by Kat Mizera
“I’d like that,” he said, his eyes never leaving mine.
“There’s a bass player I know that’s fantastic. His name is Tyler Thompson. He’s young, but I think you’ll like him.”
“His band opened for you four or five years ago, right?”
“Yes.” I smiled. “Have you seen us on every tour?”
“Every single one that came through New York, New Jersey and the surrounding areas.” His eyes crinkled with laughter. “I really am a huge fan.”
“Well, see if you can hold off on the fan-girling long enough to make some music, okay?”
We smiled at each other and excitement surged through me. Working with him was going to be phenomenal and I couldn’t wait.
“What about a drummer?”
“I have some ideas. Is this going to impact your friendship with Tim and Roy, if they’re not in my plan?”
He shook his head. “We’re not that close. Every time we try out a new guitar player they lose a little interest. Tim’s a full-time musician, does a lot of studio work, but Roy’s a body builder and personal trainer. He doesn’t care one way or the other.”
“Do you have a day job?” I asked curiously.
He smiled. “I’m a software architect. I run the IT department for a law firm here in Manhattan.”
“Wow. All this time we’ve been friends and I had no idea.”
“I’d be a pretty boring guy if not for the voice,” he chuckled.
“I doubt that,” I said softly. And I meant it.
I was excited when I got home, ready to find a drummer and get this party started. I had a million things to talk to my father about but when I walked in the house, my mother was on her way out, looking frazzled.
“Mom, what’s going on?”
She met my eyes sadly. “Your dad’s in the hospital. He got an infection and two rounds of antibiotics haven’t touched it.”
“What happened?”
“His immune system is compromised from the last round of chemo. I just came home to shower, and I’m going back to spend the night with him. You get some rest and in the morning we’ll talk to the doctors.”
“I should come.”
“No. Get some sleep. There’s nothing you can do and if anything changes, I’ll call you.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.” She kissed my cheek and hurried into the garage.
I exchanged a frustrated look with Sandor. “She’s right, you know,” he said. “You should sleep. We’ll go straight there when we get up.”
I nodded even though I didn’t want to. I tossed and turned all night and I was up and in the shower by seven. I desperately wanted to see the kids, but my dad was important too, and they would be okay with Nick for a few more hours. I’d spoken to them every day while I was gone and it sounded like they were having a blast.
“Good morning.” I stuck my head in Dad’s room when I arrived and my mom looked up with a smile.
“Hi, sweetie.”
“Hey, Mom. Hi, Dad.”
“Hey, honey.” Dad looked okay, and I reached for his hand.
“What did the doctor say?”
“It’s a bad infection but they think they’ve got it under control with the IV antibiotics. We’re going to have to keep Sasha away from him. He most likely picked up something she brought home from school.”
I sighed. “I’m sorry. Maybe we can get her to wear one of those surgical masks, and make sure she washes her hands every ten minutes, because she’s gotten so attached to him.”
“I’m attached to her too,” Dad smiled. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Go get the kids,” Mom told me. “We’re fine here and they need you more than we do today. Now that I know he’s on the mend I won’t sleep here tonight, so you can come back and visit after dinner.”
“Okay.” I kissed both of them and headed out.
As I was walking down the hall, I spotted his oncologist. “Dr. Seymour!” I called to him.
“Hi, Casey.” He was a pleasant-faced, middle-aged man.
“How’s he doing?” I asked. “Dad always says he’s fine. I need a little more detail than that.” The doctor had been given permission to talk to me about Dad’s condition, so there was no issue of confidentiality.
“It’s serious, but I think we caught it in time,” he said. “He’s very susceptible to germs and infections right now. The latest round of chemo is kicking his immune system’s behind, so you all have to be extremely careful.”
“We will be. Thank you.” I paused. “Doctor, tell me truth. How long does he have?”
The physician’s eyes darkened slightly. “I don’t know, Casey. It’s really hard to say with this kind of cancer. We’re lucky it went into remission the last few years but with this new recurrence, I can’t promise another miracle.”
“I understand that.” I paused. “But…what do you think?”
He took a breath. “I don’t want to—”
“I need a timeline, dammit. My whole life has been a clusterfuck the last few years and I really need to prepare myself as best I can. Please give me your best estimate.”
He paused for a long time and then looked away. “I would say six months. A year at the most.”
22
Casey
Sandor picked up the kids and brought them home while I was making dinner, and now Sasha was talking a mile a minute. About Skye’s wedding dress, the junior bridesmaid dress Alexa was making for Sasha, and a hundred other things, all without taking a breath. Luke, for the most part, was far more interested in food, so I gave him some cucumber slices to munch on while I made spaghetti and warmed up Mom’s frozen sauce and meatballs in a pot.
“Is Alexa making you a dress?” Sasha asked as she set the table.
“No. I’m not going to be in the wedding.” Skye had asked me, but we’d decided it might look weird for me to be a bridesmaid at my ex-husband’s wedding.
“Why not?”
“It’s going to be a small wedding, that’s all.”
