Page 57 of Worth the Fall

LOSING IT

THOMAS

Inever thought I’d enjoy seeing a woman around my daughter. Never realized that it was something I even wanted or needed in my life. But Brooklyn was starting to change all that. The woman was under my damn skin, and Clara wouldn’t stop talking about her.

My evenings were filled with questions like, “When can I see Brooklyn again?” and, “Why can’t Waffle Princess come over?”

All fair questions that I had no real answers for. Why? Because I’d been avoiding Brooklyn like the plague since that night at the diner. Which was over a week ago if anyone was counting—and I definitely was.

If I saw her sashaying down the hall at work, I walked the other direction. If I noticed her passing by my office slowly, I quickly picked up the phone and pretended to be on it.

Apparently, I’d left my maturity back at the diner with my unfinished fries. I somehow thought that avoiding her would help me stop thinking about her or wanting her to be a part of our lives, but I was an even bigger idiot than I’d realized because nothing stopped my mind from drifting to her.

She had been so great with Clara, her advice to my daughter strong and pure. I remembered how it’d felt to hear the way she spoke to her and how I’d instinctively braced for her to say something stupid and piss me off the way that Clara’s teacher had. But all Brooklyn had done was reaffirm how fucking great she was.

And now, my house was filled with drawings of a red-haired waffle princess because my daughter seemed to like her just as much as I did.

But I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I hadn’t dated in years. Hadn’t ever wanted to. It hadn’t been my intention to basically become a monk after Jenna died, but my whole world had crashed and burned in that moment. The only person who mattered was Clarabel. Everything else could wait.

My dick included.

At first, I’d been fine with my new priorities. I was too exhausted to even think about sex, much less perform it. But eventually, I started fantasizing about one-night stands. Fucking someone and never seeing them again held a certain appeal to a widowed twenty-something-year-old male. And the only way that would work was if I slept with tourists.

I couldn’t have sex with a Sugar Mountain local and not expect it to get messy. But then I started freaking the fuck out. What if I got someone else pregnant? It had happened once unexpectedly, so why couldn’t it happen again? I’d convinced myself that it could, and my dick had basically shriveled up and put itself to sleep.

But he was awake now.

And honestly, I couldn’t blame him.

Brooklyn had woken me up too.

I jerked off to thoughts of her in the shower. My nights were filled with sex dreams about all the things I wanted to do to her. I’d basically turned into a horny teenager overnight. And it wasn’t going away. If anything, it was getting worse. I walked around with a semi all fucking day long at the resort.

I couldn’t seem to escape the woman.

And I was done trying.

I picked up the phone and called her into my office. Within moments, she appeared, looking as stunning as she always did. It didn’t matter what she was wearing or how she did her hair; there was just something about her that had started to stir me awake the day that I interviewed her. I’d be lying if I said it was the day that she’d drunkenly run into me.

“Can you close the door behind you?”

She did as I’d asked without making a sassy comment, and I found myself shocked by that fact alone.

“Am I in trouble?” she asked seriously.

“No. I just wanted to apologize for my behavior this past week,” I said, and she took a seat across from my desk, crossed one leg over the other, and stared right through me.

“So, you’re done avoiding me then?” She sounded a little pissed, and really, I deserved it.