AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This further endeared him to me, and I was trying to stop the skid of feelings raging through me. I was slipping further and further—faster.
That night, Daniel seem to push all his worry away to make sure Kennedy was happy. When the little girl finished her snack and homework, she asked if she could swim with me and her father before dinner.
“I don’t have a swimsuit.” I protested. “And my hair…”
“Bra and panties, Kokou.” Daniel leaned into whisper in my ear. “And I have a swimming hat you can borrow.”
He stole my excuses and soon, we were in the water, splashing each other. Kennedy’s laughter echoed around us and for the first time in a very long time, I began wondering if I could ever make it as a mother. I never saw myself as one—ever since I was a little girl. My mother had always been tough—so much so that she pushed me into being her duplicate. By the time I was sixteen, I was angry—angry that she’d taken away my chance of being a girl.
At the age of sixteen, the boys wanted nothing to do with dating me. It had gotten around that I could beat the living shit out of any of them—and if that happened, I would feel no remorse about it.
My father hadn’t minded.
He’d always wanted a boy and if he couldn’t have one, he’d wasn’t against my mother trying to turn me into one.
When he was killed in a civil war in Nigeria, I hadn’t mourned.
I didn’t mourn my mother’s passing in a car accident the day of my nineteenth birthday either. I merely buried her and signed up for the military.
If I was capable of such coldness, did I have it in me to be anyone’s mother?
After having a mother like mine, did I deserve to be one—or would I take it out on my child the way my mother did me?
Eventually, I climbed out of the water and sat on one of the deck chairs with a towel wrapped around my shoulders. I was not very good with water for very long—but Kennedy and Daniel didn’t seem to mind. Leaving them, I showered and dressed.
Long after dinner, when Kennedy was in bed, I sat together with Daniel trying to fight the sensations shimmering inside me.
I wanted him again—I needed to feel him again.
Was the intensity of these feelings normal?
Sighing, I shifted in my seat, lifted my beer to my lips and took a long drink.
“There are so many things in play here.” Daniel finally spoke. “Now that we’ve gone and crossed such a line, there’s even more.”
“Now who’s regretting what we’ve done.”
“Not regretting. Pointing out the obvious,” he said. “I’d never regret what happened between us because if we could travel back in time, I’d do it again. But this has gone on long enough and I can’t keep looking for monsters in the dark.”
I said nothing.
“We need to speak with Anna Lowe and figure out what she’s up to.” Daniel pressed. “If she’s not a teacher, I want her nowhere near Kenny. We get Anna, we don’t have to worry about Kennedy being around her at school.”
I framed his face but still had nothing to say.
There were so many things to consider before going after Anna Lowe. If we did and she wasn’t involved, we would be opening the school up to a lawsuit.
If we went after her and she wasn’t involved as deeply as we thought, she could run back to whoever hired her and make things worse.
There were so many bad ways this could end—I exhaled and leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. Daniel rested a hand on my chest and kissed my cheek.
Moaning, I wrapped my arms around him without lifting my head, and he snuffled into me, his face against my neck, his breath tickling my skin. I allowed myself to be comforted—gave myself permission to feel needed.
As the night hummed around us, silently, creatures of the night singing their regular music, I tried calming the excited race of my heart. This with Daniel was quickly becoming something and I was fighting old habits to not grow scared and run away.
He made me want to be better, stronger. He made me want to be the kind of woman who was elegant and soft.
But what did that mean for the person I had become over the years? What did that mean about my steeled spine and my ability to kill a man with zero remorse?
