by Cara Dee
I frowned and stepped over a branch.
I did think about Finn a lot. I missed him terribly, but after everything we’d been through together, I couldn’t blame him for wanting to keep his distance, because there was a part of me that wanted the same. Facing him would mean I’d have to face my past too, and I was sick of doing that. There wasn’t anything else to do. I’d processed what I could. I’d moved on too.
“I’m sorry.” She squeezed my hand quickly. “I didn’t mean to ruin your mood.”
“You didn’t.” Not giving a fuck about who could see us, I brought her hand to my lips and kissed her knuckles. “My turn to ask you something.”
“Shoot,” she mimicked with a smile.
“No one’s ever really free of judgment,” I said. “But everything I’ve told you about how I used to be…”
“You mean with women?”
I nodded.
She shrugged and unstrapped her water bottle from the side of her backpack. “Why would I judge you for that? Yeah, you were a raging dick, and you did some bad things, but it’s not like you did it out of the blue because you felt like being mean. The two women you were supposed to be able to trust and count on betrayed you in the worst ways imaginable.”
I didn’t deserve her faith in me, but I took it. I fucking rolled around in it.
Pipsqueak guzzled some water before continuing. “There are so many factors too. It’s interesting, really. No one raised you properly—for years, you acted on instinct and let nature guide you. You protected your brother. You recognized he was weaker than you in an awful situation, so all your attention shifted to him.” She was turning me into a science project. I’d be more uncomfortable with the fact if I didn’t know she was genuine and just sharing her way of understanding me. This was what she did. She spoke openly and objectively, and everything was wrapped up in her favorite thing in the world—logic. “School was your only constant when growing up,” she went on. “It didn’t change. It became reliable. I bet that helped you stay on track. I mean, you could’ve turned to drugs and crime… It’s possible I’ve read some statistics of children who end up in the system.”
I merely smiled to myself and helped her reattach her water bottle. I could trust her to turn my life story into something she gave herself homework to figure out better.
“What were we talking about?” She frowned before she remembered. “Oh, right! You being a dick. Yeah, so it’s pretty self-explanatory if you think about it. First time since moving on from your childhood, you open up to your wife, and she betrays you.” She shook her head, sobering. “My methods would’ve been different, but I wouldn’t be able to forgive that sort of betrayal either. Well…” She squinted at nothing, officially thinking out loud. “That’s not true,” she backtracked. “I can forgive and forget fairly easily, but that person is out of my life for good. He or she becomes completely irrelevant. Like that.” She snapped her fingers. “I’d just stop talking to them. I wouldn’t acknowledge their existence.”
I knew that part about her. She had two lines drawn in the sand. If you crossed the first one, she’d hear you out and most likely offer a second chance. She was strangely forgiving. Until you crossed the second line. One strike and you were out. I’d witnessed her go through her reasoning a few times over the years, twice with former friends in school who had talked shit behind her back. Once with a distant cousin of theirs who had mocked Willow for being nonverbal.
I reckoned most of us had those two lines. There were always infractions we were able to forgive—and some we couldn’t. With Elise, those lines were just easier to see. She had an ability to shut down emotionally—as well as power up—that I hadn’t seen in neurotypical people.
“I guess you couldn’t get rid of that anger and hurt,” Elise said. “Hence your treatment of women—not to mention the projections. Obviously not healthy, but still understandable. We’re a very flawed species. And it’s funny, because flawed is our nature, and yet we get angry when we do flawed things.”
“How do you figure?” I asked curiously.
She sidestepped a rock that was in the middle of the path. “The way I see it, we can have order, or we can have freedom. We can’t have both. So, we’re constantly trying to balance the two—like, get as much of both as possible—and it makes it impossible to avoid clashes. Because with free will, you get a world full of voices, all of which come from different backgrounds with different histories shaping their opinions. And in that mess, we seek order to uphold a functioning society. But with everyone’s free will and freedom, chaos doesn’t erupt on a global scale. You get tiny mayhems instead.” She’d lost me. I quirked a brow, confused, and noticed she’d become a bit lost too. She scowled to herself and bit her lip. “Here’s what I mean. We see things from our own perspective, which is a flaw in an argument or any kind of meeting with another person, because no one else will ever automatically put your perspective first. And you told me that your ex-wife had once forgiven her dad for being a distant father.”
