“Crow,” I whisper, my voice cracking a little. “Two imperfect halves make a pretty great whole.”

  He nods and grabs me roughly, kissing the top of my head and squeezing tight. I hold him too, marveling at the connection we’re building. As much as I want what his heart has to offer, his body is doing things now that we’re standing so close, and it’s hard to ignore the enormous bulge pressing into my belly.

  I work a hand between us and gently cup his balls through his briefs. He closes his eyes and sucks in air, but he quickly scoops me up and plants me on the bed. There’s no gentle foreplay this time. He yanks my panties away from my hips, and before I can even lie back, his boxers are gone and he’s centering himself between my legs.

  “Birdie,” he gasps, saying my name over and over.

  He’s rolled a condom over his length, and I can feel the tip of him gently nudging against my center. We’re kissing, his teeth banging against mine as we tug at each other’s hair and devour each other’s mouths. The moment is frantic and needy, the lust we’ve let simmer and only partially satisfied over the past weeks now demanding everything we’ve held back.

  I lift my knees high, spreading my thighs wide, and he taps my entrance only once before planting himself deep inside. He’s holding his weight with his colorful, sculpted arms, every design and muscle working to support him as he bucks against my core. His pace is deep and slow, shallow and fast, but I can’t keep track. I’m lost to the sensations, to the pleasure pounding its way along each nerve ending with his every thrust. I’m drenched for him, and he slides deep, the angles and ridges of his body perfectly fitting and forming to mine.

  He moans and cries out my name, quickly withdrawing with fire in his eyes.

  “Get on top,” he demands, flopping onto his back.

  I’m groggy with desire, my body shaky and my breath coming in small gasps. I center myself over his cock, my thighs wide over his hips. He inches toward the head of the bed, sitting with his back slightly supported by pillows.

  “I want to watch you take me inside you.”

  I shift into a squatting position, my knees bent and legs open so I as lower myself onto his cock, he can look down between us and see every inch of his length disappear between my lips. He keeps one hand on my pussy, teasing the curls aside so he has an unobstructed view. My thighs quake and burn as I lower myself slowly, his mouth falling open as he watches. I can’t look, can’t see. My eyes are closed, and I’m supporting my weight as best I can, but it’s so much. It’s so good, the way I feel him stretch and stroke me.

  I can’t keep up this position any longer. My thighs are trembling, and my pussy is pushing me to the point of no return.

  “Crow,” I gasp, dropping my knees to the bed and sinking fully onto his cock. I start to roll my hips, riding him hard and fast.

  His hands are on my tits then, his fingertips teasing my nipples with tiny twists and tugs that send currents of fire through my body until, finally, I crash. The wave crests, and I’m riding high, calling out his name, my eyes closed and the most exquisite bliss pouring through my body in wave after wave after wave.

  I’m sweating and trembling and near tears when he releases my nipples, and I open my eyes.

  He helps me ease off his cock, and we lie with my back to his front, spooning together while I come down. He’s kissing my hair and ears, his still-hard cock nudging my ass cheeks. He works the muscles of my backside with one hand, stroking and massaging until I feel one finger slide between my legs.

  “Oh God,” I moan. I’m satisfied and am starting to feel raw and full, but his finger between my lips is stroking my plentiful juices backward, wetting my tight pucker.

  He lifts one of my thighs and holds it up while he slips back inside me. One thigh in the air and him deep inside me is all the pleasure I think I can take until I feel him shifting his weight a bit to make room for one hand to slide between us. He’s thrusting slow and deep inside me, my moans and begging for him to go deeper unanswered until I feel the tiniest bit of extra pressure and realize the tip of his thumb is pressing against my pucker. When he fills me with just the tip of his finger, the pressure inside me goes white, and all sight and sound disappear into another wave of all-consuming fire.

