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“Yes ma’am.” My dad’s grumble entered the hall a moment before he did. He approached me, squinting jokingly as though he didn’t recognize me. Then he pulled me into a hug. “Good to see you, son.”
“You too, Pops.”
Mom had the bed made up by the time my father returned with my bag, which I was fully capable of getting myself. But I visited so infrequently that I figured I could let them spoil me a bit. Never mind that I’d essentially come here with my tail between my legs; they didn’t need to know that.
That was, until dinner that evening, when my mother leveled me with that probing gaze of hers—her eyes the same shade of green as mine—and asked, “So why are you here, Calvin? Not that we don’t love having you home, but something is clearly wrong.”
I snorted. Leave it to her to sniff that out within a few hours in my presence.
Colette Ryder had a knack for that sort of thing. She was a well-sought after yoga instructor and meditation specialist, and she’d always been adept at reading moods and energies—particularly that of her only child.
“How do you know something’s wrong?” I asked, and she shot me an unimpressed look.
“Your energy is dark. Troubled.”
Heaving a sigh, I decided my best course of action was to simply rip the bandage free. “I uhh…lost my job. But…I lost my girl too, and that’s even worse.”
My mother gasped and my father gaped. “I’m sorry, honey,” Mom said, settling her warm palm over my hand. “What happened?”
As much as I didn’t want to, I couldn’t hold myself back from spilling the entire sordid story at their feet.
Which took me all the way back to five years ago, to Amara the night I’d met her flashing through my mind. God, she’d been almost ethereal in the low lights of Lawless, her thick, deep brown curls falling around her shoulders and down her back. The memories of her body beneath my hands that night instantly melted into images of her speared on my cock in her desk chair. My head between her thighs on the beach, her mouth around my length in her bedroom. Every time and all the ways I’d had her.
But the quiet moments were there too. The innumerable nights spent on the beach at her house, watching the sun go down, or rising early in the morning—sometimes after not having slept at all—to watch it once again rise over the bay. The way she easily folded into my arms, her slow, deep breaths fanning across my chest, thigh flung over mine as she slept next to me. Cooking meals together, endless bottles of wine and picnics in secluded spots along the water. The day trip we’d taken to Sleeping Bear Dunes—Amara’s idea to wipe away the bad memories the place held, replacing them with new ones, ones ofus, happy and falling in love.
Riding to work together in the morning when I’d stay over, going into town for coffee and danishes at Brie’s, getting drinks at Granny’s, watching movies on her couch or mine when it was raining.
Running the Delatou empire side by side.
I wanted all of that forever, and I’d fucked it up.
“Maybe I’m just not meant to be loved that way. Maybe I’m not meant to be loved at all,” I said after spilling my guts on the worn-wood table between my parents and me. Tears sprang to my eyes as I met each of their stares and asked the question that had plagued me for thirty-three years. “Why didn’t you guys ever love me?”
A pained sound escaped my father, and my mom’s hand tightened on mine.
“It wasn’t that we didn’t love you, Cal. We did—do—love you, so much. But our lifestyle before you came along wasn’t exactly conducive to raising a child. You were never the problem. We simply struggled with what to do with you, this kid who, despite the way we’d each grown up, despite the parenting—or lack thereof—we’d each received, was so damn smart, with his head on straighter than either of us could ever hope for. We may not have ever planned on you, Calvin, but you are the biggest blessing we’ve ever received. You forcedusto grow up. We love you so much, but you’re so different from us, and we didn’t want to fuck you up with our admittedly jilted world views. We wanted you to make your own assumptions and perceptions of the way things worked. We wanted you to read those fantasy novels that took you to distant lands. We wanted you to get the education we’d both scorned. We wanted the world for you, and still do. It was just difficult for us to show that properly.”
It all made sense now, why I’d never managed to connect with them. It wasn’t that they hadn’t cared about me—it was that they’d cared about me so much they hadn’t wanted to mess me up the same way they’d each been messed up.
The realization was staggering, completely shifting my worldview on its axis.
“I’m afraid I’m making your same mistakes,” I said quietly.
“Whatever you think you’ve done,” my dad said, “I can assure you…you’re doing just fine. Against all odds, you turned out to be a great man, Cal.”
I gave Dad a watery smile and said, “I got her pregnant.”
“Amara?” my mom gasped. I could only nod in response.
“And I’m afraid I’m going to fuck it all up. She—I hurt her. Badly. And she fired me, effectively cutting all ties between us. I don’t know what to do from here.”
“Do you love her?” my mom asked softly.
“More than anything,” I whispered without hesitation.
And that emotion—I’d only felt a fraction of it before. Before I’d opened my eyes to the full picture of Amara, allowed myself to see how truly talented she was, how much business she’d single handedly brought to the company over the years, how intelligent and sexy and funny and trulyperfectshe was, IthoughtI’d loved her.
But it was nothing compared to the way my heart belonged entirely to her now. How every single one of my thoughts was full of her—her laugh, the smell of her shampoo when I dug my hands in her hair, and the scent of her perfume at the base of her throat where I loved to press my face, the way her hand felt in mine. How, the moment she’d told me she was pregnant, the life we could have together flashed so clearly in my mind, only to be shattered by the fact that she thought she’d have to do it all alone.
