Free What Mother Never Told Me by Donna Hill

that she wanted more than the platonic ideal they’d created. She knew that even as she tentatively knocked on his door the night before she was to leave.
    Nick opened the door and her heart stopped beating. The air stumbled in her lungs. The darkness of his eyes was that endless stretch of blackness as she fell through the night toward the inevitable. She would survive. Nick would catch her.
    “I…”
    He took her hand. “Don’t talk. Don’t explain.”
    Gently he pulled her inside and shut the door behind them.
     
    Parris awoke not to the strains of Coltrane but the steady beat of Nick’s heart. A flood of peaceful warmth flowed through her, delivering a smile of raw happiness to her mouth. His hard, muscled thigh was draped over her, pinning her to bare flesh. Her senses preened. The air was filled with the scent of them. Heady, muggy, telling.
    Nick groaned softly. He nestled her closer. The heat between her thighs pulsed like live wires. She still felt him there, memorized the way he’d loved her—slow, urgent, deep and long. Her muscles hummed with pleasure and as she drifted off to the rhythm of his heart and the warmth of his breath brushing against her hair, she knew why she’d waited.
     
    Parris squeezed Nick’s hand as they walked through the doors of JFK airport. Her flight was due to leave in two hours. She wanted to spend every second of it with him, but that was impossible.
    “Sure you have everything—passport, wallet, cell phone, something to read?” he added with a half smile.
    “Yes.” She gripped his hand tighter.
    “You’ll call me as soon as you land?”
    “I promise.” She struggled not to cry.
    They were next in line.
    “Where will you be flying to today?” the cheery reservationist asked.
    Parris swallowed over the sting in her throat. “France.”
    “Are you traveling also, sir?”
    Nick and Parris exchanged a look filled with a million questions. “No,” he answered.
    He curled his arm around her waist and tenderly kissed the top of her head as she handed over her documents and got her boarding pass in return.
    They walked together as far as security would allow him to go.
    “I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
    He brushed her cheek with his fingertips and her eyes fluttered for a moment. “I’ll be waiting.”
    Parris joined the security line, glancing back over her shoulder as Nick’s image drew farther away until she couldn’t see him at all. A moment of panic gripped her. What was she doing? This was crazy and impulsive. There was no guarantee that Emma still lived in Paris at the thirty-year-old address. This was a mistake. But like lemmings drawn to the edge, she kept moving until she was walking down the aisle, finding her seat, holding her breath as the world disappeared and she soared into the clouds.

Chapter Five
    C eleste turned the key, opening the door to exquisite nothingness. The abyss was alive, traveling along the champagne-toned silk drapes, woven into the threads of the imported Turkish rugs that drew one’s attention to the gleaming teak wood floors, out to the imported antique furniture, upward to the vaulted ceilings. Her emptiness echoed with each footstep, leaving a scent of Chanel in its wake.
    Most days the void didn’t consume her. Today wasn’t a sensation, it was a physical weight that draped her shoulders and clung to her ankles, curving her back and sucking her feet into the mire.
    Thunder rumbled in the distance, muffling the sound of the phone. It took a moment for her to register the ringing. She dropped her bag on the oxblood leather couch and reached for the phone on the end table. The caller ID highlighted thenumber. Briefly she shut her eyes in annoyance, steeled her emotions and picked up the receiver.
    “Hello, Mother.”
    “You would think that with caller ID you could at least pretend to sound happy to hear from me,” Corrine Shaw chastised.
    There was no point in debating the issue or insisting that Corrine was wrong.