Destination Connelly (20 page)

“I love you, Nora. You should know that I’m never letting go.”

“Promise?” Even her tone holds thin filaments of secrets. Perhaps even fear.

I press a kiss to her forehead and hug her tighter, trying like hell to meld her flesh into my flesh and her bones into mine so she becomes a part of me I would die without. “Yes. I promise.”

P
romises
. They’re like bull’s-eyes. A big fat fucking black mark square between your eyes, just waiting for something or someone to come along and take you out. They are slippery, tricky fuckers that are hard to hold on to, even for those with the best of intentions. When you make them, you are 100 percent certain there is nothing that will or can make you break your oath, the vow you swore above all other things you’d honor.

But then something completely unforeseen, wholly unimaginable comes out of left field that tests your pledge, stretches your commitment. Makes you reevaluate where your loyalties lie and whom you can trust.

That “thing” will undermine everything you believed in, will dissolve the trust behind the promise in the first place, and sometimes that “thing” is just a misunderstanding.

More often than not, though, that “thing” is betrayal.

C
onn

I
laugh
, feeling in a pretty good fucking mood. Better than I have in weeks. I tried to bribe Nora to come home with me so we could spend the rest of the weekend lounging in bed, nude, binge watching
The Little Mermaid
, to which she laughed so hard she had tears in her eyes. But she said she had things to do and needed to get home. We agreed to have lunch tomorrow, though and to talk. But not before I get her naked and twisted in my sheets. Hell, I may just tie her up so she has no choice but to stay this time.

A few minutes later, I’m knocking on Ella’s door. It’s early, still not quite ten in the morning. Nora and I landed just shy of an hour ago. I miss her like hell already. After our marathon bout of sex, we cleaned up and rushed to the airport. This flight went better for her. While we didn’t make the mile-high club again, between talking about my brothers and their newfound women, we made out like a couple of horny teenagers, especially on takeoff and touchdown, when she was most scared. It was fucking heaven, actually.

“Hey, come on in.” Ella bounds back through the condo toward the kitchen, calling behind her, “Just be quiet.”

“Be quiet? Why?” My eyes shift down the hall toward the bedrooms. “Your Coyote Ugly sleeping it off?”

“God, you are such a dick.” She hands me a soft golden package containing a Grease T-Birds T-shirt I happened across on eBay. Nice gag gift for Asher. “No, my
niece
is still sleeping.”

“Your niece is here? The one you bought that design thing for?”

“One and the same.”

Remembering she said she had to mail the gift, I ask, “She visiting?”

“She lives here now.” She shrugs and I know that’s all I’ll get from her tight lips.

Ella’s phone rings. She swears under her breath before she puts it to her ear. “Hey, sorry,” she says without even so much as a “hello.”

I hear a loud female voice coming through the speaker. I can’t make out what she’s saying. I try not to eavesdrop but my ears perk at Ella’s response.

“I know. Sorry, change of plans. I took her to
The Little Mermaid
last night at the Shakes and then we hung out on the pier for a while. We were both beat. I planned to bring her home when she woke up, but she’s still sleeping.”

More noise comes from the other side before Ella laughs.

“For Christ’s sake, she’s fine. Unharmed. Unpierced. Unmarred. Totally sober. What kind of aunt do you think I am?”

Pause.

Ella scowls. “There is this thing called the Internet. I used it. Plus a colleague has a nine-year-old.”

I hear laughter and Ella’s frown disappears.

“Are you sure? I can bring her over, no problem.” She pauses. “Okay, see you in a few.”

“Your sister?”

“Yes. She thinks she’ll come home to a tatted, hungover child. I may have tatted her, but it’s just a henna. Coffee?”

“Uh…sure. Got nothing better to do.” Although I do. I have a shitload of e-mails to catch up on and quarterly financials to review, but for the entire last two days, I’ve done nothing but spend time inside of Nora. I should spend the whole day working, only for the first time in my career, I find I’m not hell-bent on getting back to the grind.

“Don’t you want to shoo me out before your gorgeous sister arrives?” I tease, taking a tentative sip of the hot, strong brew. Not that I give a shit about anyone else besides Nora, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to needle Ella.

Gazing at me, she replies, “No.”

