Walking toward my SUV, he was quiet. However, I could almost feel that he wanted to say something. I bit my lip to keep from asking him what he was thinking and reminded myself that we were no longer friends or lovers. It shouldn’t have mattered to me if he had something on his mind or not.
I lifted my hand to wrap around the SUV driver’s door and heard the distinct sound of the doors automatically unlocking. Before I could open the door, though, Dom grabbed my waist and pulled me around to face him.
“What—”
The words were forcefully cut off as he lowered his head and captured my lips in a hungry kiss that rocked me back onto my heels. He dug his fingers into my hips as he backed me up against my vehicle and devoured my mouth as if he was starving for my taste.
My brain shut down and my body took over. Lifting my hands, I thrust my fingers into his shaggy, mahogany hair as I kissed him back, just as hungry for him as he seemed to be for me.
He kissed me until I felt like I would melt into a puddle of sheer need at his feet. He kissed me as if he wanted to possess every inch of me, and God, I wanted him to.
Dom tasted just as I remembered, like the darkest chocolate mixed with mint and lust, like all my wildest fantasies come to life.
He thrust his lower body against me, his growing cock stabbing into my stomach as it fought to get free from the confines of his black slacks. I was getting drunk off him, or maybe it was just the lack of oxygen from our greedy kiss. I didn’t know, and right then, I didn’t care.
The sound of someone setting their car alarm not far from us had Dom slowly lifting his head. He didn’t try to look around, even as we both heard the somber voices of family members leaving and arriving for other patients. His eyes drilled into mine, and I felt trapped, not only by his body pinning mine to my SUV, but by the look in those dark depths.
I couldn’t speak. There was an interference from my brain to my vocal cords, so I just stood there, sucking in one deep breath after another, helpless to look away.
He lifted one of his hands from my waist and dived into my coat pocket for my phone. Pulling it out, he punched something into the unlocked screen then handed it back. “I texted myself so that I would have your number. I’ll check on Savanna before I leave and let you know how she’s doing.”
I licked my lips, tasting him there, and nodded. “Thank you,” I got out in a voice thick with all the things I couldn’t let myself think about right then.
Lifting his hand, he stroked his fingers lightly over my cheek before pushing a few locks of hair behind my ear. “Drive safely, baby.”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I nodded and finally opened my door. He stood there as I climbed in and started the vehicle. He was still there when I backed out and drove away.
TWELVE
Dom
STAYING AWAY FROM TRISS THE last two weeks had been hard. Every day I’d had to force myself not to show up on her doorstep, not to ask—no, beg—for a second chance. It wasn’t just because I wanted to get to know Lily, which I did, desperately. It was Triss herself. Ever since I had seen her again at the reading of Robert’s will, I had felt this overwhelming need to constantly be near her.
Somehow, I had found the willpower not to give in to those needs and stayed away, telling myself that she needed time to settle in with the girls before I barged back into her life.
Seeing how devastated, almost broken she was over her mother had changed all of that, though. I couldn’t stay away now. She needed someone to hold her up while she went through this, and I wanted to be that someone.
After she was gone, I went back inside and checked on my own patients before once again stopping by Savanna’s room. She was still asleep when I got there, but I could tell her breathing was only growing more labored. The rattling in her chest wasn’t something I had wanted Triss to have to hear. I knew Crandall had been right when he had said her time was growing short.
My heart ached for Triss.
Instead of going home, I took a seat beside Savanna’s bed and just sat there, watching her breathe. Watching over her for Triss. It wasn’t going to be long now, and I didn’t want her to be alone when it happened. The urge to intervene, to assist her if and when she stopped breathing tried to destroy me, but I knew she had a DNR. Knew that I wouldn’t be able to help her when it ended.
I had always liked this woman, and now, knowing everything she had done for my daughter and how she had helped Triss when I hadn’t been there to do it myself, I felt like I owed her. She had earned my respect and loyalty, and I wanted to be there when she took her last breath.
In a way, it wasn’t fair. This woman was a good person, a loving mother. Meanwhile, there was my own mother, who didn’t know the first thing about any of those things. Yet the good woman was fading by the hour, while the evil one would grow older, tainting more lives over the years until she finally died.
However, when Savanna passed, she would be surrounded by those she loved and who loved her. Whereas Nancy would most likely die alone. She sure as hell wouldn’t go with me holding her hand.
I was done with her, just as my sister had said she was.
After talking with Kim, hearing her side of the story of what had gone on all those years ago, I knew she had been pulled into my mother’s scheming. She had been weak, still trapped in her own personal hell addicted to drugs, and our mother had promised to protect her. With Robert’s words from his letter to Triss ringing in her ears, haunting her, she had decided to go into a long stay at rehab to get clean.
My relationship with my sister was never going to be the same again. I couldn’t trust her as I once had, not knowing what I did now. Not when she had helped tear Triss from my life and fucked my daughter’s world up in the process. But I loved her, and I couldn’t completely turn my back on her.
We had agreed that our mother had to be stopped, and the only way to put an end to her evilness was to completely get her out of our lives. So while I supported her decision to go into rehab, she was supporting mine to never have anything to do with Nancy again.
