Unconditional

by Tyler, Q. B.

  His hands find my face and he strokes my cheek, as if he can hear my thoughts, as if he is lurking there as well, whispering, you’re not next, Mads. “Two minutes, okay? Just stay here. It’s your turn in Words with Friends. I took my turn after you fell asleep.”

  My eyes shoot to my phone, opening the game that Cal and I have been nonstop playing since I got an iPhone three years ago. “Okay.”

  I’m still trying to figure out how I can put this five-letter word on a triple word score when Cal walks back through the door with something in his hand. I can’t quite make it out when he puts it on the floor. “What are you doing?”

  “I got a sleeping bag.”

  “What for?”

  “Mads…” He trails off.

  “You’ve never made me sleep on the floor before.” I frown.

  “It’s not for you, Maddie. You think I’d make you sleep on the floor?”

  “Oh…why are you sleeping on the floor?”

  “I just…I don’t think…I mean…you’re older now and I just…” I hear the implication, and I interrupt.

  “Oh my God, Cal. Stop.” I try to sound as dismissive as possible so I don’t alert that I’m gunning for the exact thing he’s trying to avoid.

  “No, Madeline. When I’m asleep, my body might still react to…” The room is so quiet I can hear him gulp as he lays out the sleeping bag and grabs a pillow from his bed.

  “So, you don’t trust yourself with me, then?” I try to catch the words before they leave my mouth, but I’m too late and I snap my lips shut knowing that he’s going to react to my comment.

  “That’s not what I said,” he grits out and I let out a sigh before falling back in his pillows. His entire bed smells like him and it speaks to me on the most primal level. I turn my head into his pillow and quietly inhale his scent. A scent that is so ingrained in my body and soul despite the fact that it isn’t in my DNA.

  “You’re being ridiculous,” I tell him as I let my eyes flutter closed.

  “I know,” is the last thing I hear before sleep takes me for the second time.

  I wake up the next morning to the most delicious warm feeling flooding my entire body and heating my bones. My feet, which are notoriously cold even with the fluffy socks Cal consistently buys me are toasty warm and I feel heat wrap around me like a vine. A tingle licks up and down my spine and it feels like a heater is blowing out air directly on my neck. My eyes flutter open and the first thing I feel is a pain in my shoulder. What the fuck?

  The feeling in my shoulder that I realize is due to falling asleep on the floor is immediately erased when I look down and see arms wrapped around me. I’m basically pinned to Cal’s body with the vice grip he has on me, and I briefly wonder how in the hell I got, not only on the floor, but inside his sleeping bag with him.

  Holy shit. He’s going to freak. Especially when he realizes that his morning wood is digging into my back like a spear dying to push its way through me.

  I have vague memories of climbing off the bed and snuggling against him, but I could have sworn that was just a dream.

  Evidently not.

  I manage to peek towards the window and I see it’s still storming out. It’s about to be a storm in here as well.

  I’m trying to pry myself out of Cal’s arms when the universe decides that now is the time to fuck with me. Cal’s alarm blares through the air with a shrill pierce, serving as an alert that something isn’t right, Cal Grayson. Wake the fuck up and deal with it.

  His eyes fly open before I’ve had a chance to untangle myself from him. I’ve sat up slightly, but our legs are still entangled, his arms are still wrapped around me, and his dick—I shift slightly and inadvertently bump into him—yep still hard.

  “Maddie?” His eyes are wide and nervous but mostly confused as he lets me go like I’ve burned him. Like he’s been holding onto fire all night and his body is finally reacting to the searing flame.

  “I…I don’t remember moving down here.”

  He looks around, still slightly confused and disoriented before focusing back on me. “What the fuck, Madeline?”

  “Sorry, I…”

  “This is exactly why I got the sleeping bag.” His ears are red, a telltale sign that he’s embarrassed. His cheeks don’t pinken like most people. Instead, his ears are his giveaway. He moves backwards away from me and shakes his head before turning his alarm off, which I didn’t even realize is still blaring with the way my subconscious is screaming at me for my stupidity.