“No? Not that long ago I could have sworn you’d gouge my eyes out if I so much as looked at her.”

“I did not. Besides, you look…I don’t know.” She tilts her head and narrows her eyes like she’s just noticing something about me she hasn’t seen before. “Different. You look relaxed. Dare I even say…happy? Someone special perhaps?”

If you told me smiling would trigger a stampede of wild boars that would crush me to death, I still couldn’t have stopped it. “Yeah.” I laugh. She’s something special all right.

Before she can ask another probing question, which I’d willingly answer, I hear a small voice call from behind me, “Hi, Aunt Mira.”

“Mira?” I ask, confused as hell.

She shrugs. “My full name is Mirabella, but my father always called me Mira. At work I go by Ella,” she tells me as she quickly rushes around the kitchen island toward the child behind me. When I swivel in my stool all I can see is Ella’s back and small hands around Ella’s waist.

“How did you sleep, Ladybird?” Ella/Mira croons while hugging her niece.

In an instant, that nickname sucks me back in time.

“Morning, Ladybird,” I tease, leaning close to smell her perfume.

“Ladybird?”

I wag my eyebrows. “Yeah, I did some research on ladybugs, princess. Do you know in Europe they call them ladybirds?”

She smiles. It’s brilliant and mind stealing. “You researched ladybugs? Why?”

“Because they interest you, and I’m interested in what interests you.”

Her mouth softens and for the first time I see our future in her eyes, not just my own.

Have you ever had a heartbeat, just a single second in time, that seemed to completely stop? It’s frozen, and as much as you want to press that damn fast-forward button so you can skip this point in time because you know it will change everything, you can’t. You can’t, because that’s your life-altering moment. The one that’s meant specifically for
you
to live.

I thought I’d had one of those already. The night Nora broke up with me over the phone.

But now I know I was wrong.
This
is that moment for me.

This is my game changer.

Had Ella not used that nickname, I probably would have missed it. I would have given the child a cursory glance and ran for the door, kids not really being my thing. But the second Ella mentioned “ladybird” my entire world came to a grinding, thunderous, fucked-up halt when I zeroed in on what circles the little girl’s wrist.

A ladybug bracelet.

And not just any ladybug bracelet. It’s the exact replica of the one I gave Nora the last night I saw her.

Random snippets of memories and conversations, completely out of order, pummel me so fast my head buzzes. It sounds as if a hundred thousand bees were just let loose to torment me. Puzzle pieces snap together. Ice crawls up my spine. My limbs feel cold, numb. My breathing labored.

It’s for my niece. Really has an eye for that stuff.

Dinner? No. I can’t. I have other responsibilities, Connelly.

We should talk.

Someday you’re going to marry me, Nora.

I have things I need to tell you.

There’s never been anyone else. In my heart, I mean.

What are you sorry for, princess?

It’s beautiful. I love it. I’ll never take it off.

Everything. I’m sorry for everything.

You’re mine now. You realize that, right?

“Conn? Connelly? Hey…” I feel a sting on my cheek, but it barely registers as I now stare into the most angelic face I’ve ever seen.

She’s small, no more than four and a half feet.

Her hair is a stunning hue of coppery brown.

Her lips are full and pink.

Her cheekbones high and sharp.

Her nose is small, pert, a perfect size for her tiny round face.

But it’s the eyes…her unusual hazel eyes that truly do me in.

They are mine, only a hundred times more beautiful.

There is no mistake. No doubt.

She is a perfect combination of her mother and father.

Nora.

Me.

She is mine.

Fuuuuuuck.

I have things I need to tell you.

…things I need to tell you.

…we need to talk.

If I wasn’t sure that this beautiful little creature in front of me was mine, the next words out of her mouth solidified it for me, another memory almost knocking me over.

Holding her hand out ever so politely, the child’s hazels—
my
hazels—never waver from mine. “Hi, I’m Hazel. But my friends call me Zel.”

“I love your eyes,” Nora says, running a finger down my cheek.

Hazel.

Jesus Christ.

I have a daughter.

I have a daughter and her name is
Hazel
.

