“Oh, Cole.” Her eyes grew shiny. “I’m so sorry. Did the therapist help?”

“Yes. Eventually, the therapist got Mariah talking about her fears, even about the letters she wrote but never sent. Apparently it’s healthy and normal, functioning sort of like a diary. A safe place to express her feelings.”

“That makes sense. Did she ever talk to you about what was in the letters?”

“No. And I didn’t want to confront her with what I knew because it felt wrong—like a violation of her privacy. But it also tore me up inside. I want her to know she’ll never lose me.” My chest grew tight. “When I brought her home from the hospital, I set my feelings aside and made a promise to her and to myself that I’d give her all I had. I’d be the best father I could. I’d go above and beyond to protect her, even if it continued to mean setting my feelings aside.”

Cheyenne smiled sadly. “You can’t get involved in anything that would hurt or scare your child. I understand.”

Knowing I had to let her go, I kissed her forehead and released her. “You’re one in a million, Cheyenne. And you deserve the guy who can put you first, give you all the nice things, and never let you down.”

She sniffed. “Ha. Does that guy exist?”

“Yes. And someday I will probably kick myself for not saying it’s me.” I cradled her face in my hands. “But I’ll always be here for you.”

She looked away, but not before a tear slipped down her cheek. “Thanks.”

I dropped my arms, feeling like the biggest dick on the planet. How had I fucked this up? A few minutes ago, we’d been laughing.

“You don’t have to stay,” she said, adjusting her dress and then her hair. “I can finish up on my own.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive. I should probably just get it done without any distractions.”

“I understand. I’ll let myself out.”

“Okay, thanks.” She offered me a half-smile and turned toward the sink, and it took every ounce of strength I had not to wrap my arms around her again.

I was walking away from her when she called out to me.

“Cole, wait.”

I turned. “Yeah?”

“Your ring. You forgot it.” She came toward me, holding my wedding band in soapy fingers.

“Oh.” Shocked, I took it from her and slipped it on. “Thanks.”

Her smile was forced. “No problem. ‘Night.” She faced the sink again.

I walked out of the kitchen, wishing I could flip the dining room table on my way to the front door.

Ten minutes later, I got into bed with the scent of her still on my hands and in my head. Don’t do it, I scolded, as my fingers stole beneath the waistband of my boxer briefs. She deserves more than starring in your adolescent fantasies, I thought, gripping my swollen cock. She deserves someone who can give her what she wants, just like you said, I told myself, slipping my flesh through my palm. The more you think about her like this, the more you want her like that. And you can’t have her, I repeated silently as I worked myself into a frenzy, fucking my fist like I wished I could fuck her.

You can’t have her.

You can’t have her.

You can’t have her.

I exploded in a hot rush of fury and desperation and desire, agonizing that there was no way to be two men at once, to keep my promises and have her to myself.

Nothing seemed fair.

Eight

Cole

I hadn’t slept well, and I was dragging when Moretti picked Mariah and me up the next afternoon at one o’clock. We piled into his car—Mariah liked his SUV better than mine because it was a Mercedes, which she insisted was superior to my trusty old Dodge Durango. You only had to push a button to start it, it smelled new, and it had a sunroof.

“It’s freezing cold,” I told her irritably. “We can’t even open it.”

“The hell we can’t,” said Moretti, turning up the heat and opening the sunroof. “It’s not even snowing today.”

Mariah laughed. “Yay! Dad, can we get a new car with our new house?”

“No. Now buckle your seatbelt back there.”

“Jeez, you’re cranky today,” Mariah muttered. She was aggravated with me because I’d said no to inviting Cheyenne to the movies with us tonight. My reasons—it was a tradition just the two of us shared, I wanted some father-daughter time, Cheyenne probably had plans anyway—were not to her satisfaction, and she’d marched up to her room after the argument and hidden out in there until it was time to go.

My mother had annoyed me too this morning, dropping all kinds of hints about Cheyenne, wanting to know how things had gone last night, remarking again and again on how beautifully she’d grown up, what a sweet daughter she was, how much Mariah loved her. Finally, I’d gotten tired of it and locked myself in my room just like Mariah had. I didn’t need anyone to tell me how amazing Cheyenne was. It wasn’t that I hadn’t noticed she was beautiful and sweet and great to Mariah—and beyond that, I knew she had a dirty mind and she sometimes imagined doing filthy things with me—it was that I couldn’t do anything about it.

And that was driving me fucking insane.

Our first appointment was at the house nearest to my mom’s, a stout brick colonial with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a den off the back, and a kitchen that looked like it had last been remodeled while Reagan was in the White House. It was okay, but I didn’t get a feeling when I walked through it that told me I’d live there.

We shook hands with the agent, a woman named Florence Billingsly with a towering beehive hairdo whom I recognized as a town council member and Bellamy Creek Historical Society volunteer. She asked after my mother and made sure to emphasize how close we’d be to her house if we lived here. “Why, you wouldn’t even have to call her to borrow a cup of sugar,” Mrs. Billingsly said with a laugh. “You could just walk right over.”

I shuddered.

“So what did you think?” Moretti asked as we drove away.

“I don’t know,” I said, craning my neck to look at the Dempseys’ house as we drove past it. Was Cheyenne home? Was she thinking about me? “Some of those kitchen appliances are older than we are.”

“They could easily be replaced,” he said reasonably. “The bones of that house are good.” As a builder, Moretti was used to looking beneath a house’s cosmetic appearance to the foundational structure.

“The deck in the back looked a little warped, didn’t it?”

“Another easy fix,” Moretti replied. “We can replace those boards. Or better yet, tear the whole thing off and build a new one in a weekend.”

“It’s really close to my mom’s.”

Moretti laughed. “I can’t help you there.”

The next one was only a few blocks off the lake, almost walking distance and definitely biking distance to the public beach. Mariah liked one of the bedrooms, which was painted a pale blue with an underwater mural scrolling across three walls. “A mermaid room,” she gushed. “And it has its own bathroom right there! I wouldn’t even have to go down the hall.”