  “I’m…sorry.” Tears well in my eyes as I hear his disappointment, his regret, his…disgust. “Please don’t hate me. You know I get a little…vulnerable during storms.”

  “Yeah, I’m more than aware. And when you were younger it was fine that you snuggled up to me. Now…you can’t do that shit anymore and you fucking know why. So, don’t act like you don’t,” he snaps.

  His posture is combative, despite the fact that he’s still sitting and I shrink slightly into myself. I don’t say anything, and I try to look anywhere but the heated eyes staring at me.

  “Go get ready for school, Madeline.” I hop off the floor and basically sprint out the door. I make it to my room and fall back against the door, letting a breath out that I feel like I’ve been holding since I slipped into his bed last night.

  It isn’t until my heart has started to slow from the accelerated speed that I realize I left my phone in his room. I groan, thinking about going back in and facing Cal, and I honestly think I’d rather go the day without it. I spend the next thirty minutes showering and getting ready for school, suddenly excited that this is the last day before Thanksgiving break.

  I’m pulling my boots on when I hear the door close and my head snaps towards the window. I’m immediately off my bed and bolting towards the window just in time to see Cal already in his car, backing out of the driveway. What the fuck?

  When he makes it into the street, his black Jeep Patriot stops, and for a moment I swear I meet his gaze through the window. I just only hope he doesn’t see the tears forming in my eyes before I turn away. I jog down the stairs, and I see that he’s left enough coffee for me and my phone on the table. I pick it up, prepared to text Sasha when I see I have one waiting for me.

  Superhero: Have a good day. Be safe.

  IT TOOK TWENTY MINUTES AND a lukewarm shower for my dick to go down after I willed myself not to touch it. I had a paralyzing fear that Maddie’s face would flash through my mind the second I wrapped my hand around my dick and I didn’t want to risk it. So, I let the cooled water rain down on my cock until it softens enough for me to wash my balls. I let my head hit the tile and shame slides over me; I wish it would slither down the drain like the water.

  I was hard. Holding Maddie in my arms. Her soft warm body rubbing against my dick like she had the right to.

  I run a hand through my hair as I wonder how in the hell I’m going to face her as I step out of the shower. I open the door of the bathroom, peeking my head out as I didn’t put it past Maddie to be sitting on my bed so that we could talk, and I let out a sigh of relief when I don’t see her anywhere in my room. I move towards my door and lock it, suddenly feeling like a seventeen year old is preying on me like she’s the hunter and I’m the hunted.

  You’re being dramatic, Cal. She was scared and you make her feel safe. Protected. It’s always been this way. Nothing’s changed.

  My cock stiffening under my towel refutes that thought, confirming my suspicions that in fact, everything has changed.

  “Hey hey!” Aria drops into my chair on the other side of my desk and props her foot up on the wood surface as she takes a bite of the protein bar that she treats like a major food group. Her hair that is usually pulled into a slick bun is wild and free around her shoulders with sunglasses perched on top of her head.

  I tap her foot with my pen and she rolls her eyes and crosses her legs. “Listen, what are you doing tonight?”

  “Why isn’t your hair up?”

  �
��Chill out, boss man. I just got here.”

  “You were due at eight. Why are you just getting here at nine-thirty?” I look at my watch.

  “Because your brother wouldn’t let me out of bed.” I go to tell her that I so didn’t want to know when she holds up a hand. “And told me to tell you to take the stick out of your ass before I knock it out of you, little bro.” I blink my eyes at her several times and she giggles. “Listen, I didn’t say it, he did.”

  “Don’t make me put you on parking duty.”

  “You wouldn’t.” She frowns and I shoot her a look willing her to test me. “Not when I have such good news for you.”

  “It better be a lead on that mysterious fire in the warehouse across town.” I wince, wondering if foul play was involved and thus no real suspects as everyone had covered up the evidence.

