Page 87 of Wasted Lust

With me.

“Hey,” I say, as the cold air from the door recedes as I close it. “You got room for me over there?”

Lauren pats the bed and Sasha smiles as I scoot in next to them.

Hate is hard, I decide. It’s hard to hold a grudge for so many years. All the planning and plotting. All the sleepless nights filled with rage and thoughts of revenge. Regrets and remorse. Those are all the hallmarks of hate.

But love is easy. Love is listening to Sasha read a story that takes her back to a simpler time. Love is watching Lauren’s eyes grow heavy from the telling. Love is me letting out that breath I feel like I’ve been holding since I was fifteen.

Love is easy, and not one moment of it is wasted.

Six months later

The desert. It took me more than a year to get used to the summer heat. But Merc promised an oasis and that’s what he gave me. We started the remodeling as soon as we got back to the little house in the middle of the desert scrub two and a half years ago.

First we added two bedrooms. Merc was always talking about kids. But it was a touchy subject for me. I know what it means to have a Company child.

Still, I went along with him. It made him happy. And once he got started on the remodeling he just couldn’t stop. The entire backyard is like a five-star hotel in Vegas. A pool that could fit a hundred with a walk-in beach. Waterslides, and waterfalls, and water, water, water everywhere. It’s a kid’s backyard dream.

So here I sit in a hammock, under the shade of those palms that look more like giant umbrellas than trees, with an automatic mister keeping things cool. Two-year old Lily is on my stomach, sleeping away, not a care in the world.

Daphne is splashing her way across the length of the pool, having just learned to do the five-year-old version of the butterfly stroke. I smile at that. Merc whistles encouragement and tells her to keep going. When she makes it to the far edge, she bobs up and takes her goggles off to squeal about her achievement.

I clap softly, not wanting to wake up Lily.

“OK,” Merc says, taking his attention back to three-year-old Avery. She is standing at the top of the waterslide biting her nails. “Your turn to shine, Ave.”

She shakes her head no, and pouts. “I’m skered.”

“Baby girl,” Merc says, standing up in the water to his full height of six-foot-four. “I’m big, darling. I’ve got arms like an octopus. I’m gonna swoop you up the second you hit the water.”

Avery was the one who took the most time to adjust. She’s just starting to warm up to us. She doesn’t really remember me from her other life. All she knows is that she’s in a new place with people she doesn’t recognize.

But every day we come out here to play. And every day she stands up there and Merc stands at the bottom in the water, promising to catch her. And every day she cries until he comes to rescue her from the slide and carry her down.

I expect that today too. But she sits down this time.

Merc shoots me a smile, but just a quick one. His eyes returning to Avery before she thinks he’s not paying attention.

She screams all the way down and plops into the water. Merc’s long arms do in fact, swoop her up to safety. She spits out water and wipes her eyes.

I wait.

And when she giggles and hugs him hard, pressing her face into his neck, I start to believe the promise he made me two years ago. I was Avery once. And Merc saved me too, so I know how she feels. He promised to be good to my daughters.

And he’s made good.

Everything is good.

One year later

“Just put the fucking blindfold on,” James growls to Angelica. “Jesus fucking Christ. I’m the motherfucking head of this family. You’re supposed to do what I say.”

“Harper,” Angelica says, her hand on her hip. “He promised not to swear in front of Hannah.”

“Harper,” James says, his tone softening. “She’s eighteen months old. I get another year, at least, before she starts saying fuck.”

I have to hide my smile or Angelica will drag this fight on for hours. And I know James is in a hurry. So I act like a mom. “James, she’s right. Put a dollar in the jar.”