But I couldn’t do it at the time.

I wanted to.

I had to fight to stop myself.

It’s better that I did.

It just wasn’t something I felt ready to do with Chrissie, unsure what I’d feel, and more worried about letting her see. I didn’t want to hurt Chrissie again. I didn’t want to disappoint her. I didn’t know for sure what this would be for me.

I cross the room to the crib.

Khloe lies at an angle, hands under her cheek. She is wide awake and there is a faint sound coming from her like hiccups. It’s nearly a noiseless passing from her lips but it makes her whole body jerk. I laugh. She is wearing only a diaper. I can see every detail of her tiny body. The full bottom lip, the bluish-veined lids with long dark lashes over bright blue eyes, a little pug nose, round creamy cheeks, tiny fat fingers with tinier faintly pink nails, and curls in black.

I slowly stroke her hair. I gaze at my daughter. Emotion lodges in my throat…my daughter. It’s amazing that even so small she is very distinctive in personality. I can feel the serenity of who she is just by touching her, how her body shudders from the reflex she can’t control, untroubled. I’ve not touched her before. My feel and my sound are not familiar to her. She lies calm beneath my fingers, no tears, wide awake and content.

Trusting of the world in every way. Four months have made her world already shaped and defined and comfortable to her. A baby surrounded by love from the start. I feel an unwanted stab in my chest. The only part I’ve had in her being here, in who she is, was at the moment of her conception.

I pick her up, wondering if a change of position will stop the hiccups. She melts into me, a little curl of body parts that feels almost like an embrace. She has her own scent beneath the fragrance of raspberry soap. I settle on the bench built into the long row of full length windows, and lie back against the pillows, legs bent, with her nestled into my chest. Her little body hiccups again. I laugh, the sensation sweetly endearing even with that stream of dampness rolling down her chin onto my shirt.

I smile down at her and let her drool. Surrounded by a stranger, my hold, my warmth, my scent and she falls back to sleep.

I struggle to hold in my emotion.

Being here in Chrissie’s house tonight it feels different. Richer. More intoxicating. More vibrant. Being with Khloe sucks me in deeper, and odder, makes me want Chrissie even more painfully.

It is so fucking strange that I love Chrissie so much, and yet do it badly. I’ve never known how to love her the way she needs to be loved and we are both too old, too tired, too wounded by life for how we’ve loved before—my fucking her, her walking away, my letting her go, her coming back, my fucking her again and on and on even to this point—to start it all over again unless one of us figures out how to change that quickly.

My body and heart ache for her. But I don’t know how not to fuck this up. How to prevent the cycle from starting all over again. I’m sick of losing Chrissie. I’m ready to get to keep her.

I’ve spent twenty years of my life playing fuck and run with the only woman I’ve ever loved, the only woman I’ve never wanted to let go of. What was it that James Hetfield had said? To keep his family he had to be ‘here, clear and in the now.’ Well, I’m here. I’m clear for the first time in a fucking long time. But I am nowhere near in the now.

My lips pucker.

I feel the dampness on my cheek.

Fuck, I’m crying.

Len is right.

British rockers never die. We become fathers and fade away.

I’m shocked how much that thought is appealing to me, and how little interest I have in my life beyond Chrissie’s front door. Everything I want—everything I need—is here with Chrissie.

Holy fuck.

I just want to come home.

 

 

Chapter 11

 

I go into the kitchen, bypass the hard liquor, and pour myself a glass of wine.

The house is quiet. Chrissie must still be in the studio working. She probably doesn’t even know that I’m here yet. Good. I need time to regroup.

I go out onto the patio and settle on a lounger. I need to think this one through before I make so much as a single step in any direction. Figure out what I want. Figure out how to make it work. Be honest with myself about what I can and cannot do.

Honest with myself.

Fuck.

My weak suit.

Can I even do this?

It won’t be the same as it was last time we were together. To be with Chrissie means I have to be willing to do everything in this house. Anything short of that would be unfair to her and wrong for the kids.

Do I want to complicate my life with kids?

It’s already complicated. One of those children is mine.

It’s an incredible feeling.

Does Chrissie even want me in her life?

Fuck, that isn’t something I’ve thought about.

Why did I just assume we’d be together?

Fuck, I love her.

I don’t want to lose her again.

I take a sip of my wine. I want to be here, nowhere else ever again, except with her, but Chrissie comes with kids—lots of kids—and that’s hardly an element I expected myself to be considering at this point in my life.

Not after Molly.

I push away those memories. It hurts too much to love a child and then to lose them. I never wanted to go through that again. The pain of loving someone, completely, and then having it taken away. Too soon. Leaving a hole in you that never goes away.

Yet somehow, Chrissie’s kids have roped me in since the day of their birth. I’ve always loved them. The love I feel for her children runs deeply through me in a way that has always left me sharply surprised. Probably just an extension of loving her. No, they’re wonderful children. I like them.

But to live with them fulltime.

To be here.

Is that even something possible for me?

I have always enjoyed my visits surrounded by Chrissie’s family. I spent a lot of nights during her marriage in her backyard overlooking the Pacific, talking late into the night with Jesse, envious and admiring them both, and relieved of that tedious sedative boredom that claims me too often by doing nothing but watching her for hours with her kids.

The way she smiles at them, touches them, made me ache. I’d wonder if that was the way she was with Jesse in their private moments, what it would feel like if I’d known her this way when we’d been together before.

It was like visiting a spa when you can’t afford it. I’d leave rejuvenated and pinched. The experience recharging me; the cost hurting me. The cost was always leaving, sharply aware that Chrissie was happy and married to Jesse.

I’m not the man Jesse Harris had been.

I don’t have a clue what they need from me.

How am I supposed to make this work?

I finish my wine, lie back in my chair, and run my hands through my hair. Whatever I hoped would happen tonight—my cock pulses. Fuck, I’d hoped a lot of things. Wanting her is becoming a painful ache—but it is not going to happen.

She won’t let it.

We’re not there yet.

Not in her mind.

Fuck, I just hope we get there soon.

I climb from the chair. I’ll go in, say hello to Chrissie, then cut out. It’s the right thing to do. For both of us.

I step into the kitchen and Lourdes whirls to face me.

“Señor Alan. You are back.”

I set my glass on the counter and smile at her. She’s always liked me, though I’m not exactly sure why. Her arms open. She wants a hug.

I let her take me into her embrace. She squeezes me tightly and gives me a little shake, in an exuberant, motherly sort of way. Christ, she must be near seventy. She’s worked for Chrissie forever. Like hell she can’t take care of all these kids by herself. She’s got quite a grip on her.