Page 26 of One More Chance
The name sent a jolt through me. It sounded harmless. But it had sounded harmless in my previous life as well. My throat tightened, but I forced a smile as I said, “Oh yeah? How do you talk with these friends?”
She grinned. “There’s these public chat rooms. Liam helped me make my own account. I only play on the weekends, but there’s this girl in my class who’s helping me build a dinosaur world. It’s awesome.”
"That sounds awesome,” I lied. I was unraveling.Thiswas it. This was the rabbit hole she’d fallen into in my previous life: a game, a stranger, a trap that I had been too distracted, too selfish, too absent to see coming.
Not this time. Not this life.
But how could I stop it without sounding paranoid? Without coming across as crazy, without scaring Violet, without revealing the unbelievable truth of what I'd already lived through?
Step one: be a cool dad.
“Maybe we could play together sometime?” I offered, as casually as I could.
She laughed, scrunching up her nose. “Daddy! You’re way too old.”
I laughed with her. But in my mind I was already planning firewalls, account monitoring, lockdowns. Whatever it took. She was still here. I would keep her here.
And that "friend" of hers? The one who took her away from me? Prince_Harming? I would find that monster, no matter what name they used, no matter what mask they wore. And when I did, I wouldn’t call the cops or look to the system for justice. I would bury them myself, pour their screams into concrete, and let them rot beneath the foundation of my next project.
A fitting tomb for the kind of monster that tears little girls from their families and leaves nothing but silence behind.
This time, they wouldn’t get the chance. Not with mine. Not again.
Chapter 11
After we made a lot of progress on her science fair project, Violet helped me cook dinner. I opened all the windows to let in the cool autumn air. That night, we sat together to eat the gluten free spaghetti we'd made, as well as some delicious homemade garlic bread Sloane had baked earlier in the week. Violet kept the conversation going and Liam even cracked a small smile at one of her jokes. I didn’t try to force anything. I listened and took it all in.
The kids were already fast asleep by the time Sloane came home. I didn’t need to hear more than the way the door clicked shut behind her to know she’d had a brutal shift. I heard it in the way she trudged into the living room, her movements slow and defeated. She rubbed at the back of her neck like the weight of the whole damn world had settled there. She didn’t say much; a low “Hey” before heading straight to the shower.
While she was gone, I ensured the kitchen was spotless from mine and Violet's earlier cooking. I threw together a small charcuterie board and poured Sloane a glass of red wine, a vintage I remembered sheused to love before life got too loud and bitter. I didn't do this out of romance, but genuine care; something to take the edge off if she wanted it.
When she came out, her hair damp and skin pink from the scalding hot shower, she paused in the hallway. The shirt and jeans she wore clung to her in all the right ways as her eyes flicked from the glass to me. Her gold flecked hazel eyes nearly distracted me from the fact she was still not comfortable enough to be in her night clothes around me. Not that I could blame her. It stung, but it was fair.
As I stared at her, I knew this wasn’t her trying to punish me. It was her protecting herself. She was drawing a line in the sand that said we're not there yet. Maybe we never would be again?
Fuck me, I missed that version of her. The way she’d shuffle out of the bathroom in soft cotton shorts and one of my old T-shirts, hair tangled from the shower, eyes heavy with sleep. That was when she was most beautiful, unguarded, effortless, andmine.
Now, she wore her clothes like armor and I was the reason for it.
“Hi,” she said, voice soft, almost uncertain. “Did you have a good night with the kids?”
I nodded. “Yeah. They were really great.” My voice cracked slightly at the end, and I hoped she didn’t notice.
She smiled. “Yeah. They are.”
I gestured to Violet’s backpack on the bench. “I signed her field trip form. Slipped some cash in for lunch. I hope that’s okay. There’s pasta in the fridge and I made sure to grab the brand you recommended. Honestly, it wasn’t too bad though I think we had better luck with lentil pasta than the chickpea.”
I was rambling about other items, about mundane things that didn’t matter; bills or groceries or the chance of rain tomorrow. When Iturned to look at her, I found her standing in the doorway, arms crossed, staring at me with something unreadable on her face. I replayed everything I had said in my head, worried I'd blurted out something stupid. "Um… Sloane?"
“Who are you?” she asked, her voice filled with playful accusation.
“What?” I asked, taken aback by her mischievous tone after weeks of stoicism.
She shook her head and let out a short laugh. “You’re… different.” She sounded out the word deliberately, as if she knew it wasn't the most accurate word but couldn't think of a better one. “I don’t know if this is all a facade or an act, or if you’ve hit some kind of wall, or, fuck, Levi… it’s like someone swapped you out for a better version of yourself.”
I took a deep breath as my heart thundered. She'd practically hit the nail on the head and I was thinking of how best to reply. “I’m not faking it. I know that I've made mistakes. Huge mistakes. And if I lose you all ag-" I stopped myself from sayingagain. My voice shook as I said, “I think I would die if I lost you all."
There was the faintest curve at the corner of her mouth despite the fact I'd laid bare my heart before her. “You dying would save me the trouble of killing you," she said, lifting a brow ever so slightly.
