Page 46 of Speechless
She didn’t know what time it was when she woke. The music still hummed away in her ears, but she could smell bacon frying which meant Sarah was already up, as usual. The woman was a machine, often up at the crack of dawn.
Jenna knew because she’d woken one morning at the same time. Her friend could move stealthier than the shadows themselves, her tiny feet making no sound as she went from one room to another.
Sarah said it was something she’d learned after having her twin boys. Necessity when they’d been such light sleepers. Jenna just thought it was the brilliance of the faery in her.
The curtains were still closed, and the sunlight behind was muted. Already she could tell it wasn’t going to be a sunny day—there was a cast over the room she thought suggested clouds, if not rain. A gloomy day then.
Her nose twitched and she breathed deep, her eyes tracking around the room for the source of the scent burned into her soul. Excitement and trepidation filled her as one entity.
Connor was home.
Leaning forward in the armchair, his elbows braced on his jeans-clad knees, his bearded chin rested on his linked hands. Watching her with shadowed eyes she couldn’t see, but she felt the assessing weight of his gaze on her.
“Daddy,” she whispered before she could stop the word.
Connor sat up straight, pushed to his feet and stalked to the couch. With one hand he plucked the buds from her ears, with the other he cupped the back of her neck. His mouth covered hers without warning, fierce and demanding. One long, beautiful melding of lips that ended long before she was ready and left her following his lips when he drew away.
He lifted her easily, sat and settled her on his lap, tucking the covers around her shoulders as she curled into him. The last dregs of sleep were clearing when he picked up the plushie and dangled him in front of her. “And who might this be?”
Shyly, she reached out and took him. “Sarah said he was mine. He doesn’t have a name yet.”
“Can’t think of one?”
“He doesn’t deserve one,” she said without thinking.
Connor stiffened, then ran his hand down her back. “Why doesn’t he deserve one, baby? What’s he done?”
“Only people deserve names. Everything else is a number.”
“Everything deserves a name, baby. Were you a number before you had a name?”
“Twenty-Two,” she murmured and rested her head against his shoulder, her face pressed into the curve of his neck. “I’m Twenty-Two.”
“No, baby, you have a name. What’s your name?”
Every discussion she’d had with Sarah over the last few days came back to her. It was bad to think of herself as nothing. She was not nothing, she was someone special. She was a person and a person was loved, respected, and cherished. She breathed in his scent and hummed. “Jenna.”
“That’s right, and who is Jenna to me?” he asked tenderly.
“A person?”
“Jenna is beautiful,” he corrected and tapped a finger on her nose. “She is sweet and brave. Sometimes she’s sad, and sometimes she smiles so brightly she makes the sun seem weak. Jenna is strong, and the world turns for one man because she’s in it. Because she’sit.”
She peered up into his eyes, blinked. His face was serious, his eyes dark and stirring with emotions she didn’t have names for. “Me, Jenna?”
Connor nodded soberly, his lips twitching. “You, Jenna. My Jenna.”
She snuggled closer to him, almost crawling inside him with the need to be near him.His Jennasounded like a promise. Promises were forever, so Sarah said. Breaking a promise brought bad luck, so people didn’t make them lightly.
“Breakfast time,” Sarah announced cheerfully. She smiled at them, placed the ever-present tray on the coffee table. “That has to be the longest conversation I’ve heard out of you, young lady. You were holding back on me.” She winked and settled into the vacant armchair with a cup of coffee and a slice of toast.
“We still haven’t solved the problem,” Connor commented as he leaned forward and grabbed the glass of juice off the tray. He lifted it to her lips and, besotted with him, Jenna drank slowly. “Good girl.”
“Problem?” Sarah asked curiously.
“A certain young elephant doesn’t have a name. I think he needs one before breakfast is over.” Setting the glass on the table, he perused the plates and brought a piece of crispy bacon to Jenna’s mouth. “Don’t get grease on him, baby. He’s too handsome to spoil.”
Obediently, she opened her mouth and bit into the bacon, chewing slowly under Connor’s approving look. She remembered the eating rules and was abiding by them as best she could.