Ten minutes in her company and I already know she is the best thing to ever happen to me besides her mother.
“Hey, Van.” Stella slinks into the room, immediately enveloping me in a hug. “It’s so good to see you. We all missed you.”
“His name is Vander Henley,” Iris corrects, looking up from her seat at her sister.
“I know his name, silly,” Stella says, tweaking her nose. “You know your daddy was West’s best friend and my friend too when we lived in Colorado.”
“Well, he’s my daddy.” Iris puffs out her chest, and I crouch in front of her, unable to resist hugging her again. She can be territorial all she likes, for as long as she likes, and I will never tire of it. My heart is so swollen behind my chest it feels like it might burst.
“And you’re my princess.” I dot kisses all over her cheeks, and she giggles. The sound is infectious, and I make a silent promise to make her giggle as often as I can.
“I love you, Daddy,” she says with a big smile on her face, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to say to a man who is a virtual stranger. Kids are so adaptable, and I love that she’s so confident and loving and trusting. Every kid should grow up in an environment where they feel safe and comfortable expressing their feelings. Kendall has done an amazing job with her, and whatever guilt she is carrying needs to be eradicated.
“I love you too, Iris.” My voice is thick with emotion. “I promise I’m going to see you all the time from now on.” I sweep my fingers down her cheek.
“Silly Daddy.” She tweaks my nose. “I already see you every night in my dreams.”
54
KENDALL
“You’ve got to give me some answers,” Vander says as we walk one of the paths at Holladay Park, hand in hand. “How does she know who I am, and what did she mean about dreams?”
“I was faced with some impossible decisions,” I begin explaining. “I had to make choices no parent should have to make.” I scoot a little closer to him. April in Portland is still quite cold, and I’m grateful for the warmth of his hand in mine and the heat emanating from his body. “When I knew I couldn’t tell you, I decided Iris was going to know who you were.” I lean into his side because I crave being near him.
I was desolate last night, crying into my pillow, afraid I had ruined everything with the choices I’d been forced into making. I have always known Vander would do right by Iris. Given the childhood he had, I know he would never neglect his flesh and blood. My tears were selfish tears, and I was sobbing for a love I thought I might have lost forever.
Vander turning up today has reinforced my belief in destiny and the strength of the love between us. I wasn’t lying when I said I have never stopped loving him. No one else has ever compared to Vander, and I know they never will.
“I’m listening,” he says, pressing a feather-soft kiss on the tip of my nose. “Go on.”
I don’t blame him for being hungry for every detail. Seeing them together was probably the most emotional moment of my life, next to birthing my babies. “I chose to tell her about you, but I couldn’t tell her the truth about why you weren’t living with us and why she’d never met you in the flesh. I don’t like lying to her, but there was no other option.”
“I understand, Kendall, and you don’t have to apologize. We’re past that.”
Vander yanks me out of the way as a man on a bicycle speeds toward us. I use the opportunity to slide my arm around his back, and he does the same. I like being all pressed up against him as we talk about our daughter. I have waited so long to tell him how amazing she is. “She’s an incredible little girl, Vander. She brings such joy to my life, and besides our bond, Iris is the one who has helped me the most.” My other kids and my friends have too, but every time I look at her, I see her father, and it helped to remind me of why I needed to keep fighting the good fight. That, and Iris’s effortless positivity and constant joyfulness has pulled me through some of my darker days. Having children to care for stopped me from sinking into deep depression on many occasions when it felt like I couldn’t keep going it alone.
I stop those thoughts before I put a dampener on what is a happy occasion. “Iris has a framed photo of you by her bed, and from the time she was little, I was pointing at it and telling her all about you. She knows you’re a painter. She knows about your digital art and your galleries. I’ve read her articles and shown her pictures online. West and Stella have shared stories with her, and I’ve explained how we are in love but couldn’t be together because you were busy studying and working to support us.”
I glance up at him. “She readily accepted it, Vander. She has never questioned it or challenged it. She tells kids about you at school, and all her friends know the famous artist Vander Henley is her daddy. She tells me she misses you and she loves you all the time, but she never cries or whines or screams or tells me it’s unfair. She has a picture of you with her at all times, and she wears the necklace you bought me for Christmas every day. She refuses to take it off even to shower.”
“She’s special,” he says, immediately getting what I’m saying.
“Iris told me she saw you in her dreams for the first time when she was four. I’m not sure if she was seeing you longer than that, but it seemed perfectly normal to her that she was being visited by her daddy in her dreams. At first, I didn’t even consider she was having visions or premonitions or whatever they are. I thought it’s what she was conjuring up to cope without having you physically in her life, but she knows things, Vander. Things she shouldn’t know. Like how the man who tattooed the butterfly on my wrist had gold teeth, and she says I was a scaredy-cat because I kept clinging to your arm. I almost fell off my chair the morning she told me that.”
Shock is etched across his face as he pulls me over to a bench, yanking me down beside him. He bundles me in his arms, holding me close. “After that, I wondered if you were aware. If you were consciously visiting her in her sleep, but I know that’s not the case now.” He would’ve known she wasn’t Stella’s daughter.
“I’m astounded. If I was somehow doing it, it was completely subconscious because I haven’t had dreams about her.” Vander presses a lingering kiss to my brow. “Only dreams about you.”
Gawd, he’s as romantic as ever, and I never want to be without him again. I snuggle into his embrace and squeeze my eyes closed, committing the feel of being in his arms to my memory in case it all goes belly up and doesn’t work out the way I want it to. “Baby.” He brushes hair off my brow and tips my chin up. “I’m going nowhere.” My eyes blink open, and I stare at him in amazement. “I can usually tell what you’re thinking. You’re clinging to me like a koala. Like you fear you’ll never get to do it again, and I think we need to lay it all out in the open.” He clasps my face in his palms. “I’d prefer to show you first.”
Before I can do or say anything, his lips descend on mine, and he kisses me. The instant our mouths meet, an intrinsic change occurs deep within me, like a switch being flicked after years of being broken. My hands grab the back of his neck, and I hold on to him, angling my head and opening my lips to welcome his devilish tongue. He explores my mouth with a reverence that is both patient and urgent, casual and needy. My pulse throbs in my neck, and the parts of me that have lain dormant, waiting for my lover to return, restart with a ferocity that startles me.