“Are you sad that Dad’s getting married again?”
Oh, lord. Why hadn’t I anticipated a question like this? We’d obviously never told Sasha ours had been a marriage of convenience and I didn’t think this was the time either.
“Not at all,” I said, stirring the sauce. “Your dad and I have been best friends since we were little, so I want him to be happy.”
“What about you? Do you have a boyfriend? Are you happy?”
“I have you and Luke,” I said with a laugh. “When would I have time for a boyfriend?”
“Dad has me and Luke too, but he has time for Skye.”
Damn kid was too perceptive.
“Mommy has boy friends,” Luke piped up. “Like Uncle Loco.”
I snorted out a laugh and Sandor rolled his eyes. We’d watched a Star Trek episode that featured a Borg character named Locutus and afterward, Sandor had stomped around the living room like a zombie, with his hands outstretched, saying, “I am Locutus, I will assimilate you.” Unable to enunciate the word Locutus, Luke had started calling him Loco and it had morphed into Uncle Loco. Sandor had tried everything to dissuade him, but Luke thought it was hysterical and eventually Sasha had picked it up too.
“I don’t think Uncle Loco is Mom’s boyfriend,” Sasha told her little brother. “He’s our bodyguard.”
“Uncle Loco is a lot more than our bodyguard,” I said slowly. “He’s part of our family. I hope you don’t tell people he’s just a bodyguard.”
Sasha wrinkled her nose. “Is he related to us?”
I frowned, phrasing my response carefully. “Not by blood, but you don’t have to be related by blood to be family. Kind of like you and me.”
She looked up. “Did you adopt him too?”
Sandor laughed and reached over to ruffle her hair. “She kind of did, actually.”
“So she’s your mom too?” Sasha looked horrified and Sandor and I burst out laughing.
“No
,” I said, still chuckling. “We’re more like…cousins.”
Our eyes met briefly and he gave me the tiniest little nod before reaching out to tickle Sasha. Then Luke jumped in and there was a lot of laughing and squealing as I finished up dinner. Times like this made me forget the past and appreciate what I had. It was still lonely, still hard to get through some days, but between my parents and the kids—and Sandor—it wasn’t always that bad. I also had a new band in the works, and a handful of good friends, which meant a lot to me. These were the things I clung to when I lay awake at night longing for Erik. For his touch. Hell, at this point, anyone’s touch other than my own. I’d been without sex for almost as long as I’d been sexually active and it was a weird feeling to think no one would ever make love to me again.
That wasn’t reasonable, though. I was twenty-five years old and a healthy, attractive woman. It didn’t make sense that I would never have sex again. I’d been thinking about it a lot lately, especially as Jayson and I got closer, but deep down I felt guilty, as though I was somehow betraying Erik. I knew and had mostly accepted his death, but my soul still yearned for him, in ways I couldn’t explain. He was such a part of me I didn’t know how I would ever move on or give myself to someone else. No matter how much I wanted to.
I’d just put Luke and Sasha to bed and was about to dig into a new paperback I’d bought when my phone rang. Jayson. I answered with a smile. “Hey.”
“How are you?”
“Tired. I’d forgotten how much energy these kids take.”
“How’s your dad?”
I groaned. “Doctor said we’ll be lucky if he lives another year. I can’t wrap my head around it, Jay. I really can’t.”
“I’m sure it’s awful. I’m sorry it’s getting worse.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk about it. Right now, he’s on the mend after this infection and we’re going to do everything we can to keep him around as long as possible.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“In the meantime, I’m going to send you some music I’ve recorded, just informal stuff, and I want you to see what you think, have some ideas in mind for when we get together.”
“When am I going to see you again?” His voice changed a little, was softer, more intimate, and I mentally sighed. It was so hard battling the disparate emotions in my heart. I wanted to explore something more with Jayson, but I truly didn’t know how. I’d dated and flirted and had sex long before I fell in love with Erik, but it was different now. I was different. And I didn’t know what to do with the woman I’d become since I lost him.
“I’m thinking sooner rather than later. Maybe right after Nick and Skye’s wedding. We have space in the studio the week of July fourth. What do you think? Can you get some time off?”
“Absolutely.”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
“To the band or to…spending more time with me?”
“Both.” I swallowed, trying to wrap my head around this. I could do it. We were on the phone so nothing physical was happening. This was easy and I had to try, didn’t I? Otherwise, what was the point? “Tell me something about you I don’t know,” I said abruptly, hoping to nip the intimacy in the bud without compromising the growing friendship. One step at a time, I told myself wearily.
“Well, let’s see. You know that my father died when I was nine and I have three sisters.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t date,” he said after a moment.
“Huh?”
He chuckled. “I have sex or I have relationships, but I don’t date.”
“How do you get into a relationship without dating?”
“Both of the serious girlfriends I’ve had were from friendship that morphed into something more. But the whole first date, dinner and a movie thing is weird to me. I haven’t done it since high school.”
