She tilts her head. “It sounds like you’ve been thinking about this a lot.”
“I have,” I admit. “I was going to ask you, actually, if you wanted me to go first.”
“So you’ll do it?”
“I feel like I have to. They need to know how grateful we are. And if there’s anything I can do to help, I want to. I want to show them that Lisa’s death wasn’t for nothing. That girl did an amazing thing. She brought you back to me.”
“Oh, Dad.”
Alexis moves in for a hug and I wrap my arms around her, holding her tight, not letting myself imagine a world where I lose the only family I have left.
“When are you going?” Alexis asks when she pulls back.
“Today. There’s no point waiting.”
She grits her teeth for a second and then releases the tension a second later. “Let me know how it goes. Let me know if they want to meet me.”
“I will,” I tell her, and turn for the door.
As I drive from the suburbs towards the city, I think about what Alexis asked me last night. It was a typical night for us. I was sitting in the armchair, my laptop open, handling a few business-related matters for my chain of outdoor clothes and equipment stores. Alexis was on the couch, swiping on her iPad when she looked up at me.
“Dad.”
“Yeah?”
“Why haven’t you ever moved on?”
It took me a moment to realize what she was asking.
She was talking about her mother who’d died when Alexis was only five years old, and I hadn’t been with anyone since her.
There was no special reason why I hadn’t moved on to someone else.
But I wasn’t getting any younger.
If I was ever going to find a woman who made me feel, a woman I had to claim, I had better start looking. But I’d tried dating over the years, at the urging of a couple of my friends, and it had never ended well.
Nothing bad had happened, but nothing good had happened either.
All the dates never ignited any feeling in me.
In the end, I felt guilty for continuing to go on the dates when I knew I wasn’t going to give these women what they wanted.
“I guess I’m just waiting for the right person,” I said quietly, not wanting to let my loneliness color my voice.
“I just want you to know I’ll support you if you ever find someone. Unless it’s one of my friends.”
We both laughed at that. There was little chance of me hitting on one of Alexis’s photographer buddies or any of her childhood friends. They were all half my age and, even if they weren’t, I’d never thought of them in any way other than my daughter's friends.
I pull up outside the apartment building, feeling a tugging at my chest when I see its condition has worsened since the street-view photo was taken. Part of the exterior is crumbling and there’s even more graffiti. The main door is busted, swinging lightly on its hinges.
I stride up the stairs, over dried chewing gum and trash, with a vague stink reaching my nose.
Outside the apartment door, I take a moment, preparing myself to meet with Lisa’s mom or her sister, or her father. She only gave us her name and the note. Everything else is a mystery.
Knocking, I wait.
There’s movement behind the door.
It opens.
And I stare. I stare hard.
My body tightens and my heart drums and I know that this is the moment, right now, where everything changes. Nothing is ever going to be the same again.
The woman has long wavy dark brown hair going down past her shoulders, framing full flushed cheeks and innocent wide tempting eyes. Her body is imprisoned in tight black pants and a shirt, tucked-in, giving me a mouth-watering outline of her shape.
She’s captivatingly curvy, her large breasts causing my fingers to twitch, her hips looking like they were made to be grabbed and massaged and caressed as I hammer into her.
She looks young, in her early twenties at the most. I try to tell myself that’s too young. But my manhood doesn’t give a damn. It hardens to steel, the tip tingling, as I struggle to find my words.
“Hello,” she murmurs. “Can I help you?”
I clear my throat, forcing the words out, trying to push the desire away.
I fail, badly.
“I’m here about Lisa,” I say. “She…donated her heart to my daughter.”
CHAPTER TWO
Tamia
We sit on opposite ends of the coffee table. The apartment is tidy and clean, but there’s no hiding what poor state it’s in, with the faded carpet and half the fixtures looking like they’re ready to fall off. I normally try not to think about it, but it’s difficult when the man of my dreams is staring back at me.
I fire a warning signal into my mind at the thought.