“Yes?”
Elise couldn’t possibly compare that to what my mother had done, could she?
“Right, so bad parents resulted in turmoil for your ex-wife,” she concluded. “That was her version of chaos—something she felt the need to fix. So, in an attempt to restore order—while stupidly projecting her own past on to you—she approached your mother. She disregarded your personal wishes and reached out to the one person whose actions you could never forgive. But instead of bringing back order, she brought you chaos. She obliterated your trust and tipped the scale to the point where it was no longer just one woman hurting you—it was two women. Then you had that sadistic aunt of yours, too? Make that three women. Three women. That’s a pattern. And don’t get me started on that, because in chaos, we get desperate for understanding, and patterns can seem solid and reliable.”
In other words, when my head was fucked with all the hurt, I’d spotted a pattern and decided it had to be true. All women were vile.
“I’m sorry if I’m not making sense,” she said. “But I keep seeing people as visceral blobs in my head. Willow summed it up great with some quote about us, the human race, making permanent decisions based on temporary feelings, and it’s exactly what we do. We react to things—which is normal—but we probably shouldn’t file that as evidence or assume everyone reacts the same. It’s stupid. It was stupid of your ex-wife to assume you’d find peace in forgiving your mother. It was stupid of you to project three women’s horrid behavior onto all women in the world. Darius was stupid every time his anger dictated his next move, which was always a new mission.” She huffed a labored breath. “We’re just stupid, Mister. Flawed and stupid.”
I grinned so widely that my cheeks hurt, because that had to be the most honest, philosophical rant I’d ever heard, and she’d given quite a few in her time.
“In short, you’re not judging my stupid behavior because we’re all stupid anyway?” I teased.
“Visceral. Blob.” She glared playfully and poked at my side. “Don’t worry, it’s human nature, and we have enough freedom to continue acting on emotion and creating chaos.” She paused. “Willow and I would make excellent world leaders. There would be so much order and structure.”
I laughed and threw an arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer so I could kiss her temple. “But none of the freedom?”
“None of it!” She smirked. “Maybe one day, I’ll share my opinion on human hypocrisy.”
“Sounds like a doozy.” I chuckled and spotted the next cliffside up ahead. “No one likes hypocrisy.”
“But we’re all guilty of it.” She shrugged. “In your situation, for example. I can’t swear that my opinions aren’t based on at least a little bit of hypocrisy. Because the truth is that when you told me how you’ve treated women in the past, there was a sense of satisfaction in me. It’s kind of horrible, but…I like being the one who broke that pattern—the one you’ve always found special.”
I’d
waited long enough, but now I was getting my goddamn hug. Right there in the middle of the trail, I hauled her in and wrapped my arms around her.
She had no idea just how special she was to me, or how much I appreciated her perspective and openness.
“Never stop sharing your brilliant mind with me,” I murmured.
She exhaled and locked her hands around my midsection. “You’re the only one I can do it with to this extent.”
I drew in a breath through my nose, inhaling the scents of pine, damp soil, and pleasure. Maybe I was a hypocrite too, then. This felt just as amazing as it did to discover that she hadn’t been with anyone before me—not like we had, intimately. “Good.” I kissed the top of her head.
Willow didn’t last very long in the hot springs. She couldn’t get past the faint smell of sulfur near the water and opted to brave the cold mineral lake instead. The water was milky and blue, same as in the springs, making it nearly impossible to see anything below the surface.
Ethan followed her down the cliffs to accompany her. Unfortunately, Darius did not. He stayed with us in one of the four springs, the one we preferred, the one that was a lot like a hot tub. Smooth rocks, from the smallest pebbles to bigger boulders that pooled the hot water as well as provided seats for everyone.