N
ora

I
stand
in the living room of Mira’s downtown Chicago condo in absolute horror and utter confusion. I can hardly catch a speck of air as I watch my daughter put her hand in her father’s for the very first time. I see the thrall and confusion on Connelly’s face as he blindly takes it. And I’m well aware of my sister taking in the entire scene as if she’s just stepped into the Twilight Zone.

Welcome to the fifth dimension, because there is no fucking possible way I can be witnessing what I am unless I’m lost inside of its unknown vastness. It’s like I’m watching a movie in the weightlessness of space, the scene before me unfolding so slowly my heart races. The way she’s looking at him, I wonder if Hazel is putting things together just like Connelly is. She’s a very intuitive little girl, a trait she clearly inherited from her father.

I had tried twice over the last twenty-four hours to tell Connelly about her. Both times he put me off. I should have tried harder. I needed to have control over the situation, over my words. I had to frame the message just right to minimize the fallout and make him understand I did what I thought best at the time. This is the worst possible way he could have found out because the only way this can end is…

…utter annihilation.

And just like that, the spell is broken as Zel realizes I’m here and runs across the room to throw herself into my arms. But I can’t look at her. I can’t even listen to her as she starts babbling a hundred miles an hour about what she and her aunt Mira did while I was out of town.

All I can do is watch Connelly as he sits there, dumbfounded, staring blankly at the spot where Hazel just stood. His brows are creased. He blinks slowly as if trying to convince himself he just saw a hallucination.

But he didn’t.

In slow motion, his head pivots my way, yet he still doesn’t look at me. His eyes never leave Hazel. He’s watching her talk, her little hands flailing everywhere, but like me, I’m sure he’s not hearing anything she’s saying. Seconds drag on like days while I wait for the other shoe to drop, all the while wondering why the hell I’m in my sister’s condo gaping at Connelly.

“Uhhh, what’s going on here?” Mira whispers.

I can’t. I just…can’t. My voice is ice covered, like my heart.

The only reason I can come up with for Connelly being here is...but…my
sister
? The thought of Connelly stroking or kissing or thoroughly dominating my sister’s body the way he did mine for the past couple of days almost buckles my knees with unimaginable agony.

I can’t fill my lungs with enough life-giving oxygen.

And he’s here a mere hour after he left me.

Anger stirs and once again, I harden the walls he effectively managed to tear down over the past few weeks. I knew he wasn’t trustworthy. I knew it was an impossibility for him to commit to one woman. I knew I shouldn’t have opened up to him, let him into my heart again.

Now I remember why.

When his eyes finally rise to mine, they are full of confusion and disbelief. And hurt. Which quickly morphs into a fiery rage I’ve never seen in him before.

With the utmost control, he rises from the kitchen stool and stalks in my direction. A stealthy panther on the hunt. Out of my periphery, I see Mira volley back and forth between us and I hear her ask again what’s happening. I ignore her.

“Mommy, this is Aunt Mira’s friend, Connelly. Isn’t he pretty?” She whispers the last part as Connelly comes to a stop in front of us. Zel is constantly trying to hook me up with men, always pointing out the “pretty” ones at the grocery store or the movies or the Humane Society. She has no idea that the only “pretty” man I would ever want is now full of loathing and hatred for her mother.

“Hazel, I need a moment with your mother.” Connelly’s jaw is plank tight, which, other than his eyes, is the one indication of how hard he’s working to control himself right now. But he surprises me when he looks down at her and softens his voice considerably. “If that’s okay with you?”

“Sure. Take all the time you need,” she singsongs traipsing off into the kitchen, leaving the three of us standing there in a little semicircle.

“Okay, somebody better tell me what the hell is going on,” Mira sneers on a low whisper.

“None of your business,” we both answer at the same time, our eyes locked on the other.

“Aunt Mira, will you make me pancakes?” Zel yells from the kitchen. That little shit knows exactly what she’s doing, but little does she know it will never work with this man. Not now. Not ever again. Unable to stand the condemnation in Connelly’s eyes any longer, I turn to see she’s already poured a glass of orange juice, making herself right at home.

“Sure will, buttercup.”

I look at Mira, knowing she doesn’t cook a thing that doesn’t come out of the microwave. She even burns toast. “You know how to make pancakes?” I ask with doubt.

Her shoulders rise and fall. “No, but it can’t be
that
hard, can it?”

