Epoch (Transcend Duet #2)(44)

“Why don’t we give you two a few minutes?” I hug Morgan to me. “We’re just going to … snoop around.” I say the last two words quietly. But I know all that Claudia hears is Her name is Morgan.

We go upstairs. There are three bedrooms and a hall bathroom. Yep. Just like I remember. “So …” I stand at the entrance to Daisy’s bedroom. “This was my room, huh?”

Morgan doesn’t answer me. She’s too busy playing patty-cake with my cheeks. I recognize everything in this room. Holy heartbreaking hell! They haven’t touched her room since she died.

I feel bad for every time I’ve told my mom she needs to move on from grieving my dad. He hasn’t been dead all that long in comparison to the over two decades that Daisy has been dead.

Wouldn’t it be something if they knew that part of their daughter resides in me? Maybe like that heartbreaking yet inspired emotion that surely accompanies knowing that a loved one’s organs saved lives. That lingering physical connection.

But this is more. I carry something greater than flesh and blood. I have her memory. And on days like this, I wish I had her emotions too. I’m so numb to the familiarity around me. Sometimes empathy seeps in and disguises itself as something I think belonged to Daisy, but it’s not.

“There you are.”

I turn to Nate’s voice and a puffy-eyed Claudia behind him. Her gaze darts to the room. I haven’t left the threshold. It feels like I need permission for that.

A noise from downstairs distracts her. “That must be Dennis. Let me take Morgan.” She trips on her name, blinking back more tears.

I hand her Morgan.

“Go on in.” She smiles at Nate and nods toward Daisy’s room. “I know it seems crazy, but I’ve left her room the same. All these years later, I just like to go in there and talk to her. She was and always will be my daughter. I don’t want to forget her.” Claudia shrugs like it’s no big deal.

My twenty-two-year-old self with little true life experience would find Claudia a bit cuckoo. I think obsessed was the word I used with my mom. But after all summer and these first months of fall with Nate, I no longer feel qualified to judge anyone.

“We’ll be downstairs. Take your time.”

“Thanks,” Nate says.

When Claudia is out of earshot, Nate pushes me into the room and shuts the door behind us. My eyes shoot open wide. Holy crap! What is he doing?

“Finally.” He gives me a devilish look. I haven’t seen this look from adult Nate. However, I recognize that mischief in his eyes from my memory of him beneath me, when he said what are you going to do with me?

Gulp!

“I was never allowed in your room.”

“D-Daisy’s room,” I stutter as he gives me a predatory look.

He takes a step toward me. I take a step back.

“If I even looked in the direction of the stairs, your dad would clear his throat and scowl at me.”

“Her dad,” I say just above a whisper because I can’t breathe.

“Twenty-two years ago I would have thrown you on the bed and made out with you until you were …” He grins while biting his lower lip and shaking his head.

I take another step back until my legs hit the bed, and I stumble, landing with my ass on the edge. My hands fist the quilt.

Until I was what? I don’t want him to finish.

Shit! Yes I do.

He kneels on the floor in front of me, resting his hands on my legs. It’s giving me third-degree burns.

“Do you remember this room or are we both seeing it together for the first time?”

His hands require constant supervision. I can’t take my eyes off them. “Uh …” I swallow hard. “I remember it.”

“And?” He squeezes my legs a fraction.

I wish I were as numb to his touch as I am to the emotions of Daisy’s life, but I’m not. It’s not just that Nate is this incredibly sexy man touching me—I’m engaged to the sexiest man alive. It’s that my body lights up to his touch like seeing an old friend for the first time in two decades. The familiarity is the drug. Like I was once a Nate Hunt addict, and after years of sobriety, I’m getting a hit again and it sends my senses spiraling into an oblivion of need.

“Do you remember you?”

“Not me. Daisy.” I still don’t let my gaze drift an inch from his hands. “And no. I have this picture in my head of her life, you, this house, her parents … literally everything and everyone but her. It’s as if she’s been erased. And I hate not having feelings to put with the things I see.”

My breath catches as his hand moves from my leg to my chin, tipping it so I look at him.

“Do you want to remember what it felt like to be Daisy?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To make sense of the things in my mind.”

“What if it means you feel what she felt when she died?”

“I-I don’t know.”

“What if it makes it hard for you to ignore the two people downstairs? If your love for them comes back to life, what would that do to your relationship with your mom?”

Swallowing, I shake my head ever so slightly.

“Do you want to feel that love for them?”

It’s love. Can love be a bad thing? Can we ever love too many people?