  “No. Well… maybe, but that’s not what I was referring to.”

  “Maybe?” I ask wondering, what the lead is.

  “Focus, Cal.”

  “I am focused!”

  “No, listen. I want to set you up with someone.”

  I groan. “Aria, no. We’ve been over this.”

  “Cal! Henry approved this one!”

  I give her a stern glare as I remember the last three women Aria has set me up with. They were all disasters. One was a neurotic schoolteacher that treated me like I was one of her students. The other was thirty year old party girl who got so wasted on our date that she spent the night puking up the tequila shots she’d assured me she could handle. And the final, a preacher’s daughter that was currently going through her rebellious phase about seven years too late, and practically pulled her tit out at dinner and told me she’d suck my dick in the bathroom before we’d even ordered appetizers.

  No, no, and fuck no.

  Once upon a time, I would have fucked all three and not thought twice, and yeah maybe I did fuck that last one. But I never dated all that much, and I brought even fewer women around Maddie. I never wanted her to get the wrong idea about me, or that these kinds of women that felt disposable to me were the kind of women she should strive to be.

  I wanted better for Maddie.

  I wanted everything for her.

  “Come on, Cal. She’s really sweet. We do yoga together.”

  Since when did flexible become synonymous for sweet? “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Come on, Henry says you haven’t gotten laid in forever,” she points out.

  “I hate you both, and I’d love if you could keep my sex life out of your pillow talk.” I slam the pen I’m holding down on the stack of papers and shoot her a look.

  “You don’t have a sex life, Cal. I hate to break it to you, hon. And Margie wants grandchildren sometime this millennium.”

  “Then you and Henry give them to her.” I feel a pang of guilt over my comment and Aria and Henry’s past, but luckily Aria doesn’t react, so I continue. “Besides, I already gave her one.” Even as I say the words, they bother me. Maddie isn’t your child.

  “You and I both know, she doesn’t see Maddie like a grandchild. She’s like the daughter Margie never had.”

  “She certainly treats her like a grandchild.” I recall every single time that my mother has let Maddie get her way. Every time Maddie would throw Margie lets me do it in my face when I told her no. The way they would talk on the phone for hours, the way her face would light up when she came over to babysit. I’m still slightly pissed at my mother for teaching her to play poker and then proceeding to give her a “Poker for Dummies” book that hustled me out of forty-five dollars and a week’s worth of ice cream for dinner.

  She was nine.

  “The point iiiiiis,” Aria drawls, “you need to meet someone. You’re a young, good-looking guy, with a good job and good credit and you own your house and you have your shit together! I see the way women fall at your feet. Why are you keeping everyone at arm’s length?”

  “Why do you think, Aria?”

  “I know and that’s the point I’m trying to make. You can’t keep letting Maddie control your life.” She tucks a hair behind her ear and looks at me with that signature look that pisses me off. Stop fucking momming me, Aria. I already have one.

  “She doesn’t control my life, A, but I made her a promise. I made a vow to put her first.”

  “And that’s admirable, but at some point, you have to put you first again. She’s almost eighteen and eventually she’ll be out on her own.” My cock stiffens and deflates in that one sentence. Hardens as it thinks about her being eighteen and then softens just as quick thinking about her out on her own. Away from me.

  My mind floats back to a time when she’d told me that time would never come.

  “Hey, Cal?”

  I look over to where Maddie is doing her homework to find that she’s set her pencil down and is staring at me with a worried expression.

  “What’s up, Mads?”

  “Can I live here forever?”

  “Forever?”

  “Yeah, I mean…even when I go to college and get married and stuff?”

  I chuckle at the ten year old at my table. “You don’t want to move out? Get your own place? Have independence and all that shit?” I wince. I’ve been trying to get better about not swearing so much, especially around Maddie, but it isn’t exactly working and now she’s swearing like a sailor too.

  “I can still have independence from my bedroom.”

