Page 10 of Wicked Destiny

Fuck. What a sweet gesture. Too bad I can’t bear to look at her. I’m mortified. “Thank you.”

Determined to get this over the fuck with, my plan is to speed through my twenty questions and peace out before I do something I can’t take back. Like kiss her.

Within fifteen minutes, Elodie offers her background through quick, funny anecdotes. One sister. Single mom. Father left when she was three and there’s no relationship. Spent her childhood in a little house in Ballard with a lemon tree that never produced one lemon because, well, Seattle.

Elodie is so easy to talk to. Effortlessly witty. Stubborn. Opinionated.

Before long, I’m fully relaxed and comfortable. Despite my wicked dreams, maybe things aren’t so dire.

“What event most split your life into a before and an after?” I read the canned question off the list.

“My mom. Meredith.” Something under her voice shifts. She cups her coffee with both hands. “Pancreatic cancer. She passed last year. Her health problems started when I was in high school. She beat kidney cancer, but the new diagnosis came my second year of college. Her decline happened fast. I was her whole care team in the end. Learning how to run a morphine pump was never on my bingo card.”

Fuck. I sensed it.

Now I understand why I’ve been drawn to her. Elodie and I both spent years caring for someone we loved, watching a fiercely independent woman come to need us for everything. Then we lost them and were left with the same question, no matter how much we gave.

Could we have done more?

Elodie had it even worse. At least I’m a grown man who’s navigated a lot of ups and downs. She handled all of this before she was old enough to drink.

I set the questions on the floor. To hell with the them. I’m the mature adult here and she doesn’t seem to have anyone to talk to about this. “Elodie. I get it. Tell me about this past year.”

It’s like a firehose. She unloads it all. From the smell of hospice, which I know down to the back of my throat, to how to read a face for pain once the words run out.

Also, the isolation. Her sister took more shifts as a flight attendant to avoid seeing her mom getting sicker. Theo stayed in grad school because he couldn’t handle being around his mother wasting away. Friends who evaporated, because dying is a downer.

Elodie’s voice changes when she talks about Owen, her boyfriend who broke up with her a month before her mom died because she wasn’t “fun” anymore. He told her they were too young to be around this much sadness and he needed his life back. At first, she lays it out factually, like it doesn’t split open a vein.

Somewhere in the middle of the retelling, though, her face caves all at once and she breaks. A choking burst of tears. No warning. My guess is, she’s held it down for so long there was nowhere to go but out.

Elodie claps a hand over her mouth like she can shove the sound back in.

She can’t.

I’m out of my chair and crouched in front of hers with my arms around her before the thought is done. She sobs against my shoulder, both fists knotted in my flannel. Crying the way a person does when they haven’t let themselves properly grieve the loss of an important relationship.

With my hand firmly cupping the back of her head, I hold her as she shakes. I feel every tremor ripple through her and land somewhere in me. When the worst of it eases, she stays put, cheek on my shoulder. Wrung out.

I keep my voice level and my hands where a father’s would go. “My daughter is about your age. She misses her mom terribly. Sometimes I’m so lost in my grief, I’m not sure how to help her.”

It’s important to remind us both who I’m supposed to be here. Older. Safe. A man who could be her father. Acting as such.

Elodie lifts her head and nods, wet-faced. For one breath I think I’ve gotten away with it.

Until her eyes lock with mine.

Holy fuck. I knew it.

She doesn’t look at me like a substitute dad. Or with the strained patience twenty-somethings reserve for anyone old enough to remember pay phones.

No, Elodie’s eyes fucking smolder.

Without a shadow of doubt, I’m mirroring her expression.

I’ve desired a lot of women in my fifty-six years on the planet. Only one other time has it been this intense, and I married her. If I don’t shut this shit down right fucking now, I’m in serious trouble.

I manage to break away and stand up. Elodie peers up at me with those eyes.