Sizzling Hot Apple Cider

by Jaliza A. Burwell

  “I-I’m not ready to think like that,” I whispered.

  “And I’m not asking you to. I only want you to know that I’m sincere in everything I do when it comes to you and your nephews. You have people in your corner to help you face life. I’m not going anywhere.”

  I bit my lip, taking in what he was telling me. It was weird to think like that. With Felix—my ex—he never said anything like that before. There was always a line that neither of us crossed, even after three years of dating. Yet, here was Dayton, saying all these amazing, wonderful, beautiful things, and he was only a friend. A friend who wanted to be more than that, but still a friend.

  “Thank you,” I croaked out.

  “Always,” Dayton replied. “Now I’m assuming you’re making dinner?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, you better get back to it before it gets ruined.”

  I laughed with how true that was. I hung up, Dayton’s words replaying over and over in my head.

  That night, when it was time for bed, I didn’t hesitate and slept with the boys. We took their mattresses off their frames and put them onto the floor to create a bigger bed. Then I crawled in between the two of them and refused to leave for the rest of the night, holding them to me.

  They were little furnaces when they slept, but I didn’t care. I needed to hear them sleep, to have them in my arms. Losing them felt all too real after the day I’d had.

  Chapter Seven

  The early morning sun filtered through the window, and the boys were still pressed into me. They moved around a lot in their sleep. I was still trying to figure out how Lawson managed to get his foot wedged into my neck at one point in the night. Lee decided to become one with my spine, his face pressed into my back, his knee digging in. It felt like he was shoving a drill into me.

  I woke up sore but also energized. Which was silly considering I didn’t sleep all that well. The twins had made me feel like a pin cushion with their limbs stabbing into me throughout the night. Needing to get them to wake up, I started with Lawson, playing with his ear first. Still sleeping, he reached up and swiped at it, like swatting a fly. I giggled and poked his cheek. He didn’t move.

  I ran my hand through his hair and whispered into his ear. “Wakey, wakey.”

  Nothing.

  My body shook as I held in my laughter. Taking drastic measures, I plugged his nose. After only about a second, he made a weird snorting noise and jerked away from me, amber eyes unfocused as he tried to piece together what had happened. His gaze met mine and they narrowed.

  “Sissy!”

  “Shush, your brother is still sleeping. Go to the bathroom and start getting ready.”

  He pressed his lips together and rolled off the bed. Once he was on his feet, he shuffled out the door and toward their bathroom.

  Next was Lee. His head was pressed into my armpit. How did he always manage to find the most awkward positions to sleep in against me? Last time, he had managed to shove his leg into my pants.

  “Honey Bunches,” I crooned.

  He still didn’t move. Lee always slept heavier than Lawson did once he got into a deep sleep, and Lawson was always the last to get out of bed in the mornings if I didn’t make him get up. I shifted so Lee’s head flopped down onto the mattress.

  He didn’t care at all, still lost in dreamland.

  I stroked his black hair, realizing I’d need to take them for haircuts soon. Lee turned his head, giving me a better view of his face. My heart twisted as I took in his features. He had so much of his mother in him. The dark hair, the heart-shaped face. Even his nose. Other features weren’t known in the family, and I assumed they came from the father, like the pale skin and eye color, but there was still a lot of Mandy in the twins.

  Lawson came back into the bedroom, digging in the drawers for clothes. It was Lee’s turn and he was still snoozing, so I did what I knew worked every time. I tickled him.

  Lee woke up and once he realized what was going on, broke out in a high pitch laugh-scream noise that I would never be able to replicate as an adult. He fought me off until he rolled onto the floor.

  “Are you up?” I asked.

  He sat up and glared at me.

  “Bathroom, now.” I climbed to my feet and stared down at the mattresses. They’d be fine to clean up later.

  I made them scrambled eggs, nothing fancy, and did up some toast. By the time they were ready, I had it sitting on the table for them.

  It was a quiet morning getting them ready and out the door. The drive to see Dr. Adam was just as quiet. Usually, I’d blast music and sing along to it to get through the morning rush hour traffic to Newton.

  Instead, I got lost in my thoughts, thinking about all the things going wrong in my life. It was impossible to think about the good. That was another trick Dr. Adam taught me. Think about all the good things happening in my life. But instead, I kept imagining what it’d be like to be in a jail cell, to miss Lawson and Lee’s future as they grew older because I was stuck behind bars.

  How Olivia would win.

  By the time I sat on the couch across from Dr. Adam, I was about to hyperventilate.

  “What’s wrong, Maddie?” Dr. Adam asked, sensing how on edge I really was.

  “Everything. Everything is wrong.”

  “Everything, everything?”

  I nodded. “Everything, everything.”

  He thought about that for a moment before asking, “So the twins are sick?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Is their education at risk?”

  I blinked. “No.”

  “Are they not eating?”

  I shook my head.

  “How about you? Are you sick? Do you need to go to the hospital?”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  “So, not everything?”

  “Well…” I huffed in frustration. He made a good point. “Fine. Not everything, everything, but almost everything.”

  “Okay. So what does this almost everything entail.”

