She agreed to talk about this later and agreed to put it all aside for now.
But I can’t avoid it forever.
“Triston,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
I almost laugh. It seems like such a strange thing for her to say, as though we’re not joined, as though we weren’t bonded the moment we laid eyes on each other. There’s nothing this woman could say to me to make me stop wanting her, except that she’d been with another man… but that will never happen.
I know my woman’s going to be as loyal as I will be to her.
Just us, together, forever.
“Yeah,” I say, realizing I’m staring at her like a wolf. Hungry for her.
“What happened to Alexis’s mom? Alexis talks about her sometimes, but she hasn’t said. how she passed”
“Alexis talks about her?”
Tamia nods. “Yeah. She can’t remember much, just little snippets.”
“That sounds about right. She was only five.” I place my fork down. “Her mother died of the same heart condition Alexis suffers from… suffered from. It hit her quick, took her quicker.”
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly and I can hear the sincerity in her voice.
“It was a shame for Alexis,” I say. “She was a good mother. I felt so bad for my daughter, knowing she wasn’t going to have her mom around anymore. I tried to do my best, though. I hope I did.”
“I think you did an excellent job,” Tamia says, giving me a sweet smile. “Alexis is a great person.”
We pause, both silently acknowledging how messed up this is, how twisted.
Alexis is a great person…
But we’re betraying her just by sitting here.
“You said you felt bad for Alexis,” Tamia goes on. “But not… I’m sorry. Tell me if I’m prying too much.”
I nod, understanding what she’s hinting at. “But I didn’t say how upset I was?”
“Yeah,” she says quietly. “But like I said, feel free to slap me with a big shut up.”
I studied her for a moment. All the things I was supposed to feel for Alexis’s mother – the devotion, the desire, the need – I feel for this woman. The age gap doesn’t matter. Her connection to Alexis doesn’t matter.
Not when I’m looking at her so closely, not when there’s so much emotion inside of me calling out for her.
“I would never call Alexis a mistake,” I say. “I hate that word when it comes to children. I don’t think it should ever be used. I don’t even like using accident because of all the implications. But she wasn’t planned.”
I pause, running a hand through my hair. I notice the way Tamia’s eyes follow the movement, the same way my eyes follow her wherever she goes. We can’t help it, being drawn to each other.
But that doesn’t mean she’s as far gone as I am.
That doesn’t mean she’s been struck by the same bolt of possessiveness.
“It was a one-night stand,” I say after a beat. “After, I invited her to live with me. We got married when she was four months pregnant. I never had parents so I didn’t want my child to go through the same thing.”
“You didn’t?” she says. “I didn’t know that.”
“They died when I was only a baby. I grew up in the system too.”
“Oh, Triston.” She slides her hand across the table, squeezing onto mine. “I’m so sorry. Do you mind me asking how it happened?”
I could ask her the same thing. The curiosity is bubbling up inside of me. I want to learn every single thing about her, to peel back her defenses until there’s no space between us at all, until we know each other better than we know ourselves.
“It was a robbery gone bad,” I say. “I don’t remember a thing, obviously. I was only five months old. But apparently, someone broke in and tried to rob us. I didn’t know him, my dad, but I’ve seen photos. He was even bigger than I am. And he looked tougher, fierce. He put up a fight is what I later learned, but it went bad, a gun went off… They think the bastard killed my mother because she was a witness. If I’d been older, he would’ve done the same to me.”
“That’s horrible,” she whispers, giving my hand a squeeze. “What happened to him?”
“He was caught the next day. The idiot pawned my father’s watch an hour after killing him. He’s serving life in prison. He’ll die there.”
“Good,” Tamia says fiercely, her expression becoming tender, reminding me what an amazing mother she’s going to make. “He doesn’t deserve any better.”
We sit silently for a while, listening to the soft music playing over the restaurant’s sound systems. A dark part of my mind strays to what would happen if Alexis walked in now, with her new friend’s hand on mine.
“What about you?” I ask, as gently as I can.