“I get it,” he agreed, and for a moment, they fell silent. “This is surreal, the two of us discussing raising teenagers.”
“Isn’t it?” Her smile slipped. “I’m not raising her anymore, though.”
“So what happened there?” he asked. “What’s the story with your ex?”
“Adam,” she said. “I met him when I was twenty-three. I was working as an interior design assistant, and he was older, more mature, and wanted commitment pretty quickly. It was a real change from the guys my age I’d been casually dating. And I fell in love.”
“I get that.” He’d been one of the guys who hadn’t wanted commitment. Caroline had had other plans for him, and the memory still made him smile.
“So I became a stepmom to a toddler, a first grader and a fifth grader, all at once,” she said. “It was a huge leap, but I thought I was ready for it. Adam was like...a fairy tale, I guess. He was wealthy, smart, attentive. I thought I’d met my guy.”
“So you raised his kids,” he said. “You didn’t have any of your own?”
“He had three children,” she said with a faint lift of her shoulders. “And Tilly was still pretty small. She was this tiny little girl with pale blond hair. She was stick thin, and still in a diaper. And she needed so much love. For the first year, she clung to me constantly and could only fall asleep if I rocked her. I thought I’d have my own children later, but then Adam and I talked about it, and we really thought that three was enough. Besides, they’d lost their mother to cancer, and they needed me.”
“So you raised Adam’s kids, kept his home together and then got cheated on,” he said.
“That sums it up.” She sighed. “I thought he was my forever. And a good relationship requires some give and take, right?”
“It also requires fidelity,” he said.
She smiled ruefully at that. “Thank you. I agree with you, there.”
He remembered how Graham’s birth had changed him. He’d gone from being someone’s boyfriend, someone’s son, someone’s employee to becoming someone’s father—he was the one responsible for giving this tiny person a good life, stability, love and guidance. Becoming a dad had turned his heart inside out.
“Do you regret it now—not having a child of your own?” he asked.
“I keep getting asked that, and I don’t know...” Her voice was soft. “Maybe. But then, Adam and I would be battling over custody. It wouldn’t make the divorce any easier. Though it might be nice to have a child who still loves me.”
“You’ve got a teenager in your home, using up your space, your food, your emotional energy... I gotta say, Mel, you aren’t quite so alone as you feel right now.”
She smiled at that. “That girl hates me.”
“Graham has hated me at times.”
“Like when?” She looked up.
“Like when I took away the car keys for a month the time he came home three hours past curfew when he was sixteen,” he replied. “And the time when he was fourteen, when I told his friends he wasn’t a badass-mother-anything, and made him come home with me. I mean, every time he acted up and I put my foot down. That’s parenting. We aren’t their friends. We raise them. It’s pretty thankless.”
“It’s feeling thankless,” she agreed.
“She dumped her boyfriend, and she came to you. That says something.”
Melanie looked over her shoulder toward the hallway, then smiled wanly. “She used to love me, you know. Back when she was little. She used to crawl into my lap and snuggle. And she used to insist that I tuck her into bed a particular way and read her the same story over and over again... Then she got older and figured out I was nothing more than a stepmom, and I didn’t actually count.”
“Nah, she found out she had some power,” he said. “They discover that they’re capable of hurting an adult, and they get drunk with it.”
“You make it all sound so simple,” she said.
There was movement in the doorway, and Logan looked up to see Tilly standing there. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she looked pale.
“That smells good,” she said.
Melanie turned around. “You hungry? Come eat with us.”
“I’ll just take some to my room,” Tilly replied, and she came to the table, picked up her plate, dished herself up a heaping pile of spaghetti. She dropped three meatballs on top and grabbed a fork.
Tilly didn’t look at him, and Logan didn’t say anything. When the girl had retreated again, Logan shrugged.
“See?” he said.
Melanie shook her head. “I get what you’re saying, Logan, and I appreciate it, but this isn’t going to last. Her dad is going to come get her, and I’ll fade very quickly into the background. I’m not deluding myself here.”
She knew her situation better than he did. He suddenly felt bad for making assumptions. Who was he, anyway—just a guy who happened to have raised a son. That didn’t make him any expert on raising girls, or on marriage.
“Okay...” he said. “I’m sorry.”
He just hated the thought of her being alone after all this time. After all she’d given. She deserved better, too.
“I made choices, and this is the fallout,” Melanie replied. “That’s life.”
Melanie raised her gaze to meet his, then she reached for his empty plate.
“Let me help clean up,” he said. He gathered up the plates and headed for the sink. He rinsed them off and stacked them on the counter. He felt her touch on his elbow and he turned. She was closer than he’d anticipated. She looked mildly surprised, too, looking up at him, her lips parted.
“Oh...” she breathed, but she didn’t move.
“Sorry.” Logan should have stepped back. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. A wave of longing swept over him. She was beautiful in a deeper way than she’d been before. Years