  I cry out and press my hips backward, my ass and pussy alive with his fullness. “Crow, oh my God…”

  He comes way too soon, gritting my name and pounding his release in steady, rhythmic beats. He pulls his finger and his cock out but holds me firmly against him, our sweat and heat and tangled hair so intertwined I feel like we’ll never separate. I take one quick peek at the clock and reassure myself we’ve got more time together. As my eyes flutter closed, I realize I never, ever want this feeling to end. I want this and him. Always.

  Crow and I shower together, which makes us dangerously close to being late for work, but I want to spend every second I can with him this morning. Even the moments I spend scrubbing away the sweat and smells of our passion.

  I don’t bother drying my hair and throw it up into a messy bun. While I’m grabbing clean clothes, Crow is on his phone. He’s looking angrier and angrier, so I come around and grab him by the waist. He drops his head and jams his phone into his pocket. The warmth from our morning has faded fast, and he turns and plants a kiss on my head.

  “Gotta run,” he says, his voice tight. “See you at work?”

  After what we just shared, I want him to tell me everything. Open up about the sudden shift in his mood. Whatever he’s reading on his phone has to be what’s caused this sudden change, but I don’t know how to push him, whether to.

  “Hey,” I say gently, stroking the side of his face with a hand. “Are you okay?”

  For a moment, he focuses his full attention on me. He leans down and sweeps a kiss across my lips. “Never better,” he says, and I believe that he means it. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a mask shielding me from what’s going on behind his eyes. He holds me close and says again, “See you at work.”

  I head into the kitchen to get lunch and snacks ready to bring for both myself and Mia for after school, when there’s a knock at the door. Crow just left, so I assume it’s him and open the door to find another man at my door.

  “Bridget.” The elderly man nods. “I’m glad you opened the door.”

  I look the man over. from the steel-gray eyes that match mine to the stooped-over shoulders, all the way down to the pricey leather loafers on his feet.

  “I told you I had no interest in this.” I wave a hand at him. “I don’t need to see you or speak to you. Now, if you don’t mind…” I try to close the door, but he holds up a hand.

  “Bridget, please,” he says. “I only need a few minutes. And then I promise, I’ll go.”

  He seems a lot less frail than he did the other day. The sun is shining on my face, and I pull my phone from the pocket of my jeans and check the time.

  “I need to leave for work,” I tell him. “This isn’t a good time.”

  “I’m dying,” he says, his voice low. “This may be the last chance I have to set things right.”

  I look him over closely, refusing to believe anything he says as truth. “Don’t lie to me, James. Not now. Not like this.”

  There’s something in his face that strikes me. It’s raw and real, but it’s not honesty. It’s fear.

  I debate stepping outside to talk to this stranger, to this man who somehow thinks he has a right to contact me, but he looks so pathetic, I decide to let him in.

  I step back and wave at my couch, offering him a seat. “Ten minutes,” I remind him, glaring.

  He drops down onto my couch, staring at the pictures of my mom and Mia scattered throughout the place. “You have a daughter,” he says quietly.

  I nod. I don’t say anything, won’t tell him her name or any details. He lost the right to that information when he walked out of my life twenty-five-plus years ago.

  “She’s beautiful,” he says, but I’m not feeling very generous.

  I tap an invisible watch on my wrist. “I need to go to work soon,” I remind him.

  He looks down at his hands. They are strong and large but marked with the veins and spots of his age. They shake slightly as he looks up at me. “Will you sit?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “I’m good right here.” There’s no way I need to be any closer to this man.

  “I’ll speak plainly, then,” he says. “I’m not here to waste your time.”

  I lean against the wall and cross my arms, squeezing my eyes shut and thinking of my mom. What she’d think if she were here. What she would do. Mom was such a kind soul, but she had a sharp edge.

  “I was a serial adulterer,” he admits, pressing his lips together. “My wife Gail and I were high school sweethearts. She’s a fantastic woman. Kind, smart.” He looks at me and shrugs. “I have no excuse for what I’ve put that woman through.”

  I find it hard to feel any compassion for this Gail person, and I blurt it out. “How smart can she be if she never caught you in these, as you call them, serial affairs?”