“How about some instant oatmeal? You have that?”

“Nora, I got this. Go…do…whatever it is you two need to do.”

Before the words even leave Mira’s mouth, my elbow is in Connelly’s painful grip and he’s ushering me to the front door.

“Where are we—?”

“Do. Not. Speak.” His growl is low. Terrifying.

He leads me down the narrow corridor, the elevator to my right mocking my escape. About now, I’m wishing I’d taken Mira up on her offer to bring Hazel home. As much as I’ve tried to prepare myself for this moment, I know I can never fully be ready.

When we reach the far corner, he opens another condo door before dragging me in behind him, slamming it shut. The instant we’re in what I would guess is his living room, which seems to be a mirror of Mira’s only backward, he lets my arm go like it’s venomous and starts pacing while stabbing his fingers through his hair. I have to push down the memories of doing that just hours ago when he was fucking me so hard I couldn’t see straight.

I hold in a sob, knowing I’ll never have that again. I knew it when we boarded that plane and left Memphis.

Finally stopping a foot away, he glares deserving daggers into me. I don’t think he’ll hurt me, but that doesn’t stop the “fight or flight” instinct from coursing through my veins. My feet ready to run. “Please tell me I did not see what I think I just saw.” Each word is punctuated hard. Each feels like an invisible fist to my gut.

“I was going to tell you,” I respond quietly. Lamely.

“Going to tell me!” he roars, his entire face turning a dark shade of red. “When the fuck were you going to tell me? When you asked me to walk her down the goddamned aisle at her wedding?”

His anger rains down all around me. It’s sharp as arrows, piercing my skin, leaving trails of remorse and shame behind. Guilt that I let things go this far eats my insides until I think I may just bleed out right here on his perfect ivory carpet.

“Connelly, I—”

“Jesus. Fucking. Christ, Nora! You mean to tell me all these years I’ve—we’ve”—he waves back and forth between us—“had a daughter and you didn’t have the fucking decency to even tell me? How could you do that?”

I feel myself buckling under the weight of my lies and deceptions. I knew what I was doing. I didn’t have definitive DNA proof but the older Hazel got the less I needed it. Deep down I
knew
the truth. I could see it in her captivating smile, hear it in her melodic laugh, feel it in her boundless love. I knew it in my soul. Hazel is as magnetic as Connelly and she’s his as surely as I once was.

But the surer I became she was his, the more scared I became at the same time. After so long, how could I go to Connelly and say,
“Hey, surprise, Daddy! Sorry, it took me years to figure out she was yours.”?

I couldn’t.

“Did you want to get away from me that bad, Nora?”

“It wasn’t like that,” I whisper lamely.

“Wasn’t like that? Then what the fuck was it like, Nora? I had the best night of my life and then I never fucking saw you again. You told me you loved me. We created a life and you…you…fuck! How could you do this?”

Every muscle is his body is vibrating as he stands there, his hard gaze boring holes into me. It burns so much. I deserve every bit of the fiery hell I’ve now found myself in.

This would be the time, Nora. Tell him what you did. Tell him what you saw. Tell him why.

But the words crawling up my throat get stuck in the back. They won’t budge, no matter how hard I’m pushing.

As if reading my mind, he whispers brokenly, “There really was someone else, wasn’t there?” He slumps into a leather lounger and hangs his head between his hands, mumbling. “Ah fuck. That’s the only thing that makes sense. You didn’t know if she was mine, did you?”

“Connelly…”
Tell him. Tell him. For the love of all that’s good and right, tell him, Nora.
But acid slowly dissolves the confession that was stuck, so I stop talking and swallow down the vile fragments instead.

Seconds, minutes, maybe years pass. I feel as though time has frozen us in perpetual purgatory. Connelly certainly doesn’t belong here, but I do.

When he finally lifts his head, the naked, brutal pain ravaging the depths of his being shames me. Pain that my selfish actions caused. Just hours ago we were in each other’s arms, professing our love and promises of a future I knew we could never have, but held out hope for anyway. His raw agony shreds me. I begin to softly cry.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” he grits furiously. Standing, he walks to the kitchen, pulls out a bottle of amber liquid and a tumbler. He pours himself a healthy amount, drinking it all in one swallow before repeating the same process two more times. A glance at the clock shows it’s early…just half past ten.

