Page 15 of Little Bird
This semester has been more difficult, though, due to the age of my students. I’ve never dealt with first-years before and didn’t realize how complicated they were going to be. These kids don’t even know their way around campus yet. Getting them to focus on their studies has been... difficult.
I glance through those students now, naming them in my head as I go. Sally, Jasmine, Sandy, Emily, Jason, Aurora...
My eyes catch on that one, and my smile dies.
Because her hair is a sandy blonde and slightly curly, her wide eyes the color of honey.
Just like Taryn.
I grind my molars together, suddenly angry, and turn my eyes away from her, but the damage is already done. Taryn. The other reason this semester suddenly feels complicated, though she’s only been back in the picture for a few days.
She is, unfortunately, the thing that makes me less excited to go into our Christmas break. Because instead of being the quiet sanctuary I want, my house is now home to a girl I once loved like my own daughter, and now...
Now what?
Now, I think, a young woman has replaced the child I once knew. And that spells trouble. The girl I remember was a gangly teen, inclined to practical jokes and laughing too hard at my son’s jokes. She got into enough trouble to make her difficult but always talked her way out of it, and the sweetness of her smile meant I could never stay angry at her for long.
She’d been sunshine in a world darkened by the sudden death of my first wife, and though I’d liked Helen well enough—enough to marry her, at least—Taryn was the one I loved during that marriage. When her mother left without warning, tearing the girl from my life and leaving a gaping hole, it had nearly killed me.
My son has barely spoken to me since, and I can’t blame him for that. I gave him another family, and they disappeared nearly as quickly as his mother. He blamed me for driving them away.
Hell, I blame myself.
Helen never told me exactly why she left. All I got were the divorce papers and a terse note that if I signed them without any trouble, she’d make sure I could still see Taryn when I wanted to.
I’d signed them without question.
I hadn’t asked to see Taryn.
And now that I have...
Like I said, she’s not the girl I once knew. Gone are the too-long arms and legs, the toothy smile, and the need for protection. And in their place is a girl who has blossomed into a woman. Lips that are too kissable and curves I want to wrap my hands around. She’s still small, barely coming up to my throat, but she’s grown into herself and looks at the world with a defiance I never would have expected from the girl I knew. Her warm whiskey eyes hold a fire they didn’t used to, and the shadows under those eyes tell me that she spends too much of the night thinking rather than sleeping.
I want to know what she thinks about. I want to know how she tastes and feels under my fingers.
I want to know a whole lot more than that.
But the girl is my fucking stepdaughter.
I shut my thoughts down and focus on the class, telling myself again that the girl is only twenty and practically related to me. She needed help and I offered it. And now she’s an uninvited squatter in my home, where she’ll no doubt make more trouble than she’s worth. She’s not there for me, and I’m not allowed to touch her.
Taste her.
Figure out just how much she’s grown up since I saw her last.
“This is our last class before break, so let’s make it an efficient one,” I say firmly. “If we can get through the material quickly, I’ll let you go early. How does that sound?”
The class murmurs in delight and I catch two very inappropriate smiles from girls in the front row, who shift to show more of their legs.
I refuse to look. I’m not the type of man who admires his students in that way.
Instead, I turn to the whiteboard and start writing the lesson for today, trying to figure out how I can get through it more quickly. Because I might not want to go back to the house, where Taryn waits. But I do want to get the fuck out of here.
“But have you seen the way he runs his fingers through his beard?” Jasmine says, her voice breathless with something that might be laughter but isn’t. “God, I’d kill to know how those fingers feel.”
“On your beard?” the girl next to her asks, smiling.
Jasmine punches her. “No, Sandra. Someplace a little more sensitive. And wet.”