I was thoughtful. “I guess I could say the same. I’ve never dated much either. My first boyfriend was a family friend. Nick and I were best friends our whole life and the sex was just a natural extension of that. I’ve been out on a handful of dates, also in high school, but as an adult there’s only been Nick and Erik. I’ve had a one-night stand but I didn’t like how that felt so I never did it again.”
“We’re a lot alike, I guess.”
“I guess so.”
“Your turn to tell me something about you I don’t know.”
I hesitated. What could there be that he didn’t know about me? Obviously, I couldn’t tell him about Luke, but most everything else was common knowledge. “I don’t know,” I said at last. “You know my secret about how much I loved Erik… I can’t think of anything you don’t know about me. I’m an only child, you know who my father is, and you know all about my music career.”
“What about who you are on the inside? What do you dream about?”
“I’ve always dreamed of traveling to every corner of the earth. Antarctica, Australia, Africa, Asia… I want to see it all.”
“Didn’t you see a lot of that on tour?”
“Not really. We visited a lot of places but there was no time to explore, take pictures, immerse myself. I love other cultures, food, fashion, all of it, but I’ve had very little time to explore any of that. And I really, really want to.”
“I would explore all of it with you,” he said quietly. “From one end of the earth to the other.”
“I come with two kids and a pretty big mixed family with lots of ties to my exes and—”
“Are you trying to scare me off?”
“No, just trying to be honest.”
“Kids don’t scare me. My nieces love me and I can’t wait to be a dad myself, so you’re going to have to work harder to keep me away.”
I chuckled. “I’m really not. I think you’re great and I’m looking forward to…whatever this is we’re exploring. It just has to go slowly.”
“I live three thousand miles away. We don’t have a choice but to go slowly.”
“July will be here before you know it.”
“Send me the music and we’ll talk after I’ve had a chance to listen to it.”
“Will do.”
“Good night, Casey.”
“Good night, Jayson.” I disconnected and put the phone down. He was a nice guy and I liked talking to him. He wasn’t Erik, though. No one would ever be Erik and that was what made this so hard. How the hell was I supposed to move on when he was still all I thought about?
23
Erik
I was in no way prepared to be a full-time father, and Liz was no better at it than I was. Our new daughter, Eleanor “Leni” Kingsley-Baxter, was a sweet, healthy even-tempered baby girl the doctors told us was approximately eleven months old. With the CIA’s help, we were able to get her an American passport and even a birth certificate with our names on it, so she became our daughter the day after Liz and I eloped. There was no fanfare, no party, no guests; just us, two witnesses and Leni. Then we’d gone back to the hotel and worked on decorating the nursery.
In the weeks since then, it had been nonstop parenting. I could change a diaper and rock a baby to sleep, but the ins and outs of playing with her, feeding her, dressing her, every little detail that fell to us, was both delightful and exhausting. By the end of the second week, we agreed we needed a nanny because we couldn’t run the hotel, take care of the baby, and do our jobs for the CIA too. It was a lot of work and it wasn’t fair to any of us.
“I have to get to the staff meeting,” Liz told me on a warm Monday morning. “Why don’t you take Leni to the pool? It’s nice out and we want her to be comfortable in the water.”
“Okay.”
We had a new nanny starting on Wednesday. She would work Wednesday through Sunday since those were the busiest days at the hotel and casino, and she’d have Mondays and Tuesdays off. We were on the hunt for a part-time sitter to help out when we had to travel or on days like today when a bunch of different things came up. In the interim, I was enjoying being a fath
er, even though it took getting used to. I’d never thought about the minute-by-minute needs of a baby, like when they cried or needed to be entertained. Most of the time it was a lot of fun, but she got fussy around nap time and those were the times I didn’t know what to do.
Liz said it was instinct, that we’d figure it out because no one got a manual with new babies and parents eventually got the hang of it. We were in a unique situation, of course, since we hadn’t been planning to have a baby and we weren’t truly a couple. Sure, we were married, and worked and lived together, but the intimacy that should have come with marriage was missing. By the time I’d asked Casey to marry me, we practically read each other’s minds. That wasn’t the case with Liz even though I considered her a good friend.
As I rocked Leni to sleep, I wondered how long before I couldn’t stand the lack of intimacy anymore and turned to my wife. Even though she wasn’t the woman I wanted or the woman I loved. I liked her, though, and she was certainly beautiful enough. I would never admit it out loud, but I was lonely. I’d never truly been alone in my life. Not only had I always had my parents and family, Sandor had been my constant companion and I’d always had friends at school and university. I’d lost all of that when I’d essentially staged my death. It hadn’t been intentional, but at the time it seemed like the best course of action. I just hadn’t considered how fucking hard it was going to be to live with.
“Hey, is she asleep?”
I looked up as Liz peeked in.
“Yes.” I put Leni in her crib and we softly closed the door behind us. “What’s going on?”
“Ace is here with an update from Limaj. I have things I have to handle at the hotel that I can’t get away from, so I have to go, and you can update me later. Ace is on his way up here.”
“Okay. I’ll see you later.” I squeezed her arm as I brushed past her and she gave me a warm smile.