  “We’ll see how you feel in a few years, okay?”

  “I’m serious. I want to live here forever. I don’t have to go, do I?”

  I look in the eyes of my favorite human and even though I know one day she’ll be humming a very different tune, I shake my head as I know that day isn’t today, and hurting Maddie’s feelings was never my intention. “You can stay forever, kiddo.”

  “Perfect.”

  I swallow down the hot coffee. It burns my tongue and all the way down my throat to try and combat the burn from Aria’s words that one day Maddie would leave.

  “Alright, yeah. What’s her name?”

  Maddie is sitting on the couch when I get home, flipping through the channels as her computer balances on her knee. It’s 6 PM, and I’m meeting Henry, Aria, and my date, Penelope, across town at seven. I frown as I pick up the mail that is sitting on the table. “I wasn’t expecting you home?”

  “You weren’t? You know I usually tell you if I’m not coming home.” She doesn’t look up from the computer.

  “Right. Well, I guess I mean, I was expecting you to have plans.” I can’t remember many Friday nights that I didn’t get home to Maddie running around like a chicken with her head cut off because she couldn’t figure out what to wear, or her hair wouldn’t curl or Sasha was so motherfreaking late.

  “Oh. Well, Sasha wants me to go to this party with her, but I’m not all that interested.”

  “Why not?” Not that I’m not thrilled. Sasha Parker is trouble and she and Maddie together are double fucking trouble. Even though Maddie rarely gets into mischief, I know she’s in a phase where she’s experimenting with too much fucking alcohol and it pisses me off.

  “You’re okay with me going to a party? Usually, you make me take a chaperone.”

  “That you ditch in two point five seconds.”

  “Like they can’t find me.” She rolls her eyes. “But no…I just thought we should talk about…this morning.”

  “Nothing to talk about, Mads.”

  “Oh? Is that why you left without so much as a goodbye?”

  “I said goodbye.”

  “You know that’s not what I meant.”

  “Maddie, there’s nothing to talk about. Besides, I’m going out with Aria and Henry.” I head up the stairs and within an instant, she’s behind me, following me up. Her perfume engulfs me instantly. A scent that has the power to arouse me if I didn’t focus. I walk faster to try and put some space between us.

  “Can I come?”

  “No.”

  �
��What? Why not? I can always come when you guys go out.” I pause and turn around to face her after turning on the light in the hall. She bites her bottom lip and for a second, I see a flash of hurt, but maybe it’s just my imagination because it disappears instantly. “It’s not just you three?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “A date?”

  I nod, wondering why I feel guilty for having a date. Why I’m letting Maddie make me feel guilty for having a date. Why should she care? Why should I care that she cares? “So, you’re not going out?” I ask her. “I’ll have Peters stationed out front.”

  She shakes her head and follows me into my bedroom and suddenly it feels three times smaller with us in here together. Flashes of this morning, my body wrapped around her petite frame come crawling back into my mind and wake up the sleeping demon inside. Fire ignites through me, and I feel my ears heating. Get rid of Madeline before I make my appearance, Officer Grayson, I can practically hear my dick screaming at me.

  “Is she pretty?” She crosses her arms in front of her chest and I’m grateful that she’s wearing a t-shirt and not accentuating her breasts with those thin tank tops she wears from time to time.

  “I don’t know.” This isn’t the first time she’s asked me about a potential date, but it is the first time that it feels weird talking to her about it. Like I’m betraying her. I have got to get a fucking grip.

  “Blind date?” She snorts. “Well, that’s stupid. Aria and Henry don’t even know your type.”

  I snap my head towards her, confused. “What?”

  “They don’t! Margie even agrees.” She sits on my bed.

  “You and my mother gang up on me for everything, I swear to fuck.”

  “It’s because she likes me better.”

  “I’m aware.” I glare at her before crossing my arms and cocking my head to the side. “But back to the first thing, what makes you such an expert on my type?”