With Crayons and Love (Romantic Suspense) [COMPLETED]

Chapter 25 - Leather

She waited for me. I cleared my throat so I could speak.

"Is that what you want?" I asked, keeping my voice gentle.

Stella looked toward the ceiling, then back down again to her hand which I held softly in mine. It was after a minute that she looked into my eyes again, trying to read my face with a gaze so quiet that her age seemed false.

"What do you want, Tessa?"

For a young child to ask an adult such a question was rare. I flashed back to a moment when I had been young, yet a year older than Stella, and I had been reaching for the paintbrushes my mother kept above the armoire so that I wouldn't paint unsupervised. She had asked me what I wanted, standing behind me with amusement. And I just said I wanted to hold them, the paintbrushes, so that I could feel the tips over my fingers. No paint, I promised. But I had seen something blue and I wanted to create it.

I looked at her now, blue eyes expectant, and wondered why she would ever have a reason to doubt me, or what I wanted, when a child should be free enough to demand; to feel that everything was in their reach.

Yet she was doubting me and whether I wanted to be with her forever, and even worse, she was doubting herself.

"What I want," I started, standing from the center-edge of the bed to take a seat right beside her, "is for you to be completely and wonderfully happy. I want you to know that I love you to the moon and back a thousand times. And if it makes you happy to stay with me forever, I want it, too, Stella."

She sat up and pulled up the sheets, covering her eyes for a split second. Then she let the sheets fall again and pushed them aside. "I-I want to stay with you," she spoke.

I felt the moisture start to pool in my eyes, and willed myself to smile so she wouldn't be alarmed. "Will that make you happy?"

She nodded softly and came to me quickly, burying her face into the crook of my shoulder. For a moment before she covered her face, I thought that I had seen her eyes glisten. When she put her arms around my neck and slipped her fingers inside my hair I closed my own, finding it easier to hold the tears when I could not see her.

"Then it's you and me," I murmured softly, running circles into the small width of her back.

***

The next morning the Tribune called when I was getting ready for work to say that I wasn't needed in. The reason; today my department's story was being covered by Claire Engelmeyer because the Tribune was focusing on Middle Eastern affairs. If anyone was experienced with Middle Eastern affairs and policies, it was Engelmeyer, and there was no point in having me in if it would mean paying me for work that someone with a lesser paycheck could more affordably cover. I was given the option of staying home or deciding to go to work, of course, but I knew well what the Tribune wanted. Luckily enough for them I was fine with staying home and skipping out on the easy pay.

If there was a given way out, I didn't mind taking it.

This kind of day demanded to be enjoyed. With an ease of mind that I hadn't felt since my mother last spoke to me, I looked outside the window and watched a teenager as he walked his dog; a woman on a bicycle as she pedaled down the curb. People weren't just staying in today; they were living.

I dressed myself into one of my favorite dresses; a long one that hung as I liked by my ankles in a pretty navy blue that was good for my coloring. Then I dressed Stella into an indigo blouse with embroidered flowers at the hem and let her wear the knee-length shorts she was in the mood for.

I had made mental plans right after the phone call to go surprise my mother with an early visit after Stella and I went downtown. That way we would be able to sit down and calmly talk about the matters at hand. Then I would come home for Grant and drag him out by the ear if I had to, out of the apartment building where we could all walk for just a little while underneath nothing but sky. Just as we had done less than a week ago in South Carolina.