bed. To his surprise, they consisted of jogging pants and loose plain tees. Just his style.
He entered the bathroom and shut it behind him. He looked around him, feeling like he was on a different planet. He almost felt uncertain of how to behave in his own company.
He stripped his clothes off and entered the small shower stall. He blasted the water on the hottest setting and stepped in. He was so broad, he hardly fit. Resting each hand on the wall in front of him just below the showerhead, he dropped his head down and felt the water cascade over every inch of him.
All at once, memories invaded him, too powerful to stop.
“You look so delicious wet,” she murmured, sucking at his lips as she wrapped her arms around him. “Washing off all that grime.”
“I thought you liked a dirty man, dove,” he replied, smirking into her mouth.
“Oh, I do. Believe me, every time you’re in those overalls, I go cross-eyed.”
“That’ll be often. Gotta take care of my girls now.”
He grabbed her pink fluffy loofah and lathered it with feminine scented shit. This girl had invaded every corner of his house and filled it with her girly touch, and fuck, it did something inside him every time he saw it.
He ran the loofah down her front, mesmerized by her swollen breasts before trailing it to her cute as fuck belly. His little girl was in there. They had only just discovered her gender a few days ago. He pressed his hand against her stomach, right under her belly button, and then he stared into Charlotte’s eyes and said, “You think I can do this, pup?”
She smiled softly. “I think you can do it just fine.”
“I don’t know how to be a father.”
“You think I know how to be a mom?” She let out a hysteric laugh. “I’m nineteen, Conor. What the hell do I know about anything?”
She was wrong, though. He looked at her solemnly just then because he wished he could tell her just how much she had taught him in the last year they’d been together.
“You’d be surprised,” he whispered, watching the way the water streaked down her face. Her eyes glowed as she looked warmly at him.
“So would you, Conor.”
Thames felt pressure behind his eyes, but nothing else happened. Not a tear, not an ache, nothing. Was he so dead inside that not even the memory of cupping her belly where his child sat stirred him? He swore that couldn’t be it. He felt something in the depths of him, but that something was too far out of reach.
It was because she was gone, he knew. He could feel it in his bones. She was out there, living, breathing, smiling. She was in someone’s bed, or he was in hers, or maybe they shared it. There was a smiling little girl somewhere in the mix, and she was probably calling him Dad.
There was no place for Conor Thames in that life.
No wonder his soul abandoned him. It had no body to house itself into. Just a fucking empty bag of blood and bones.
With a shaking hand, he turned the water off and stepped out. Only, he stepped out feeling like he weighed more than he did when he’d entered that stall. He grabbed a nearby towel and ran it over his face, scrubbing at his skin hard to alleviate the fact that HE COULDN’T FUCKING FEEL HER.
So, why couldn’t he let her go?
Why did she plague his every thought?
Still soaking wet, he stepped out of the bathroom. He wasn’t aware the lamp in the corner had been turned on, nor did he notice the naked figure lying seductively in the bed, until he turned around and abruptly came to a halt.
She was the young thing Holden had grabbed and thrown at him earlier. She lay there, unabashedly naked, smiling at him, her cheeks rosy, her eyes alive at the sight of him. Her gaze trekked down his naked body, and she liked what she saw. He recognized the look of want even after all this time. Lust pooled in her eyes. She was confident, unused to rejection.
Now was a good start.
“Who sent you?” he asked, his voice sounding harsher than he had intended.
Her smile wavered, like she wasn’t expecting that reaction. “H-Holden.”
Thames blinked away from her and stared at a nearby spot on the wall. “What for?”
“He said you might need this. Eight years in the slammer would make a man go wild.”