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Even on a dark and starless night, you are the shimmering light that leads me home.
Chapter 42
ALEX - 2028
It takes ten seconds for me to realize the sound coming from the living room is the doorbell. I’ve never heard it ring before.
“Dad! Can you get the door? I’m getting dressed!” Lily yells from her room downstairs.
Sighing, I grab my black blazer from the back of the kitchen chair and pull it on as I head to the front door, quickly flipping through my mental notes. I’m positive I’m supposed to be meeting Jillian at the restaurant, not here.
When I swing it open, my heart, mind, and dick aren’t prepared for the tangle and wrangle of emotions that literally weaken my knees at the sight of her.
Little Miss Penny Rose is on my front porch, and she’s all grown up.
Subconsciously, I register every new detail. Deep-cherry-red waves of hair skim the middle of her chest. Eyes the color of soft forest moss. Long legs in tight denim. Curves that could rival a winding road.
And that smile. That fucking smile. Undoing me in a hundred different ways since she was six. Just as adorable and mischievous, but now fuller, sultry, glossy with berry-tinted gloss.
Oof.
“Penny.” My attempt to sound smooth crashes and burns. Her name comes hoarse from my throat, raspy with regret, denial, and longing.
My heart throbs as her tongue skims briefly over her top lip. “Alex.”
The mature confidence in her voice says so much.
The last time I saw her, my name wavered on uncontrollable sobs with tears pouring down her cheeks. I remember how she clung to my hand and fell to the floor, begging and crying incomprehensibly. I’ll never forget how I witnessed her soul crumble right before my eyes.
Or how I froze with fear and watched her being taken away from me, my heart shattering with hers.
And how it’s been killing me to be away from her ever since.
But that lost, fractured girl is nowhere to be seen in the gorgeous young woman standing in my doorway.
Lily’s recent words echo through my mind. “She’s better now, Dad. Things are great. She’s coming to visit in two weeks.”
I don’t know where to look. Not at those mile-long legs. Not at the pale skin of her throat encircled by a tight silver chain, or the dragonfly pendant hanging from it, just above the delicious valley between her breasts. Not at those eyes that’ve been holding me hostage forever. And not at the tiny ruby heart ring on her finger.
“Here I am again,” she says softly. I smile at the memory of her saying those same words to me in greeting over the years.
Clearing my throat, I say, “Here you are.” My response grants me a wistful smile. “Lily told me you were coming to visit.”
Interestingly enough, my daughter neglected to tell me exactly what day Penny would be arriving.
“She invited me to stay for a few days. If you’re not comfortable with that, I can get an Airbnb in town, or I—” At her feet is a suitcase and a tiny pet carrier.
I put my hand up between us. “Of course you can stay here. She misses you.”
“I miss her, too.”
Her gaze idles on me longer than it should, and I eat it up like a ravenous wolf. We don’t have to say the words. I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you, too. Four years and three thousand miles later, changed nothing.
Nada. Zilch. Zero.
The undercurrent of us is still there—still buzzing with buried secrets and longings that words are too weak to touch.
“You look so different,” she says with an intrigued tilt of her head.
I smirk. “That good or bad, little darlin’?”
Her nickname on my lips is like wearing an old sweatshirt on a cold day. Familiar and comforting. Undoubtedly mine. I never want to take it off.
She inhales a breath and bows her head. I resist pushing her hair away when it falls over her face. When she meets my eyes again, her cheeks are flushed in a way that makes my mouth dry. She purses her lips, quickly banishing the faint smile I caught a glimpse of.
“It’s good, Alex. Really good.”
I shove my hands in my front pockets. “You know what they say. Two eyes are better than one.”
She frowns and shakes her head a little. “Don’t say that. It’s not even your eye. You look healthier. Less tortured.”
I almost laugh. If she only knew the truth.
My new eye isn’t the only fake thing about me. I’ve become a master of mirage when it comes to looking like I have my shit together.
“I’m three years with no alcohol or weed. And lots of working out.”
I like the spark of approval I see in her eyes as they rove over my chest and biceps.
“It shows,” she says. “I’m proud of you.”
I nod. “You look different, too.”