I hadn’t spoken to my mother sense the reading of Robert’s will. I wanted to, hell, how I wanted to, but I didn’t trust myself not to do her some kind of physical harm if I were to be face to face with her. My lack of contact with her hadn’t stopped her from attempting to reach out to me or Kim. She called us multiple times daily, leaving messages that made her seem lost and alone without her children there to console her.
The trouble was, we could so easily see through her now, so it wasn’t hard to read the meaning behind her words. Her ‘I don’t know what I will do now without your stepfather’ meant she wasn’t getting the money she was so used to spending on an hourly basis and wanted us to foot the bill. Her ‘I miss you so much, darling’ meant that she was bored and no doubt wanted to play around in our lives once again.
Avoiding her calls hadn’t deterred her though. She had tried repeatedly to get my doorman to let her into my apartment, but I had made sure they knew she wasn’t welcome there and even advised them to call the police if she didn’t leave peacefully. She had even stopped by my office, but my receptionist and nurses knew she wasn’t welcome.
With Kim away in rehab, our mother couldn’t easily get to her as she once had. Fuck, I wasn’t even sure she knew where Kim was. As long as she couldn’t get her claws in my sister, I was fine with her being clueless where Kim was concerned.
Nancy was the biggest reason she had started doing drugs in the first place. Having put so much pressure on her, demanding she be smarter, thinner, more beautiful. Feeling like you aren’t enough to your own mother isn’t a way for anyone to have to feel, let alone a daughter who only wanted to make her mother proud. Yet that was exactly how our mother had treated Kim, and I hadn’t known it.
I had been blind to her faults, and for that I only had myself to blame.
THIRTEEN
Dom
AS THE NIGHT WORE ON, I made a silent promise to Savanna.
>
I was going to take care of her girls for her. Triss, Lily, and Daisy were mine to take care of now, and I wouldn’t let her down.
Dawn was starting to peek through the window when I watched Savanna take her last rattling breath. I reached out, taking her chilled hand in mine, and held on until the nurses came into the room. Then I blinked back my tears as I got up and bent to kiss her forehead.
“Don’t worry about your girls, Savanna; I’m going to take care of them.”
After calling the time of her death, I stepped back and pulled out my phone to call Triss. Since I didn’t leave the hospital, I hadn’t texted her, not wanting to disturb her. Now I had to make a call that never got easier, no matter how many times I made it. It was made all the worse this time because it was to the one woman I couldn’t stand to hurt.
Her phone rang four times before she answered, sounding drowsy. “Dom?”
“Triss.” I closed my eyes, dreading this part. “She’s gone, baby.”
“No,” she whispered brokenly. “Please, Dom. No.”
“Do you want me to come and get you? Or would you rather I took care of the details? I’ll do whatever you want, sweetheart.”
“My mind won’t work,” she sobbed out. “I can’t believe she’s gone.”
“I’m so sorry, baby.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
Just hearing her cry was tearing me apart. “I’m going to sign off on everything here, and then I’ll be right there.”
“You’re at the hospital?”
“I stayed with her all night, Triss. I didn’t want her to be alone.”
“Oh, my God. Dom, that’s … Thank you.”
“She was a special woman,” I told her. “Give me an hour and I’ll be over. We can tell the girls together.”
As the day dragged on, I could see that Triss was falling apart. She tried hard to keep on a brave face, but I could tell she was going to break soon.
Lily and Daisy cried themselves to sleep, and as soon as they were tucked into bed, I pulled Triss down the hall to her old room. I had taken a chance, thinking that she would have picked her old room over the master and was glad to see I was right as I shut the door behind us and pulled her into my arms. As soon as my lips touched her forehead, she finally let herself break down.
Each sob that left her cracked my own heart open. Her body shook from the force of it, while I held her tighter, letting her know without words that I would hold her together.
Lifting her in my arms, I carried her over to the bed. I held her with her head pillowed on my chest until her sobs turned into little hiccups, and then her breathing evened out and she fell asleep.
All day, I held her, needing to be close to her.
After arranging to have Savanna’s body sent to the funeral home, I had called my nurse and told her I was going to be out for a while, and to direct my patients to one of the other doctors in my practice. I didn’t know how long I was going to be out, and I didn’t care who got pissed. All that mattered was Triss and the girls.
This was where I was supposed to be. Right there with this woman who still held my heart. She had never let it go.
I held Triss, stroking my fingers up and down her arm until I fell into an exhausted sleep.
--
Small fingers touching my arm jerked me awake sometime later. My eyes snapped open, and I looked up to find Lily standing beside the bed. Her face was pale, and her eyes were swollen from crying for so long. I could hear her sniffling, her little nose running.
“Hi,” she whispered in a pained voice.
“Hello, sweetheart. Can’t sleep?”
She shook her blonde head.
“Want to cuddle with me and Triss?”
Again, I got a head shake. “I’m hungry.”
I realized my own stomach was making growling noises and was surprised it hadn’t woken Triss. None of us had eaten that morning.
