by L. D. Davis
“So, Kyle saved your life by giving you more drugs to make you high?” Luke asked with skepticism woven into his tone.
I sighed with some exasperation. “Luke, most addicts can’t quit the drug cold turkey. The symptoms are—as I previously mentioned—unbearable. Most likely, the addict will take the drug again because it’s a sure-fire way to relieve the symptoms of withdrawal. However, many people overcompensate. They take too much of the heroin to try to relieve their pain and discomfort and they end up overdosing. Many of them die. I have overdosed after trying to quit cold turkey before, and I most likely would have done it again. Even if I didn’t overdose, at home on my own, I would have come up with a million reasons why going to rehab wasn’t a good idea, despite the fact that I wanted to be clean. The drug would have killed me eventually; if not my body, it would have definitely killed my way of life. Some existences are far worse than death.”
I knew that for sure because I had lived like that more than once.
“So, yes. Kyle Sterling saved my life. Since coming out of rehab, there were many times I would have relapsed if I was left to my own devices. Having a strong support system is key, but having someone who has experienced addiction and understands the way it works is monumental, at least for me. More than that, Luke, Kyle understands me in a way that no one else can. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to agree with it. If it pisses you off, it pisses you off, but I’m not going to apologize for being friends with him, even if he does have the tendency to be a douche puddle from time to time—or most of the time.”
Luke breathed in heavily and let it out slowly.
“I don’t like it,” he said after a moment. His voice wasn’t hard, but his words were. “I don’t like him. I will never like him because there isn’t anything in this world that can make me like him. Even if Emmy forgave him, I will never forgive him. He can save your life a million times, rescue babies and puppies from burning buildings, and thwart World War III, and I still won’t like him. You are right. I don’t have to like him or forgive him. I, too, refuse to apologize. I refuse to apologize for hating the man. He could have killed my wife, and he could have killed my son. I will never be able to be okay with that under any circumstances. I will carry my hatred for Kyle Sterling to my grave. But…” He sighed and his words softened. “I am glad that he helped you. I am glad that you have a friend that understands you in ways that we can’t. I am grateful for what he’s done for you, but you are not a result of what Kyle Sterling has done, Mayson. It is your endurance, your strong will, and your hard work that made you who you are today. He may have helped you along, but you saved yourself. Don’t underestimate what you are capable of because after all you’ve been through, you are capable of great things. You are more than what you think you are.”
I couldn’t help the small smile that formed on my face as he stood up and kissed my forehead.
“You know, Kyle said those exact words. ‘You are more than what you think you are.’”
Luke looked slightly put out by that, but then he shrugged one shoulder. “I never said that he wasn’t a smart man.”
Chapter Twenty
“I’m pretty sure this isn’t the reason you hired a nanny,” I said breathlessly as Grant kissed my neck.
“I hired her to take care of the kids and house when I’m working or busy. I would constitute this as being busy,” he murmured in my ear before returning to the task at hand.
“You mean getting busy.”
“And dirty.” He released a little growl. “I would very much like to get dirty.”
“You’re already a dirty old man.” I gasped when his teeth grazed over an especially sensitive spot. “How much dirtier do you intend to get?”
He pressed his erection against my thigh.
“Filthy,” he whispered, before transferring his remaining kisses to my mouth.
Even as we heard Juliette, the kids, and Dusky moving about the ware-home, our pajamas mysteriously ended up on the floor and tangled in the bedclothes. My fingers explored his dark skin, feeling the tautness of the muscles in his arms, and how they flexed in his back. He kissed a fiery trail down the center of my body until he reached the neatly trimmed patch of curls between my thighs.
“I love that you don’t shave it all away,” he said, kissing my inner thigh.
“Real women wear hair,” I sang softly.
“Mmm. Indeed, they do.”
I gasped, and my eyes fluttered as his tongue entered me. I had been breathless before, but oxygen seemed to disappear from me altogether as Grant’s mouth worked on my sensitive flesh. He feasted on me leisurely, as if we didn’t have anywhere else to be, and nothing else to do. I didn’t complain. I held onto the back of his head, moaning and gently thrusting my hips.
When at last, he came up for air, I eagerly pulled him to me and kissed him. I didn’t mind how he tasted—a pleasant mix of him and me. I didn’t mind the smell of him, either, mixed with the smell of me. It only made me want and love him more.
He entered me, sliding himself to the hilt and making my back arch off of the bed. I had to hold back my cry of desire so that we wouldn’t be heard, but a whimper escaped past my lips. Grant dipped his head to capture the next whimper as he thrust inside me, slow and deep.
His fingers laced with mine above my head, but he was very careful not to restrain me in any way. Someday, I wanted him to hold me down and fuck me to within an inch of my life, but I wasn’t ready for that yet, even if I did trust him implicitly.
I loved that he didn’t talk utter nonsense during sex. Our moans, groans, whimpers, and gasps were enough for us. The occasional requests to go harder or faster, or to be kissed or touched in a certain place, and the utterances of love were all that we needed.