Darius sank under the surface, only to reemerge and push back his hair and groan at how old he was getting. As he rubbed a kink from his neck, I kind of wanted to do the same because I could relate to the pleasure of having such hot water loosen all the knots and tension. But I had an almost nineteen-year-old woman next to me who didn’t need to see me as an old man.
Thirty-four wasn’t old—until you’d shared a bed with someone who just never got tired. Pipsqueak might have been out of breath and sweaty by the time we reached the springs, but it’d taken her, oh, two minutes to return to normal.
I leaned my head back against a rounded rock and closed my eyes, letting the hot water work its magic through me. The smell didn’t even bother me anymore.
The sound of a lighter let me know Darius was lighting up a smoke. “What’s next on your list, hon? You haven’t said anything about your birthday.”
Right, it was coming up in a few days. I was stepping out tomorrow to get her something, and I had no idea what.
“Evie and I are going to a spa tomorrow,” Pipsqueak replied. “Wanna come with?”
I chuckled drowsily.
“What a shame. I’m working,” Darius drawled.
Pipsqueak snickered.
It was best not to think about her plans for the spa date with Evelina.
I shuddered as a current of hotter water slithered around me, coming straight from the bottom of the pool. Every now and then, little pillars of steam rose from the surface. I’d been here once in the winter, when you couldn’t see the water for the steam.
“Ave, did you read the article I sent you?” Darius asked.
“Yeah,” I answered through a yawn. Fuck, this was too comfortable. I wasn’t sure I could open my eyes anymore. “You can imagine my surprise.”
“Right? What the fuck did we expect?” Darius snorted.
“What’re you talking about?” Elise asked.
“The war in Syria.” I yawned again. “It’s been confirmed that Assad’s used chemical weapons.”
“Gotcha,” she replied, and I wasn’t sure she did. She usually tuned out when Darius and I talked about the news. “Do you think we’re going to send assistance or supplies to the opposition?”
What the hell? I frowned and cracked one eye open.
She looked adorably flushed, though I suspected most of it was from the warm water. “What?” She flicked her gaze between Darius and me. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No,” Darius said slowly. “That’s pretty much what we think is gonna happen. The question is how the fuck you know?”
That made her scowl. “I follow the news, asshole.”
The corners of my mouth twisted into a smirk. “Come on. Tell us the truth.”
She scoffed and splashed water on me.
I chuckled and straightened in my seat, wiping my face.
“I just did!” she defended. “It’s like you’ve forgotten that I live with Ryan.”
“Ahh,” Darius and I expressed in unison. See, now it made sense. “I get it,” he went on. “Ry makes you watch the news or something. That’s good.”
Oh, she was annoyed now. “It may have started that way, but I’ll have you know I enjoy it. It’s our thing. We eat breakfast and read the paper together most mornings while Angel’s still asleep.”
Ouch. That just made me jealous. It was all too easy to picture having breakfast with Pipsqueak in my kitchen, maybe before Grace was up. We’d share the different sections of the newspaper, I’d inhale her poppy seed bread, she’d stir too much sugar into her coffee, I’d tease her about it, she’d give me one of her sleepy grins…
I winced and rubbed at the center of my chest as a sharp twinge bolted through.
Darius and Pipsqueak bickered playfully, but I couldn’t hear any of it. A rushing sound in my ears took over, and I couldn’t shake the longing for those mornings with her. They couldn’t be merely a chance, an option, a “we’ll see what happens next year.” I needed it in fucking writing. I needed her to promise me that it would be our future.
Fucking hell, I was screwed.
“I think it’s time for a cooldown.” Darius’s words broke through, and I shook my head quickly to clear it. “Y’all comin’ with?”
“No, I’m staying here,” Pipsqueak replied.
I cleared my throat. “I’m good here too.”
