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I took in a breath. A clear image popped into my head, right away. I didn’t want that to be the memory, not when I had so many that seemed better.
“Once, when I was maybe eight or nine, I made my brothers put on a play with me. A full on sword-fighting, dragon-slaying thing. We waited until nighttime to perform it, because we needed the fire in the fire pit out back. For effect.”
She laughed softly.
“We’d learned early on never to ask Dad to join us for anything like that. For anything at all. He’d never come, and if he ever did, he’d tell us it was nonsense and that we needed to get our damned heads out of the clouds. So we only invited Mom.”
I shifted so I could stroke Winona’s hair as I felt myself back in that cool evening, with the scent of the ocean mingling with the woodsmoke of the fire, my chest giddy with excitement at my brothers playing along to my script.
“It was Mom who always believed in me.”
Mom, who’d tried to fish the smoldering ruins of my notebooks out of the fire after she’d seen me yelling, trying to get them out myself.
“Mom cheered along at all the right parts. Connor made sound effects. And when I killed the monstrous dragon—Blake, wearing garbage bags—I remember looking up, and there he was.”
“Your dad?”
“Yeah. He looked… kind of like a little boy himself. I think he wanted to be there with us. I think he wanted to sit beside my mom and cheer us on but didn’t know how.”
I’d never told that story before. I think I worried I’d imagined it. And maybe I did. Maybe it was a hopeful, fabricated memory. Maybe I’d just wanted him to believe in me the way Mom had. But even if the memory wasn’t real, it existed now, outside of me. Winona had heard it, and that made it real enough for me.
Chapter 7
Winona
The next morning, I woke up the way you sometimes do with an absence of memory. You wake up thinking this will be a normal day like any other.
Then it hit me.
I slept with Mitchell Harrington. My client. My wealthy jerk client who had something softer and more tender underneath—something I was pretty sure he was too scared to show anyone, including me. More than that. I liked Mitchell Harrington. I wanted to crack him open.
And that felt dangerous. My feelings had suddenly become more complex than just attraction. Yes, the sex had been incredible—the best I’d ever had, and we didn’t even finish. But I couldn’t stop thinking about that rawness in his eyes when he’d asked me to stay, and the way he held me later when I’d told him so much.
I didn’t talk much about home with anyone—it was too painful. And I never talked about Adam. I didn’t want his existence known, not only because it was hard, but because I didn’t want to expend another ounce of my thoughts on him. He didn’t deserve that.
Mitchell seemed to have understood. He didn’t try to shush me, he didn’t try to get me to move on. He didn’t even try to get me to stay after that, even though we hadn’t even addressed his needs.
I hadn’t even touched his beautiful cock. And I wanted to do that so badly it hurt.
But talking about Adam had riled me, too. It had shifted what had been a terrifying experience from start to finish into a furious memory. He’d taken everything from me, and all I’d done was run scared.
So it was with a confusing swirl of emotions that I arrived at the Rolling Hills job site that morning. And it wasn’t until I was accosted by Cher and Sarah the moment I walked into Sarah’s office that I began to actually relax.
“I’m not sharing details,” I said after both of them stopped squealing.
Cher put up her hands. “I don’t want any. I’m just proud of you for doing it. My friend Winona—torrid affair-haver.”
“I want details though?” Sarah said, her chin in her hands.
Thank God for my friends. I indulged for a moment, talking about the house, mainly, and a little about his surprise kindness, though I withheld almost all of what had actually happened.
It was funny, I was the one normally taken by my friends’ romantic stories. They were never about me. But here I was, talking about the night as if I really had met a prince.
My stomach twisted as the strange mix of feelings came back with a wallop.
“So when are you going to see him again?” Sarah asked.
I was quiet for a moment as I considered. I didn’t even know if I was going back.