  If I didn’t know Dr. Adam, and if he didn’t look so sincere, I would have wanted to bite him. Then I thought about almost everything and realized that the growing need to hyperventilate had disappeared.

  Oh, he was good. Too good.

  “Yesterday, an ex-client of mine reported me to the police. Apparently, they’re missing a chunk of change and they got the same phone call that some of my other clients got. I’m now under investigation. Who knows, they could be here now ready to lock me up for eternity.”

  “Don’t you already have an investigator looking into the phone calls?”

  “Yes, and so far, not much going on. He sent over everything to the police. It’s a different jurisdiction or something.”

  “So they know it’s not you.”

  “Supposedly.”

  “You don’t trust them to solve this correctly?”

  I shrugged. “Wouldn’t it be easy to blame me?”

  “Maddie, the police’s job isn’t to do what’s easy, but to do what’s right. Sounds to me you’re helping them, and it’s obvious that this is a setup. Someone is doing their best to cause you trouble.”

  “Cost me five clients already.”

  “And that’s the other issue, right?”

  My heart ached and I glanced down at my skirt. I went with a dark blue one. At least I didn’t look like I was dressed for a funeral like last week. I touched the soft fabric, drawing comfort from it.

  “I keep saying that I’ll be fine. My finances will be fine, but I can see it dwindling away. It makes me sick. With the custody war coming up, this is a battle I’ll lose. I’ll be sworn into oath. They’ll make me put my hand on a Bible. I just started going back to church. If I say I’ll say the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and then lie, I’ll go to hell. God will not help me. How can I say that I make enough money if that is no longer true. I’m taking a hit, and I thought it was okay if I lost one or two, or even three. But I’m at five now. That’s a chunk
of change I no longer get each month. That hurts me. What if I can no longer feed my kids? What if I can’t even give them those cheap cardboard ramen noodles? I’ll lose them.”

  “As of now, are you still able to support the twins?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have all your clients been notified of what has been going on?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many more clients can you lose before you can no longer support them?”

  “Um.” I went through the math again. I’d gone over it a few dozen times in the last couple of days. I was down to nine clients now. “Two. If I lose two more clients, I’ll be at just the line where I’ll have to start dipping into the savings to cover all the monthly costs.”

  “From the sound of it, you’re already on the path to getting everything resolved, right? The police know what’s going on. Your clients have already been made aware of the situation. Do you think any of your clients will back out on you?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve been with them for a while now.”

  “They trust you. After everything that has happened, they are still with you. I’d gather if they hadn’t bailed on you yet, then they aren’t going to knowing what’s really going on. It’s unfortunate that this happened to you. A lot keeps coming up, but it doesn’t seem like everything-everything, or almost everything, is going wrong. I’d say the police stepping in and investigating is a positive. I think that your current clients are still with you is a positive. Yes, you’ll have to rebuild your client base, and I’m sure that you’ll have to deal with the rumors, but you’re a bright woman, Maddie. You know your job better than anyone else. You’ll get past it. The only people being hurt are those who would rather believe in rumors without ferreting out the truth, and the people who are digging their own grave by going after you.”

  “I feel like I’m drowning,” I admitted. “I feel like my lungs are going to burst and I’ll die.”

  Dr. Adam nodded. “And you probably will feel like that until this is over. This is a stressful situation. But I’m committed to helping you through this. And from the sound of it, so are a lot of other people. Your clients, your friends.” He smiled. “Your men. Everyone supports you and believes in you.”

  “I’m not alone.”

  “Yes, you’re not alone.”

  I swallowed the tears that wanted to come up. I knew that. I’d always known that, but knowing something and putting it into practice were two different things. I felt like I was in school again, learning about all these concepts in a textbook and then having to take a practical test on them.

  It was hard.

  A good chunk of my life had always been me against others, me fighting on my own to stay on my feet, or in many cases, me fighting for others under my care.

  I had to fight for my mother.

  Even Mandy when she first had the twins.

  And now the twins.

  It was hard. Life was so hard.

  The rest of the session, Dr. Adam brilliantly worked with me to go through the positives and negatives of my current life. He gave me more homework, ignoring my scowl while he explained that when things got hard, I needed to text or call someone, to let them know things were hard.

  That was it.

  He wanted me to reach out more.

  I thought I had been doing a better job of it. Hadn’t I called Dayton last night?

  But no, it wasn’t enough.

  Dr. Adam wanted me to do it more often. We wrote a list of people I felt comfortable doing that with. It wasn’t a big list. It was Dr. Adam, of course. He was at the very top—he made me put him there, along with a star. Then there was my best friend, Kenni, and then the three guys. Dayton, Koen, Bryce.

  That was it.

  Dr. Adam said it was a good, strong list, a validation for me to look at when I felt like I didn’t have anyone in my ball court. We ended the session with him reminding me of that. I left the session after he reminded me to use that list, that when times got tough, when I needed to remember that I wasn’t alone, to pull it out and look at it. To call one of them.

  Bryce noticed my melancholy, and didn’t say anything as we walked to our spot. I wanted to smile at that thought. Our spot. A simple but special place for the two of us.