I wasn’t good yet, but I hoped I would be. It was my turn to need a bit of reassurance, which spoke volumes of how fucked I was over this girl.
Twenty-Seven
Darius climbed out of the spring and reached for his towel. Like me, he’d opted for swimming in his boxer briefs, whereas Ethan had brought trunks.
As Darius descended the rocks, he disappeared out of sight. The lake was some twenty feet down the slanted cliffside, with boulders and trees providing seclusion for us up here. And that was exactly what I demanded right now.
I wasn’t sure what Elise thought about us being alone. Her eyes showed relief, but her smile hinted at nervousness.
“I don’t know whether to move across the pool or scoot closer,” she admitted.
I exhaled a little laugh and realized I felt some nerves too. “I vote for closer.”
I’d hoped for one of her cute grins; instead, her reaction cannonballed a rock into my gut. Her eyes filled with tears, and her smile became wobbly as she slid closer to me.
“I’m sorry.” She cleared her throat quickly and splashed some water on her face. “It’s just difficult being near you when we can’t…you know.”
Oh, fuck that nonsense. With forceful urgency rushing through me, I threw caution to the wind and tugged her onto my lap, not satisfied until she was straddling me. “I give up. I fucking hate the distance.” I cupped her out-of-this-world beautiful face and rested our foreheads together. Maybe my reaction had broken the levees for her, but when she snaked her hands up my chest and trembled, it didn’t worry me as much to see a tear rolling down her cheek.
This was where she belonged—here, in my arms, where I could feel her, touch her, make sure she was real. Her soft skin, her intoxicating, gentle curves, her perfection. I drew a deep breath and closed my eyes, letting my hands roam up her thighs and back along her spine.
I’d once wondered where the rest of her flimsy yellow bikini was. Now I thought the little scraps of fabric were in the way.
She swallowed hard and touched my cheek. “I miss you so much.”
Christ, she was shaking. And her eyes asked the right question when her gaze dropped to my mouth.
“Me too, baby.” A shudder ran through me as I shut my eyes and closed the last distance, covering her mouth with mine.
I wanted those mornings with her. They had t
o belong to us.
There was no other option anymore, and I wasn’t sure there ever had been.
It’d always been her in one capacity or another.
“What the hell is going on with you?” Ethan panted. “If this is how you fight against Darius, it’s no wonder he beats you.”
I chuckled, out of breath, and pushed off the floor with a grunt.
Maybe I was too happy to put in a good workout. Maybe because waking up with Pipsqueak in my arms on her birthday felt like it was my birthday too. Maybe because there’d been some fantastic morning sex before we had breakfast together on the patio, the sun shining, Grace in a good mood, and Elise ecstatic over the gift I’d given her. She’d asked her parents for a new luggage set, but they’d already bought her something else, so I’d snagged the idea and included a hotel night and dinner in Seattle.
After taking a swig of water, I set down the bottle in the corner of the boxing ring and rechecked the tape around my knuckles. I didn’t understand why we needed it; the few times I did this with Ethan, he demanded open palms.
“You ready?” he asked.
I dipped my chin.
When we came at each other for another round, I tried to focus better. I tried not to think about Elise and Grace at my house, waiting for me to come home with lunch. I felt bad about her saying she was going to make her own cake, so I’d decided to make it up to her with both lunch and dinner. She was mine all day; she wasn’t celebrating with her family until Saturday.
I cursed when Ethan’s hand connected with my jaw, sending me backward several paces. Okay, fucking focus. I flew at him and hit his shoulder, then delivered a soft punch to his gut. When he grunted and bent over, I got him in the neck and pushed him over. At least I got some cardio out of it, but fighting with someone who didn’t want to mess up his hair wasn’t ideal.
He got up again, and I barely had enough time to wipe sweat off my face before he body checked me and rammed me down onto the floor with him on top. But as the air left my lungs and some mild pain radiated from the base of my spine, all I could see in my head was Pipsqueak dancing to her awful music in the kitchen at home. While she watched Grace and made a cake.