Carefully, I untangled myself from under Triss and stood. Leaning back down, I pressed a kiss to her temple then tucked the covers around her before offering Lily my hand. She took it without the slightest hesitation, and my heart gave a painful lurch in my chest.
Holding her fingers like my life depended on it, I took her downstairs. The kitchen was fully stocked, but I had no idea what to feed a six-year-old.
“What would you like?” I asked, showing her the contents of the fridge.
“Can you make grilled cheese?”
“Whatever you want, precious.” I pulled out the cheese and butter, and then went in search of a pan.
Lily pulled a chair over to the stove to assist me. “Triss puts two slices of cheese on it when she makes them,” she instructed when I only placed one slice on the buttered slice of bread.
I quickly added a second piece of cheese.
When it was done, she inspected it then looked up at me expectantly. “Triss cuts off the crust.”
After I carefully cut off the crusts, she continued looking down at the plate, a small frown on her beautiful face.
“She cuts them into two triangles.”
The little square became two triangles. “Perfect?” I asked, holding my breath in case Triss waved some kind of magic spell over the cheese next that would make the grilled cheese taste just right.
After another thorough inspection, she finally nodded her head. “Can I have carrots, too?”
Returning to the fridge, I pulled out a container of carrot sticks. I took out a small handful and placed them beside the grilled cheese. “What’s next?”
“Milk?” Lily asked around a small bite of her sandwich.
“Coming up.”
Once her snack was complete, I pulled out the fixings for a sandwich for myself. My sandwich was stacked high with everything I could find to put on it, and then I sat down across from the little girl with my own glass of milk for my first meal with my daughter.
We ate in silence, but I was okay with that. It gave me time to watch her. The way she ate reminded me of Triss, all dainty and graceful. Everything about her reminded me of Triss. The shape of her nose, the tilt of her chin. Even her ears reminded me of the woman asleep upstairs. She was Triss’s clone.
There was nothing about her looks to suggest that she had gotten even a little of myself, but I was more than fine with that. I didn’t want to taint this precious little girl with the DNA that I had given her. I didn’t want to think about the fact that she tragically shared the same blood that flowed through my mother’s veins.
Fuck, I didn’t want to think about the fact that I shared the same DNA, the same blood, the same evilness that Nancy contained.
When the grilled cheese was all gone and only a few carrots remained, Lily wiped her mouth with a napkin and wrapped her arms around herself. “Do you want to color with me, Dom?”
I could see that she wanted me to, and there was no way I could have turned that sweet little voice down.
She took my hand and led me upstairs to her room as the sun began to go down. There was an entire art station set up on one side of the room. I sat down in one of the small chairs and noticed some of the artwork already hanging on the walls.
Holy shit, my kid had talent.
I sat there, watching as she created a masterpiece just using a case of crayons and a blank piece of paper. Her fingers moved with sureness, like they had a mind of their own. The way she could blend one color into another as if they bent to her will, it was beautiful.
“Don’t you like to color?” she asked after she had been coloring for a while and noticed I had yet to pick up a single crayon.
“I like watching you,” I told her honestly. “How do you do that?”
She shrugged her tiny shoulders. “I just see something in my head and start coloring. It’s easy.”
“Will you color me something?”
She gave me a small smile. “Sure, if you want me to.”
“Can I have the one you’re coloring now?”
She nodded. “Thank yo
u. I’ll put it on my desk at work.”
“Where do you work?”
“I’m a doctor.”
Her face scrunched up as she lifted her eyes from her picture. “Were you my momma’s doctor?”
“No, sweetheart.”
“Oh.” She let out a sad, but relieved sigh. “I don’t like doctors. But you’re nice. Can you be my doctor?”
“I would gladly be your doctor, Lily. If you’re ever sick, just call me and I’ll take good care of you. Okay?”
Lily started to nod when her attention was pulled toward the door.
Turning, I found Triss standing in the doorway. Grief poured off her in waves, but when she saw Lily coloring, a sad smile tilted her lips.
“Looks like you two are busy,” she murmured as she crossed the room. She knelt beside Lily, looking at her picture. “Wow, Lil, that’s so pretty. Want to put this one on the fridge when you’re done?”
She shook her head. “No, I promised it to Dom.”
“Ah. I see.” Her blue-gray eyes lifted to mine, her smile turning shy. “Have you been up long?”
“About an hour,” I assured her. “We haven’t gotten into too much trouble, have we, precious?”
“Nope. Dom made me a grilled cheese and I helped.”
Triss’s eyes widened. “Wow, I bet that was fun.”
“Don’t worry; Lily showed me exactly how you make it, so it was just perfect.” I winked at her, making her blush. “Apparently, you’re a rock star at making grilled cheese.”
That coaxed the tiniest of grins from Triss. “I do make a mean grilled cheese.”
I took her hand and tugged her up then onto my lap. Triss came willingly, if a little shy. “Are you hungry, babe? I’ll go down and fix you something if you want.”
She shook her head, that tiny grin disappearing. “No thanks. I’m not hungry.”