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Morgan shrugged, tossing the toast to the side. “I don’t know. You’re the adult.”
It was true. And he’d already poisoned her with that Chinese food. But he dialed the local BBQ place, which sold impeccable cheesy macaroni and ordered them a large vat of the stuff, knowing they didn’t sell anything shellfish-related. He even asked, mid-conversation, “You definitely don’t have shellfish in the kitchen? Or in the vicinity? You, sir, haven’t eaten shellfish lately, have you?”
And the man on the phone laughed heartily, saying no.
The macaroni was delivered to the hospital at around eight-thirty, a few hours before visiting hours were over. Kate pounced on them immediately when she entered, viewing her ex-husband and her tiny daughter stuffing macaroni down their throats with plastic forks.
“Jesus, Q. I can’t trust you at all.”
“She wasn’t eating. She needs to get her strength back,” Quentin said, gesturing toward their daughter, who’d begun to refill her bowl. “She’s got the appetite of a lion.”
“No. A tiger,” Morgan insisted.
“Right. That’s what I meant,” Quentin said, giving Kate a knowing look.
“Whatever,” Kate said, stuffing herself in the chair across from him. She still looked fatigued, but she’d obviously applied makeup at some point. She no longer looked so skeletal, so sad. “What cartoon is this?”
Quentin tucked his daughter in that night, drawing the sheets up to her chin. Kate kissed Morgan on the lips precisely once before excusing herself and heading home with Jason, squeezing Quentin’s elbow a final time before departing.
“Aren’t you leaving, Daddy?” Morgan asked, her eyes big as saucers, like a rodent hidden in a tunnel.
“No way,” Quentin said, extending his legs out in the small, plastic chair. “I’m camping here with you. What if you wake up and you get scared again?”
“Dad. I’m big now,” Morgan insisted, rolling her eyes. But her voice wavered, telling a different tale.
“Yeah, I know you’re big,” Quentin said. “But I also know the only job I really care about in this world is being your father. And I’m going to do that really, really well. Understand?”
His daughter drifted off in the next twenty minutes, exhaustion folding through her and causing her to sleep dreamlessly, without her normal kicking and fighting to unspeakable demons. She was safe. She would sleep through the night.
Nothing like this would ever happen again. Not if he had anything to say about it.
As she slept, Quentin’s thoughts turned to the office. He lifted his phone, typing quickly and rescheduling a meeting with the band Thick Soled for the following late afternoon. He apologized to Maggie, telling her “something very important came up,” not wanting to mix his two worlds: his family life and his magazine life. Although he, personally, didn’t own the magazine, the numbers had shown nothing but growth for the past two years, since he’d become editor. He didn’t imagine he’d lose his position any time soon.
Maggie typed back quickly, her words coming a bit sloppily, perhaps showing she was drunk.
“Don’t leave me hanging like that again,” she said. “I had everyone coming at me, asking me where you were. The interns were manic. All the girls are dressing slutty to attract you, I think. It’s disgusting.”
Quentin’s mouth down-turned, then, as Charlotte came back to his mind. He typed back to Maggie, hating himself.
Good thing there’s that no-fraternization clause in place, then. Otherwise—I might be tempted! he said.
“Ha, ha,” Maggie said back, reinstating their friendship. She couldn’t stay mad at him for long. She continued, “That little pretty one, Charlotte, asked when you’d be in. She was pretty insistent. I’d watch out for her, if I were you. She’s a smart one. Smarter than even you, maybe.”
Quentin shoved his phone into his pants, shivering. As his daughter slept, he cranked up onto his feet and entered the hallway, his mind a blur. Hadn’t kicking her out of his bed been enough of a message? There was no possible way she could know what had happened with Morgan. She probably assumed he’d kicked her out, and then proceeded to avoid her all day. This was for the best. Wasn’t it?
He seemed like a major dick. But he had to uphold the no-fraternization rule. He had to force things back on the rails. He had to keep his life stable. And that meant no Charlotte.
But even as he thought about her, his cock pressed firmly against his pants, seeming insistent. This was the longest he’d gone without seeing Charlotte since he’d met her. His fingers seemed to simmer with desire to touch her, to grasp her thin waist, and to separate the silky lips of her pussy, allowing his tongue to dive between.
Would he ever have that kind of pleasure again?
As he paced through the hallway, a tiny redheaded nurse walked past him, shuffling her ass from side to side. She had a tight, taut waist, a small, bird-like neck, and lithe feet, which pulsed across the linoleum at the speed of light. She wasn’t like these other hulk-like nurses. She was different. During his rock star days, he would have branded her as fuckable and shoved her into a closet, stripping her panties to the floor.
