“You’re welcome.” Glancing at Cypress, I tilt my head toward the apartment front door. “I can wait downstairs for you. Take however long you need.”
Unable to not touch her, I briefly but gently cradle her cheek and run the backs of my fingers down that same soft skin. “Downstairs,” I repeat. Then add, because I have to.Needto. “Whatever you need, sweetheart.”
She can read what she wants into it. Knowing Cypress, she will. All she has to do is ask, and I’ll gladly inform her I mean my body, my place, my support, my…everything.
But Cypress being Cypress, she doesn’t ask.
Nodding, I shift my attention to her mother once more. “It was nice meeting you, Brenda.”
“You, too,” she whispers.
Letting myself out of the apartment where Cypress grew up, I propel myself down the stairs and out of the building, battling the urge to charge back in there and drag her out. To shield her, protect her from the ghosts that refuse to stop haunting her.
Opening my car, I slide behind the wheel and hit the locks as if they can keep me inside. Settling in for a wait, I twist the ignition so heat streams out of the vents, and then scroll through my phone. A couple of missed calls from Knox. One from Mom. Six missed calls from Ana. Same number of texts. I leave them unopened.
Sighing, I toss the cell down in the console between my seat and the passenger’s. Given her display at the shop earlier, I should at least call her parents and check to see if she’s all right. But her folks have made it very clear they blame me for Ana’s behavior. Somehow, I seriously doubt her almost pathological cry for attention started when we began dating, not with parents so consumed with work and their social calendars that the nanny raised their daughter more than they did.
Still, what if I don’t call her back and it’s the night she decides to—
She needs help, baby. And the help she needs you can’t give to her. So stop going down the what-if path because it leads to nowhere.
Cypress’s words from earlier glide through my brain, and my fingers curl into tight fists on my thighs. I don’t need a psychiatrist to inform me that I have a savior complex. It started with Mom after finding her bleeding on the bathroom floor. It continued with keeping her secret and playing the peacemaker for my brothers, girlfriends, and it was the same need that led me to offer Cypress my apartment as a place to crash.
But in the last few weeks, I’ve been learning that I can’t fix things for everyone. Accepting that truth is harder. But it started when I followed Cypress to that motel. Risking Dan’s disappointment and my mom’s hurt if they found out about Cypress and me didn’t matter. Not when it meant keeping her safe…
No, now I can be honest.
Not when it meant having the woman I hadn’t been able to purge from my mind or my dreams close to me.
Even then, she called to me, teased me, tortured me…scared me.
Can’t lie. She terrifies me, because stepsister or not…moratorium on relationships or not…unstable ex or not… I want her. Like I’ve never wanted another woman. The power and depth of my greed for her shakes me, keeps me awake at night. Because it’s not just for the sex. It’s for the scent of her shampoo in my bathroom after she takes a long, hot shower. The sound of her humming in the kitchen when she’s cooking me breakfast that I’ve repeatedly told her she didn’t have to do. The sight of her dark, thick hair spread on my pillow.
Before she reentered my life, my existence had revolved around London. Counting down the days until I could leave and start a new phase of my life. Now? Now it spins around the next time she’ll walk in that front door with her denim eyes and smart mouth.
Goddamn. I lean my head back against the seat rest, staring at the interior roof of the car. When did this get so goddamn complicated?
A tap sounds on the passenger window, and spotting Cypress, I hit the locks. The door opens, and I straighten as Cypress slides inside. I didn’t even notice her exiting the building.
“Were you asleep?” she asks, buckling her seat belt.
“Dozing,” I lie. Better than admitting I’d been sitting here so deep in thought about her, I could’ve been carjacked.
Shifting the gear into drive, I pull out. Driving down the dark street, I glance over at her. Or the back of her head since she’s staring out the window.
“Your mom good?”
“As good as she’s going to be tonight…or ever.” She shakes her head. “I’m sorry for putting you in the position where you had to lie about who you are, but thanks for going along with me. She knows everything about your mother, including your and your brothers’ names. She obsessed over her and her family when Dan first left. Trying to figure out what Katherine had that she didn’t. Like giving him sons when she couldn’t.” She shakes her head again, a humorless breath of laughter breaking free of her. “If she’d known you were Katherine’s son, she would’ve either flipped, broken down, accused me of deliberately humiliating her in front of you…”
Her sigh is so world-weary, it hurts to hear it. Has every protective instinct in me yelling to take that weight, bear it, burn it to the ground. Anything so she doesn’t sound so goddamn defeated. She didn’t sound this tired or beaten down when she confessed what occurred with her job back in California.
But it seems her complicated relationship with her mother could achieve what sexual harassment and demeaning retaliation tactics couldn’t.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, reaching across the console and finding her hand, enfolding it in mine. At first, her fingers are stiff in my grip, but in the next moment, they curl around mine, grasping them.
“I didn’t want you to see her like that,” she breathes, hurt threading through her voice, and my free hand squeezes the steering wheel tight so I don’t pull over and drag her onto my lap. “I feel like I betrayed her…”
She doesn’t need to finish the sentence. Me of all people—the son of the woman who Dan left them for—witnessing her mother’s brokenness seems like disloyalty.
