Page 53 of Off the Beaten Path

Her little arms wrap so tightly around my neck that I can hardly breathe, but I don’t loosen my grip. “It’s okay, Daddy.”

“Wren sent me a video. Maybe we can watch it together in the morning?”

Her braids scrape against my beard as she nods.

Finally, I let my eyes move up to Wren’s. They’re soft, filled with a tenderness I haven’t seen before, and it makes that ache in my chest grow stronger.

I mouth, “Thank you,” and her lips curve in a small smile, her dimples barely indenting.

June yawns and nuzzles into my chest, her arms starting to slacken, and I smooth a hand over her back. “You ready for bed, June Bug?”

She doesn’t answer, and I turn my head to press a kiss to her cheek, breathing in this new scent of her mixing with the old one.

“I’m going to put her down,” I say to Wren. “Wait for me?”

Surprise colors her features, but her smile deepens, like she’s pleased, and the ache in my chest travels lower. She’s so beautiful it hurts, all mussed hair and sleepy eyes, wrinkled dress and stockinged legs. The memory of my fingers gripping her thighs until I broke through her last pair of tights flashes through my mind, and I want to do it again and again until she doesn’t have any left.

Turning on my heel to stop the direction of my thoughts, I make my way down the darkened hall to June’s room. I could make this trek blindfolded with her in my arms. It happens so often that it’s muscle memory. But I’ve always returned to the living room alone. There’s never been anyone waiting for me. No one I wanted to get back out to.

June’s arms tighten around my neck as I lay her down, a soft squeeze of a hug that feels like a squeeze around my heart as well. I don’t know how I’ll ever deserve this sweet little girl, how she’s mine.

I press a kiss to her forehead, tugging up the blankets around her chin, and she snuggles into them. Silently, I back out of her room, watching the way the moonlight casts shadows over her skin, the braids in her hair.

The door shuts with a soft click, quiet enough to keep from waking June, and my attention shifts to the woman in my living room, a tug in my stomach pulling me toward her.

I find Wren in the kitchen, rinsing a mug in the sink. Her eyes meet mine and hold, a pretty blush staining her cheeks. She looks sorighthere in my kitchen, and I have the overwhelming urge to ask her to stay. To be here when June and I wake up for Saturday morning pancakes. To back me up when June asks for chocolate chipsandwhipped creamandsyrup. To steal a kiss when June isn’t looking. To keep driving me nuts with those tights and that smile and the way she pulls laughter from me, even when life feels hard.

Maybe I should ask. Maybe I should thank her. Maybe I shouldthink. But I don’t. I’ve spent so much time thinking, and it’s gotten me nowhere.

Not when right where I want to be is withher.

So I don’t ask. I don’t speak. I don’t think. I just move across the kitchen, closing the distance between us, and claim her mouth with mine.

If she’s surprised, she doesn’t act like it. She responds immediately, her arms coming around my neck, her nails scraping against my scalp, her lips slanting over mine.

She tastes like hot chocolate and feels like every dream I’ve had over the last month. She’s soft everywhere I’m hard, and my hands find that perfect spot on her hips, fingers digging in.

Wren breaks away, her breath coming in heaving gasps that make the hairs around my face billow. Her eyes are saucers, holding mine. “What are we doing?”

My hands tighten on her hips, and one corner of my mouth quirks. “If that’s not obvious, then I need to work on my technique.”

There’s a beard burn on her jaw, a redness I want to trace with the pads of my fingers. I can see every freckle standing out starkly against the creamy whiteness of her skin. She looks wild, like always, and for the first time in a very long time, I want to let go and be as reckless and uninhibited as she looks.

Her hand moves from my nape, sliding across the bare skin at my collar, and it prickles beneath her touch. “I guess I meanwhyare you kissing me?”

She doesn’t meet my eyes when she asks, and her hands don’t stop moving, playing with one of the buttons at the hollow of my throat.

I feel her touch everywhere. The actual spot where her hands brush against skin, but also in the pit of my stomach, the backs of my knees, the top of my scalp. I feelhereverywhere, in all the ways I was never sure I would feel someone again.

Which is maybe why the words come so clearly to me. “Because you make me want to kiss someone again. You made me trust you enough to want to kiss you. You made me feel safe enough to…try with you.”

Her eyes soften, her body melting into me. “Oh.”

It feels like a reversal, me speaking this much and her giving me a one-word answer. It makes my lips tug up in a smile.

“Oh?”

Her smile transforms her face, a ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds. “Yes, oh.”

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