  He nods. “That’s a fair question. Gail is a doctor. She ran a successful practice for many, many years. In fact, our nanny was my first…infidelity.”

  I open my mouth to respond but bite back my venom. I want to give him his ten minutes and then boot him out of my life forever.

  “I ended up having three beautiful kids with Gail and three other children outside of my marriage. You were the first,” he admits. “After your mother found out about my wife, she rightly cut me off from any contact with you. I won’t try to make it sound like I was a good man, but I did try, Bridget.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat. “You had kids with three other women? Not your wife?”

  He nods. “The difference is I was always honest with my girlfriends after your mom.”

  I’m stunned. Shocked, honestly. I drop down into an armchair across from the couch and shake my head at him. “What the hell does that mean? There are women who accepted being your…side piece?”

  “Side piece…” he echoes, nodding. “Well, yeah. They did. Gail and I were very successful, and I was able to provide for them. I was probably a better father and partner part time than a lot of men are full time.”

  “Oh my fucking God,” I seethe. “Are you kidding me? You expect me to believe you’re a good dad? A good partner?”

  He shrugs. “I-I don’t know what you’re going to believe, Bridget. I’m doing a terrible job of explaining. What I’m here to do is apologize.”

  He pulls an envelope out of his pocket. “For years, I supported my children and girlfriends, and Gail had no idea there was anyone else. Until Ginger was killed.” He tears up at that and takes a tissue from his pocket. He dabs his eyes. “Ginger was my youngest. I got the news from her mother about eighteen months ago. Car accident. Ginger was riding her bike on the way to school—she was a college senior. Middle of the day, and one moment of inattention and she was gone.”

  I feel bad for Ginger of course, bad for anyone who loses their life young and tragically. And I suppose this Ginger would be my half sister, but it’s hard to process all the pieces of what James is telling me. It’s a lot, and I’m starting to get nervous. It’s nearly ten, and I don’t think he’s anywhere close to being done.

  “When Ginger died, I told Gail everything. I fell apart. Starting drinking heavily, which is not good for me. I’ve had lifelong type 2 diabetes, was diagnosed back in my twenties. Anyway, I missed a lot of warning signs of things going on here.” He motions to his torso. “Gail, as you can imagine, was devastated. Not only were there other children of mine out there, but to know that I’d been financially supporting two other families for all these years…” He sighs. “She left me, as she should have. But that’s how I missed all the signs.”

  “Signs of what?” I rub my head, worry creasing my brow. I’m not worried for him, but for my job.

  “Cancer,” he says simply. “Pancreatic.” He looks far off into the distance at a picture of my mom. “Bridget, I’ve spent the last eighteen months questioning everything I’ve ever done. I’ve spent nights drinking myself sick, crying, berating myself for everything I threw away. Once I finally got my sorry ass into a doctor and they told me there was nothing more that could be done, I decided the only thing I could do was try to make some of my wrongs right.”

  I shake my head. “So, that’s what this is? You making your wrongs right? You realize it’s way too little and you’re decades too late. I’m sorry Ginger lost her life. I’m sorry you drank yourself into an early grave, but did you really expect to come here and tell me you’re dying and have it make one bit of difference? How could you lie all those years? Why? Why wasn’t the family you had not enough?”

  “I know I can’t explain it,” he says. “I’m a selfish man. Or, I was. I thought Gail having a demanding career and not as much time for my needs meant I should satisfy them elsewhere. It only started out as sex, but when your mother had you…I realized that I was addicted. To sex. To the chase. Maybe even to the thrill of being a father.”

  “You weren’t a father,” I spit out. “Not to me. And how available could you have possibly been to the kids you did raise? What were your kids doing when you were out whoring it up? How did you have enough time for three families!”

  He nods. “I have no defense for my actions, Bridget. None at all. You’re entitled to be angry.”

  “You’re damned right I’m entitled to be angry.” I rush from the chair and pace to the kitchen. “You need to leave,” I tell him. “I’m not Ginger, and I’m not one of your kids. I don’t care if you’re my biological father. I want nothing more to do with you. Not now. Not ever.”