“That’s why you didn’t want to move to Chicago. You didn’t want me to know.” His voice is eerily calm and monotone now as he stares at the cupboards, a full glass of alcohol in hand, his back to me.

It’s not a question, so I don’t respond.

“Is this what you were going to tell me in Memphis?”

Now he just sounds ruined.

“Yes,” I answer on a sob.

The silence is deafening. Thick and nauseating. I want to throw myself in his arms and have him hold me, comfort me. It makes me mentally crumble in a heap to know I’ll never know the feel of him again.

Tossing back another glassful, he fills it up yet again before facing me. The water I see in his eyes makes me cry harder. “What hurts the most is that you just walked away from me, from what we had, without a fucking backward glance. I was in
love
with you, Nora. Every single part of me was yours yet you got on that plane and I never saw you again. You left me behind like yesterday’s trash, like the time we’d spent together meant absolutely nothing to you. Like that
night
meant nothing to you.”

“It meant everything,” I mumble almost inaudibly.
It meant more than everything and then you destroyed us.

“You’re a fucking liar!” he spits on a thundering boom. “You clearly hopped from my dick right onto the next guy’s so goddamned fast you didn’t even know whose fucking kid you had!”

Quicker than a lightning bolt, his accusation stirs an angry fire deep within my belly. Instead of fighting it, I harness that energy, using it as a shield, because how. Fucking. Dare. Him. He had his dick in someone else first.

“Oh, that’s rich, coming from someone whose zipper gets used more than the revolving doors at Macy’s.”

He stiffens and slams his glass on the counter, sloshing his precious liquor over the edges and onto the black granite. His eyes would burn me into a pile of ashes if I stood any closer. Hell, that’s probably what he hoped for.

“You wanna know why I am like I am, Nora? Why I can’t commit? Why I
fuck
a different woman every night of the week? Well, take a look in the mirror, sweetheart. Take a good, long, hard fucking look and the answer will be staring back in those lying fucking eyes of yours.”

I shake my head, fury hazing my vision. “Your manwhoring ways are
not
my doing, Connelly. You couldn’t keep your cock in your pants even back in high school. You wouldn’t understand the words fidelity and commitment if someone read the definitions to you slowly from the goddamned dictionary.”

With each word his face pinches further and I don’t miss the fact he’s curling and uncurling the fists clenched at his sides. But that doesn’t stop me.

“You want to know the real reason I didn’t tell you about Hazel?” I continue, panting my rage. “I need a father for Hazel, not some fucking asshole who’s going to come home smelling of women’s perfume, her panties stuffed in his suit pocket. Children need stability and role models and commitment, and you have none of those qualities.”

“You never gave me that fucking chance!” he bellows so loudly I know the floors above and below us had to have heard.

“You didn’t deserve it!” I scream back, the reverberation stinging my vocal cords.

Several loud knocks rap on his front door. “Go away,” he yells, turning his attention back to his mind eraser, swallowing hard.

“Open the fuck up, Connelly,” Mira’s stern voice resonates through the now quiet space.

I head to the door, not waiting for Connelly’s permission. This has spiraled so far out of control, I’m afraid our hurtful words will cut so deep, they’ll leave permanent scars. He needs time to digest and we both need time to cool off.

“Are you okay?” Mira asks the second I pull open the heavy wood. She’s grasping my shoulders and searching my face and body for wounds, but she won’t find them on my flesh. Mine are all hidden so far inside they’ll never heal.

“I’m fine.” I’m the furthest fucking thing from fine. Just looking at my sister cramps my stomach knowing she may have been intimate with the man I love more than I will ever love another.

“Butt out, Ella,” a dark menacing voice behind me growls. Fresh tears well at how much I want him to wrap his arms around me right now. I’m so alone.

“You can fuck off, Conn,” she growls back, unfazed by the waves of fury I feel painfully thrashing my back. “You’re going to have the cops here in about ten minutes if you don’t knock it off.” She stands there pinning us both with her steely glare. “Now, I don’t know what’s going on between you two, but it doesn’t take a genealogist to guess it’s about that little girl in the next apartment, who also has ears by the way.”