Besides, too much talking would remind me of them, the demons that took from me what wasn’t theirs to take. I didn’t need any further reminders of them, and I didn’t need them in the bed I shared with the man I loved. Unfortunately, they occasionally made an appearance. Sometimes, it couldn’t be helped, but Grant always held me until I stopped shaking, and kissed away tears with the patience and love of a saint.
As he always did, he waited for me to climax before reaching his. He wrapped his arms around me as he released himself inside me, softly chanting my name onto my neck as I stroked his strong back.
He lay on top of me and semi-hard inside me for a long while before either of us tried to move.
“We have to get up,” he said with a sigh of resignation.
“No, we don’t,” I whined. “I don’t want to adult today.”
“I have to go get a bad guy, and you have to go police the employees of Sterling Corporation.”
“Get someone else to get the bad guy. You do own the company. I can call out of work. We can then pretend we’re going to work but run away and do kid stuff. We can go to the Franklin Institute, or the zoo, or go to the movies.”
He kissed my jaw before rolling off me and getting to his feet.
“That sounds very tempting, Baby Girl,” he said, smiling down at me in all his naked, sexy, hot glory. “But I am going to have to decline. I need to be with my team today.”
He started for the bathroom, most likely to stop the conversation from going any further. It wasn’t a new conversation. We’d had it a few times in the months since the beach vacation.
I liked that Grant owned his own business and that he got criminals off the streets, but I didn’t like the danger involved with the job. I learned fairly quickly that when he said he needed to be with his team, it was because they were going after a bad man—or woman—that was known to have violent tendencies or to carry a weapon.
Not ready for the conversation to be over, I got up and followed him into the bathroom where he was just stepping into the shower. I got in right behind him, not even giving him time to close the glass door.
“Can’t your team function without you?” I asked, passing him his body wash. “I mean, you did hir
e them. You wouldn’t have hired half-assed bounty hunters, right? You hired people who can get the job done without you?”
“Yes, I did hire them,” he agreed with a sigh. “And yes, they are capable of functioning without me. In fact, they do very well on their own, and there isn’t anything half-assed about any of my people.”
“Great!” I said cheerily. “Then they can go catch the latest big bad wolf on their own.”
“Mayson,” he said my name with a gentle reproof. “I can’t send my team into dangerous situations while I am chilling at home, or at the museum or wherever.”
“Why not? I’m okay with it.”
He leaned in, kissed me softly on the lips and then once on my bare shoulder.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, trying to sound conciliatory. “We’ll play hooky on Friday, okay? We’ll do whatever you want to do.”
That was the end of the conversation. He had washed quickly as we were talking. Then he stepped out of the shower, leaving me with soap suds and my anxiety.
There had been too many days and nights over the past six months of waiting for Grant to return home after going to recover someone. You would think that I’d get used to it, that my anxiety level wouldn’t be so high. I wasn’t used to it. I could never get used to it. There would always be a small voice in the back of my head that dared ask the question, “What if he doesn’t come back?”
“I’m not going to ask that question,” I said aloud to myself in the shower. “Not going to ask. Not going to ask. Not going to ask…”
I joined Grant, the kids, and Juliette in the kitchen a little while later. My morning routines had changed, for the most part. I only stopped for coffee and a pastry if I was leaving from my own apartment, which was becoming more and more infrequent. The mornings I left for work from Grant’s, however, I drank my coffee and ate breakfast with him and the kids. I liked that routine, almost as much as I liked our evening routines.
Regardless of where I was going to sleep, as much as was possible, we had dinner together as a family. I liked hearing about Natalie’s half days at preschool, and Alex’s stories about the fifth grade. Since I didn’t experience the fifth grade in an actual school, I always found it fascinating to hear about his interactions with other kids and his teachers.
I always stayed until after the kids were in bed, because that, too, had become routine. Despite how often the nights could be crazy, I liked the goodnight hugs from Natalie and the occasional chats and Lego get-togethers in Alex’s room. I especially liked that strangely gratifying time on the couch with Grant after the kids were tucked away for the night. It was our alone time, our time to talk about our day, or to catch up on our television shows, or our time for physical activity.
Grant wasn’t always home at nights, though, and it seemed ridiculous to send the kids to their grandmother’s in New Jersey or to have the woman come stay at the ware-home while he was gone. Juliette sometimes helped out, but she was generally finished by six. It only made sense that I stepped in. The kids still visited with their grandmother on some weekends, but during the week, I was there, fixing dinner, helping with homework, and making sure they got bathed and into bed.
So…I had become something like a mother, even though I said I didn’t want to be anyone’s mother. I was, by no stretch of the imagination, an exemplary mother. I was still me, a little selfish, very much inappropriate, and a bit unstable. I probably let the kids eat too much junk and watch too much television, too, but I did the best I could with them.
“Don’t forget that tonight is dinner at your mother’s,” Grant said to me as he, Alex, and I walked down into the garage.
I groaned. “I forgot. I guess you’re reminding me now because you don’t think you’ll make it?” I gave him an unhappy look.
“I’m sorry,” he said with sincerity. “I don’t think I’ll be back by then.”
He put his arms around me and held me tightly. Feeling stubborn, I didn’t hug him back.
