“Mama?” she said in her sleepy little-girl voice that sent a thunderbolt of tenderness right through Helen.
“Yeah, sweetie,” she whispered into her ear.
“Potty.”
They took a detour into the dark bathroom and Helen helped her daughter take down her pants and sit on the toilet.
“Cold seat,” Bea said with a little shiver dance.
“I missed you,” Helen said when they were done and Bea had washed her hands and her face. They walked into Bea’s bedroom and Helen kept the light off while tucking her into bed.
“Mama stay,” Bea whispered, and the words weren’t even out of her mouth before Helen was crawling in next to her daughter. “Story.”
“Sure,” Helen said, reaching for the stack of books by the bed. She got halfway through The Naughty Bunny before Bea fell asleep, curled in against her.
For three years her body had stopped being her own. It had been a vessel for Bea, and for grief. And then it had been a rampaging forest fire of hormones and then a source of food and comfort for a baby. She’d been touched more in these three years than any other time in her life. And there’d been moments she’d wished she could just lie, naked and cold and untouched in the middle of her bed for, like, a week. But that feeling didn’t last long.
Carefully, inch by inch, she pulled away from her daughter, who rolled—sighing and snoring—into the place Helen left behind.
She lay at the edge of the bed and stared up at the ceiling. The faint glow in the dark stars that had lost most of their glow about a year ago.
I should really take those down, she thought. It was somewhere in the middle of her gigantic to-do list. She took her phone out of her back pocket and set it on her chest.
Her heart was beating beneath her ribs. Her blood pounding through her body.
Micah Sullivan was leaving tomorrow morning. And this whole…departure from her regular life would be over. It felt, not to be dramatic, that tonight was the last chance at something.
Even if that something was a one-night stand.
But something had started in that closet in White Plains. And it would be wrong not to finish it.
Look at me rationalizing sex.
She crept out of Bea’s bed and stood in the dark shadows of the hallway. Downstairs she could hear her parents talking. She took a deep breath and did something she’d never done before and imagined she might never do again.
Booty-called a rock star.
She put a hand over her mouth to smother the hysterical laughter.
You awake? she texted.
Immediately the three dots showed up.
Cabin nine, he texted. Come over.
There, she thought, breathless and wild. There. It’s done. It’s happening.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Micah
He showered but didn’t have anything clean to wear so he used the thick robe that hung in the closet and felt like Burt Reynolds in every cheesy 70s movie. His phone buzzed and he half expected it to be Helen telling him she wasn’t going to come. That she’d changed her mind.
He’d been hoping for the You awake? text from her, but thought the odds were pretty stacked against him.
This was a text from his brother.
When you coming back was all it said.
Tomorrow? He texted back. Why?
I can’t just miss you?
You in trouble? he texted and there was no answer. And this was the part of their story where Micah would put on his pants and go looking for his brother. Following the crumbs until he found him on the edge of some disaster. And then Micah would pull him back by his shirt and jump in for him.
I’m not doing it anymore, he thought. And not just because a beautiful woman was coming to this well-appointed cottage. But because he couldn’t do it anymore. I’m sorry, Mom, he thought. But I can’t keep doing this. It doesn’t work. And I deserve more.
He turned his phone off. Tossed it onto his pile of dirty clothes in the corner just as there was a knock at the door. His dick twitched against his robe as he crossed the room. Outside, Helen stood in a shaft of clear blue moonlight. It silvered her, made her skin glow and the shadows around her mysterious. She looked otherworldly. And he was a rock star; there’d been more than a few beautiful women in his life, but none like her. None with her gravitas and heartache and hope.
She was a song he wished he was good enough to write.
“You want to come in?” he asked after a long second, and she stepped in and he shut the door behind her.
“You want—”
“I don’t want to talk,” she said.
Yeah. I can get behind that.
He took one gliding step toward her, his hands cupping her face, pulling her to him. She grabbed his wrists like there was a storm and he was the only thing keeping her standing. He put everything he felt into that kiss. The wonder and the desire, and it was messy and wild and she met him with her own ferociousness. He abandoned her cheeks for her waist, picking her up and spinning to push her against the door. She moaned into his mouth, fitting her body against his like they’d done this a million times.