Maren tilted her head, thinking. “I don’t know, now that I think about it. Maybe it got lost in the move. Or left behind. We never had it in San Diego.” She looked at Colin, then back at Juni. “But we never forgot it, either.”
Two little girls in a hammock. One of them gone, the other raising her sister’s daughter and trying not to break every time that daughter asked about her mother, never realizing how much she’d come to mean to her. Mira was Mom, but when Juni needed her—really needed her—Maren was Mama.
It hurt Colin just to think about it.
“Can you read a story now?” Juni asked, settling back against her pillows.
Colin cleared his throat. “Which one?”
“The next one.” Juni pointed at the bookmark just peeking out of the top of the book. He flipped the book open to the story of Rapunzel.
Colin sat on the edge of the bed and started reading. He’d forgotten how the story went beyond a princess trapped in a tower and the bit about the long hair and the prince who climbed it. As he read, he learned that Rapunzel was not a princess, but a common girl who’d been sold before she was even born so that her mother could fulfill a fucking craving. She was taken away from her parents, her father pleading with the witch to let them keep her.
“She was promised to me, said the witch,” Colin read, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “And so you shall never see her again.”
Colin buried his emotions until he was carried along by the rhythm of the story, the way the words built toward the tower and the long golden braid and the witch hiding Rapunzel from the world.
And the prince who wouldn’t give up until he found her and saved her at last.
Juni’s eyes got heavier with each page. By the time Rapunzel’s tears healed the blinded prince, Juni was asleep.
Colin closed the book carefully. He leaned over and kissed Juni’s forehead lightly.
He looked across the bed at Maren in time to see a tear slide down her cheek. She wiped it away quickly and gave him a small smile.
He stood up slowly and rounded the bed to her. Colin took Maren’s hand in his, gently pulled her up, and led her out of the room.
“She’s good,” he whispered. “She’s safe.”
Maren nodded and wiped her eye with the heel of her hand before another tear could fall. “Areyouall right?” she asked him. There was a moment there, while you were reading?—”
“I’m fine,” he said too quickly. No way was he going to burden Maren with his own pain. It would pass. It always did. Mostly.
Maren sighed. “Thank you,” she whispered. “For—” She gestured back toward Juni. “For all of it.”
“No need to thank me. It’s my job.”
There. Distance. That’s what they needed.
The look on Maren’s face hurt more than reading the story and Colin immediately wished he could take it back, pull her close instead, tell her he thought she was kind and sweet and brave.
They stood there in the hallway, too close and not close enough, and Colin felt the day catch up to him all at once.
Juni had claimed his heart. But he’d let her keep it. Maren was standing six inches away looking at him like he’d just given her something she didn’t know she needed and then taken it away again. And he realized he was in danger of giving his heart completely to her.
Mac was right. She was worth the risk. They both were.
And he was…not.
“I should—” Maren gestured vaguely toward her room.
“Yeah. Get some sleep.”
She didn’t move.
Neither did he.
Then Maren stepped back, gave him one more soft smile, and disappeared into her bedroom.
