped onto her back and promptly rolled to her side, holding onto that pillow as if it would keep her from drifting away while she slept. It took all of three seconds for her breaths to even out, the woman still wearing the clothes she’d had on at the bar, her booted feet hanging over the edge.
A riot of white curls were strewn across the side of her face, long locks spread out over the pink spread and kissing the soft curve of her cheek.
God, she was a disaster.
A perfect disorder.
One that terrified me. Affected me in a way that made me feel out of control, slipping, without a grip on my next move or thought.
Clearing my throat, I ripped myself away from her and went in search of a painkiller because she was certainly going to need it. There was a door on the opposite side of the hall, and I took the chance that it would be a bathroom.
It was, and I went inside and dug into the medicine cabinet where I found a bottle of ibuprofen. I shook out two then went into the kitchen to get her a glass of water, flipping a switch that cast a dingy light into the room.
I found a glass in a cabinet and moved to the sink.
I froze with my hand on the faucet handle when I felt the presence fall over me from behind.
The hairs lifted at the nape of my neck, and I shifted to look over my shoulder.
An old man stood just inside the threshold of the kitchen. He supported himself on a cane, and his hair that was as white as Paisley’s stuck up in every direction. Distrust was carved in the weathered lines of his face. “Who the hell are you?”
Nerves rattled through me, but I straightened myself and cleared the disorder from my throat. “I’m your daughter’s friend.”
“Granddaughter.”
Right. Of course. The man had to be at least in his eighties.
“Yes, your granddaughter. I’m Ryder Nash’s cousin, Caleb Greyson. I gave Paisley a ride home. I was just getting her some ibuprofen and water to drink.”
I assumed since Ryder had lived in Time River his entire life, this man would likely know him. That it would give him some sort of solace that I wasn’t an intruder.
The problem was, I couldn’t be trusted.