“Not only are you going after another big bad wolf who may or may not have bigger teeth than you, but I also have to go to my mother’s alone.”
He chuckled softly in my ear. “You won’t be alone. You’ll have Natalie and Alex with you. Now hug me and give me a kiss. I have to get Alex to school before he’s late.”
“You guys are grossing me out,” Alex announced.
I turned my head to look at the boy and narrowed my eyes. “In a year or two when your voice begins to change and you start growing hair in your nether regions, you’ll love to have a girl hugging all up on you.”
Alex looked disgusted. Grant shook his head and sighed heavily before kissing my forehead and releasing me from his embrace.
“I’ll see you later tonight,” he said, looking disappointed as he opened the driver’s side door of his Range Rover.
Alex gave me a wave as he made his way to the passenger side.
“Come back over here,” I said to Grant, wagging my gloved finger.
He looked skeptical, but after a moment, he came back to me. Thankful that I was wearing a pair of boots with a high heel, I wrapped my arms around his neck and brought my lips to his. Even though I could hear Alex making gagging noises from inside of the truck, I kissed Grant for what felt like a solid minute.
“I love you,” Grant murmured, rubbing his nose with mine. “Have a good day at work. I’ll keep in touch throughout the day and I’ll see you tonight.”
“I love you, too,” I whispered. “Do not come back home shot, stabbed, beaten, or otherwise maimed.”
“I promise I will come home in one piece, and Friday, we’ll have a hooky day, just like I promised.”
He kissed me once more, gave me a beautiful smile and a wink, and then he was gone.
I watched my mom’s face burn with a light I had never, ever, seen before, not until the first time she had met Natalie and Alex two weeks after we returned from the beach. We had gone to her house for dinner on the night that would have been my usual visit. I had expected the same detachment she’d always had, and her same old cold, impassive face, but that night I discovered a new version of Jasmine Santini.
She had smiled so much that night, that I thought her face could not have been real. It had to be a porcelain mask, and I expected at any time for it to slip and shatter on the floor, but it never did. She was this other person that I never knew—with her smiling, and laughing, and a softness that I was never taught. Conversation with Grant came easily for her. She was social and gracious and not my mother. She wasn’t my mother. She couldn’t have been be my mother.
She was, however, Taylor’s mother. Taylor, who didn’t seem surprised at all by the woman who beamed at Alex’s mashed potato and corn structure he’d built on his plate. Taylor wasn’t shocked when Natalie spilled grape juice on the white linen table cover and the woman she called Mom just chuckled and cleaned it up as if it were nothing.
Whenever her eyes met mine, however, she reverted back to my mom, the woman I knew so well. Her face would change, her smile dying on her face, her laughter swallowed back down into her cold, cavernous chest. Only when she looked at me did the light die in her eyes, but when she turned her attention to one of the children or Grant, or even Taylor and Aaron, she became that other Jasmine again, the one I was unfamiliar with. Eventually, she stopped looking at me so much, but I didn’t stop looking at her. After four months, I still watched her face with a sick kind of captivation.
I stood at the threshold of the dance studio that my mother had installed so many years ago for me. Alex sat on the floor with his back against the mirrored wall. He was playing a video game and pretending he wasn’t watching the girls—Taylor in particular—as she and Natalie danced around the room. Taylor was teaching the younger girl some very basic ballet steps, as she had been after every dinner we’d had there.
I refused to go all the way into the room—I hadn’t been inside of it since I was sixteen years old. I kept an eye on Taylor and Nat, but mostly, my eyes
were drawn to my mom, who stood only a few feet away from me watching the girls. Her posture was relaxed. Her face had a constant, amused and content smile, and there was that light…that light that seemed to burst from inside her.
She obviously didn’t see what I saw when I looked at the mirrored jail cell; she didn’t see the past. She did not see me as a child, begging to go outside to play with the other children. She didn’t see my tears of exhaustion, or the blood my raw toes left behind from hours of torturous dancing. She didn’t see the place on the floor where my father had lain, taking his last breaths, his heart beating its last struggling beats.
It was as if none of it ever happened. It was as if it were gone from her mind.
“Okay, it’s time to go,” I announced when I’d had enough of staring at the woman who was and was not my mom.
“But I’m still dancing,” Natalie whined.
“Badly,” Alex muttered from his spot on the floor.
“You think you can dance any better?” Taylor challenged, poking him with her toe.
“Was that dancing?” Alex deadpanned.
If no one knew any better, they’d probably think the little smartass was my kid by birth. I just lucked out finding a kid who had mastered sarcasm before puberty.
“It’s time to go,” I said again, with a little less patience. “You have school tomorrow.”
“Oh,” my mother said. “I almost forgot…”
She hurried past me. I didn’t know what she’d forgotten, or where she was going. I didn’t care.
“Get your shoes on, Nat.” I checked my phone for the millionth time.
I hadn’t heard from Grant since the early afternoon. It wasn’t unusual for him to go hours without any contact because he had to focus, but I still felt uneasy about the silence.
My mom returned a few moments later, carrying a pink gift bag that had a ballerina on it.
“What is that?” I asked as she passed the bag to Natalie.
