Page 43 of Fighter
“Yeah.” She propped her chin in a hand. “Their flight leaves this evening and they wanted to stop a few places before they went.”
“Any word from Talmage?”
I managed to ask the question without addingthe bastardat the end, the way I did in my head. Only her familial, genetic relationship with him and the pain in her eyes every time this topic came up stopped me. Still, I wasn't about to act like he didn't exist. Both of them needed to know I was tracking him.
“No.” She tapped her other fingernails on the counter. “Which is probably just as well, for now. I texted him before I came over, but haven't heard back.”
“If you ever need to go see him, let me know. I'd be happy to go with you if you needed or wanted someone else there.”
The tension in her bled away. She smiled and it warmed her eyes.
“Thanks, Ben. Such a great friend.”
I don't want to be your friend,I almost said.
I held her gaze, feeling like a sucker punch to the gut when she didn't look away. If gazes could ignite, my house would have been on fire. Despite the softness about her that always drew me in, I sensed an untamed wildfire beneath all that curly hair.
Seconds later, a dripping wet Ava stormed into the room.
“Sera!” she cried, then ran into Serafina's awaiting arms and clutched her legs tightly. Wet impressions remained behind, but Sera ignored them to wrap her arms around her. The moment broke. With a long exhale, I turned back to the dishwasher. Watching Serafina with my daughter gratified an instinct deep inside me.
“You are an expert sprinkler-runner,” Serafina said, crouched down next to her. “I've been watching and I'm impressed.”
“Thanks!” Ava's nose scrunched as she stopped jumping long enough to peer on the counter. “Did you bring dinner?”
“I did.”
“Hooray!” Ava leaped again, whooping, and disappeared out the back door. Laughing, Serafina followed to the doorway. She stood there and watched for several minutes, her hip cocked to the side in an attractive curve as she occasionally called out a score from 1-10—it was almost always 15. I finished the dishes, feeling marginally better for having done some work in my own home, then followed over. I stood a few steps away, just to keep my hands where they belonged, and not on the small of her back. Or the curve of her ribs. The hollow of her neck.
The very soft pillow of her lips.
“Ben?”
Jerked from my thoughts, I looked up to see Sera watching me with an amused smile. “Did I lose you?” she asked.
“Sorry, what?”
She tilted her head outside in a motion that suggested she'd already said something while I mused about kissing her until she was weak in my arms.
“Ava. She doesn't have a lot of friends around here, does she?”
My gaze filtered through our backyard. There was no fence and only a small patch of grass that Ava ran through now. The property opened onto the curve of the river not too far away, and contained mostly scrub and bush. Along the river edge was a foot trail that runners and people who wanted to walk their dogs off leash would occasionally slip by. A few houses littered the road farther back into the canyon, but the trees hid them, and there were only two or three. Pineville was only a mile or so to the north, but the house had been built into a curve of the mountain so only one or two properties were visible from “town”.
“Ava's never been very excited about other kids,” I said with a frown, thinking back to the times when Sadie had still been alive and I visited Ava. “Even as a toddler.”
“Was she not around them much?”
“It's hard to say.”
Serafina's brow puckered as she seemed to think that over. “Dagny knows almost everyone here. I wonder if she could introduce me to some of the parents of the other girls. Maybe we can do some play dates or something.”
“That sounds great.”
She made a noise of agreement, but hadn't peeled her eyes away from Ava. Water flashed in the fading sunlight as it sank behind the mountain at our back. Now that I watched Ava, it did seem sad that she was out there by herself. But to reach out to other parents and schedule play dates? Never would have thought of that.
I ran a hand through my hair, shocked yet again by the vastness of this parenting job. No one trained me for this. How the hell was I supposed to know that Ava needed playdates with girls her age? Maybe it was obvious to everyone but me. To me, Ava was shy. Did that need to be fixed?
Serafina distracted me from my mental spiral when she put a hand on my arm. The heat of her fingertips brushed against the hair on my forearm, then was gone, a trail of fire in its wake.