  We settled into our spot at our spot. That made it impossible not to smile and so I did.

  “What’s that grin for?” Bryce asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh, really?” His tone was teasing.

  “Really.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  I bit my lip as my body shook. I wasn’t sure what it was about the situation, but it made me want to laugh.

  “Tell me.” Bryce reached over and grabbed my hand. “I want to know what put that smile on your face for future reference.”

  “You want to know what makes me laugh?”

  “Well, I know a few things already, but I always want to know more.”

  Heat traveled across my face at his words. He was such a flirt!

  “I was thinking about how this was our spot at our spot. A place only for us.”

  Bryce’s expression brightened as he grinned wide. Darn it, his dimples came out to play too. His black stubbled jaw did nothing to hide them.

  “This is kind of our spot now, isn’t it,” he said in a lower voice.

  He already had a deep voice, and he managed to turn it into molten lava against my skin, making me more aware of him than I had already been. It was like all my cells craved to surge forward and rub against him. He so wasn’t playing fair.

  “You know,” he continued in that same sexy voice, as if he wasn’t aware that he was lighting me on fire with just his tone, “I know another spot that I could take you too. Not even Dayton and Koen have been there.”

  “I…” Shoot. Words refused to leave my mouth. “Uh, I’m not ready to date.”

  I winced, contemplating banging my head against the table. Of all the words in all the world, those were the ones I chose?

  Bryce chuckled. “That’s okay. We can go on a non-date date.”

  “You realize that is one big contradiction?”

  The insufferable man shrugged. “We’re friends, right?”

  I nodded.

  “And have you ever done something with only one friend, without others around.” Something darker slipped into his voice, and his expression slipped for half a moment before he was back to smiling.

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “Then there you have it. That’s all I want. To do something with you without everyone else. Will you do that with me? I’d like to get to know you better, know the person I’m letting into my life. I promise. This isn’t a date date.”

  “You want a friendship date?” I asked.

  “Yes. And tonight would be the perfect time for it too.”

  “That’s too soon.” I sighed, suddenly reminded why my relationship with Felix ended last month. The twins had put a huge rift between us. Many of our major fights were because date nights became difficult. I didn’t always have someone on hand to babysit the twins and my ‘issues’ didn’t allow me to hire some stranger to watch over them. A person could be recommended by Mary Poppins herself, and I still wouldn’t trust them.

  “The twins?” Bryce asked, ever insightful.

  I nodded.

  He tilted his head to the side. “I’m sure the guys won’t mind watching them.”

  “No.”

  He blinked at my abruptness.

  I cleared my throat and shifted in my chair. “Sorry. No. I’m not ready for that, and it’s not fair to Koen or Dayton.”

  All I could think about was Dayton asking me out on Halloween. It definitely wasn’t fair to ask him to watch my kids so that I could go hang out with another man. And to add salt to the injury, it was so I could go out with one of his best friends. I didn’t think Dayton would understand it as only a friendship date. It was the same with Koen.

  “Do you have anyone else?” Bryce thank
fully didn’t push it further.

  I relaxed my posture, letting my hands uncurl. I hadn’t even realized the nails were digging into the palm of my hands. Frustration built inside of me. Why was I like this? Why was it so hard to believe that the twins would be okay in someone else’s care?

  They were big boys. They knew how to wipe their bums and chew their food. They’d be okay. But the idea of letting others who I didn’t truly know take care of them made me want to go into a panic attack. Heck, the thought alone was enough to make my throat tighten and my lungs restrict.

  “Sorry.” My apology was a whisper.

  “Nothing to apologize for. I understand.”

  I met his eyes and saw only sincerity. He did understand. That calmed me further, and I managed a tight smile.

  “Who do you use as a babysitter?” Bryce asked.

  I thought about it. Since having them in my care, no one.

  Wait, actually… I felt so silly.

  I giggled and shook my head, pulling out my phone. “Kenni is back in town. I’m so used to her flying out that I forgot. I trust her.” I sent a quick text to her, asking if she could watch the twins.

  Me: Are you up for babysitting tonight?

  Kenni: Are my eyes deceiving me?

  Kenni: Is this that whole if you receive a weird text from me then I’ve been kidnapped and I’m asking for you to save me kind of moment?

  Me: What? No! Bryce wants to take me on a friendship date.

  Kenni: Eek! Date! Date. Yes. Yes, I will watch the two munchkins tonight.

  Me: No, it isn’t a date-date. It’s a friendship date.

  Kenni: Same thing.

  Me: Not uh.

  Kenni: Yeah huh.

  I sent her an emoji sticking my tongue out at her. Along with the middle finger. That’d show her.

  Kenni: I’ll be at your house at seven.

  Me: Thank you.

  Kenni: No, thank you for asking me. I’m so screenshotting this. I’m going to print it and hang it up on my wall. Maybe create a shrine around it.

  Me: What the heck? You’re weird.

  Kenni: My baby girl is all grown up. I’m getting all teary-eyed.

  I made a huffing noise and closed out my phone, shoving it back into my purse to be lost to the abyss.