  James takes my outburst in stride. He stands up from the couch, the envelope he had in his pocket now in his hands. “This is for you,” he says, holding it out to me.

  “I don’t want it.” I shake my head and walk to the front door. “Get out of my house,” I say. “Don’t ever contact me again.”

  He stands in place, looking paler than he did before. “Bridget,” he says weakly. “Please take this. Read it later, when you’ve calmed down…”

  “Are you fucking kidding me? Calmed down?” I slam the front door closed, rattling the wood on its hinges. “I don’t want to calm down. I don’t need to calm down. I need you out of my fucking house!”

  I feel slightly dizzy, I’m so worked up and angry. I storm across the living room and point in James’s face.

  “You, sir, whoever you are, are not my father. You’re not a dad. You’re a liar, a cheat, and, quite frankly, a thief. Do you know how hard Mom and I worked, how much she gave up to provide a stable life for me? Do you have any idea what it was like all those years without anyone to lean on?” I wave my hands around, motioning toward my house. “And you know what? The apple doesn’t fall far from the stupid tree. I had a baby with a man who, likewise, couldn’t give two shits about being a father or a partner or anything else to me.”

  Now that I’m talking, the words are flying out of me. I’m angry, sad, and I don’t give a shit about the time or my job. I’m seeing red I’m so mad and sad. And if this man is really dying and he came here to apologize, I’m not going to let him go until I let him see firsthand what he’s apologizing for.

  “You!” I scream, pointing at him. My nose is running and tears are flying down my face, but still, I don’t stop. “You deprived my mother of joy. You stole any hope I had of having a family and a stable upbringing. Because you didn’t care about anything but getting your dick wet. I hate you. I hate what you did, the life that you lived. I’m sorry that so many people’s lives had to be hurt because you were a selfish, cowardly piece of shit.”

  He does something then that completely surprises me. He bursts into tears. Body-racking sobs. His face is red, and his grief is so raw and so real, I’m taken aback.

  “You’re right,” he says. “And Bridget, I am sorry.” He sets the envelope in his shaking hands on my coffee table. “I’m sorry I disrupted your peace. Please read that when you have time. I don’t have much time left, but every minute until I leave this earth, I’ll be sorry for the pain I caused you.”

  He opens my front door and turns back to me. “Goodbye, sweet Birdie. I would really have liked to know you.”

  He closes the door behind him, tears still shaking his shoulders. And then, my father is gone.

  17

  CROW

  All morning, I’ve been watching the lot for Birdie’s car, but it’s almost eleven, and she’s still not in.

  Tim’s on the phone giving a client an estimate when Leo and Tiny walk through the door. Tim hangs up and runs around the counter to greet his brother.

  “Yo, man.” I nod at Tiny and give Leo a clap on the back. “Congrats, brother. How’s fatherhood treating you?”

  Leo is bleary-eyed but smiling. “Fucking amazing and insane,” he grunts. “Morris is going to have his hands full in a few months.”

  “What?” Tim looks from Tiny to Leo. “Wait… Alice is expecting? Holy shit! Why am I the last to know?”

  “Nobody knows yet,” Leo says. “I mean, they haven’t announced it yet. Morris was bawling like a baby when he came to see my son in the NICU.” He chuckles at the memory. “He let it slip. And now, I let it slip. This is what sleep deprivation does. My brain is soup.”

  Leo updates us on Lia and their son, whom they have named Rider. They are both home and adjusting well, even though poor Lia is struggling with all the activity restrictions. While Tim talks to Leo, Tiny motions toward me with a nod.

  “Let’s check out the Crashpad,” he says. “Lia’s desperate to know things are going okay.”

  We leave the shop and walk up to the Crashpad. I’m shocked to see that Alice is inside, tapping away on a laptop while the dogs snooze and play.

  Tiny yanks open the door. “Alice,” he says with a grunt. “I’m checking up on things. Lia’s missing the dogs.”