by Sophia Gray
Antonia inhaled deeply, preparing herself for Cal’s inevitably caustic, vague response. He didn’t let anyone get close to him, not even his own son. Why would he answer Daniel’s innocent question?
But instead, Cal smiled. The expression looked oddly out of place on his face, like he was molded only for misery. “A lot of different things scare me,” he admitted, tapping his fingers on the table in front of him.
“Like what?” Daniel asked with his mouth full.
“Oh, lots of stuff,” Cal replied. “Sometimes I have dreams about big storm clouds closing in on my house. Or other times I have nightmares that I’m stuck in a dark room and I can’t find a way out of it. Stuff like that.”
“Sounds scary,” Daniel commented. He brushed his hands over his plate to get the crumbs off his fingers. He turned around in Antonia’s lap to face her and said, “Mommy?”
“Yes, sweetheart?” Antonia said. She kept her arms wrapped tightly around her son even as he wriggled a little bit on her lap.
“I’m tired. Can I go back to bed?”
“Of course,” Antonia answered. She got to her feet carefully so as not to drop Daniel on the ground. “Do you want Mommy to lie down with you for a while?” Usually, Daniel wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep after a nightmare unless he was cuddled up with Antonia. She knew it was a habit he’d have to break eventually, but not tonight.
“No, I’m okay,” Daniel said. His response surprised her so much she stopped in her tracks for a second to make sure she heard her son correctly. “I’m so sleepy…”
“Okay, honey, I’ll take you back to bed,” Antonia said. She hitched Daniel higher up in her arms as she left the dining room and walked back to the staircase.
“Can Mr. Amos come with us?” Daniel asked, reaching out beyond Antonia’s shoulder to gesture towards Cal, who had followed them from the dining room to the main entrance area.
“Um…” Antonia wasn’t sure what to say. She turned to look at Cal to see if he was put off by the mere suggestion of spending more time with his live-in help.
“Sure I will,” Cal said. He walked faster to catch up with them and head up the stairs.
“I—thank you,” Antonia stuttered out. Her face burned a little as Cal led the way back towards Daniel’s room. Why was Cal being so nice? He hadn’t even reacted this way when his own son had a bad nightmare a few weeks before. What was it about Daniel that suddenly made Cal act like a decent human being? More than decent, Antonia realized. Not even Paul would stay up with me to talk Daniel down after his nightmares, and he’s my son’s father. Why in the world is Cal being this way?
Antonia finally dropped Daniel back down on his bed and gathered the blankets around him to protect him from the cold. “Sweet dreams,” she said as she pecked Daniel on the cheek.
“Can I have a kiss from Mr. Amos?” Daniel whispered, as if he was afraid to ask the question.
Okay, that was probably going too far, Antonia guessed. “No, honey, just go to sl--” she started to say to her son, but before she could say anything else, Cal appeared at the side of the bed and leaned over her to get to Daniel.
“Goodnight, champ,” Cal said. He pecked Daniel’s forehead lightly, then walked out of the room.
Antonia’s jaw dropped open as she watched Cal walk toward the door, but when Cal turned around and made eye contact with her, she tore her gaze away from him, refocusing her attention on her child. “Goodnight, darling,” she whispered as sweetly and reassuringly as she could. “We’ll talk in the morning, all right?”
“Goodnight, Mommy. Don’t let any monsters get you,” Daniel said. He yawned widely as his eyes slid shut.
As soon as she was fairly confident that Daniel was asleep, Antonia got to her feet, turned the lights off, and closed the bedroom door behind her. Out in the hallway, she sagged against the wall and buried her face in her hands as the events of the day caught up with her. She felt utterly wrung-out, like every drop of energy in her body had been drained away.
“He’ll be okay.” Antonia dropped her hands from her face to make sure that she’d heard correctly. Cal was standing across from her now, chewing on his bottom lip and crossing and uncrossing his arms every few seconds like he couldn’t get comfortable. “He seems to be all right, anyway.”
“I don’t know,” Antonia admitted. She signed deeply and peeled herself off the wall. She walked further away from her son’s room just in case he was still awake and happened to be listening. “Can I get your opinion on something?” she asked Cal. He followed her down to the opposite end of the hallway, safely away from both Daniel’s and Bobby’s bedrooms.
“Sure,” Cal said.
“I’m not sure how to say this,” Antonia admitted. If she had any energy left inside her, she would have felt embarrassed to talk about this with Cal, afraid that he’d think it was inappropriate, especially given their previous lapse in professionalism. But for now, other demands outweighed her bashfulness. She needed advice, and unfortunately there wasn’t really anybody else she could turn to at the moment. “Daniel came home with weird bruises on his body.”
Cal’s brow immediately furrowed. His eyes narrowed as he listened to Antonia’s words. “Big or small?”
“Big,” Antonia said. “And I don’t know how they got there. Daniel said he fell or bumped into something or just had some kind of normal accident while he was running around, but…”
“But you think something else might have happened,” Cal suggested, stating it matter-of-factly rather than phrasing it as a question.
“Right,” Antonia replied. “Like…I don’t know. I’m just being paranoid and freaking out about things. It’s probably nothing.”
“Not necessarily,” Cal said. They came to a stop in front of his bedroom. Antonia fidgeted with her hands for a moment, feeling awkward and unsure of what to do until Cal gestured for her to follow him into his room. “Come on, let’s talk in here.”
Antonia did as she was instructed, going over and sitting down next to Cal on his bed. The heavy sensation of dread hung over her chest, making her feel like her breath wasn’t able to get inside her lungs. What could have happened to Daniel? Antonia wondered. She picked anxiously at her fingernails, tearing up the sides of her cuticles painfully. Where did those bruises come from? Could…someone have hurt him?
“I don’t know what to do,” Antonia confessed, thinking out loud. “I really don’t know.”
“About the bruises?” Cal asked.
Antonia nodded, still not looking directly at Cal. “I don’t know what they mean. I mean, I don’t want to freak out over nothing, you know? Paul…he’s a shitty guy, but he loves his son. He wanted partial custody of him when we broke up. I don’t think he would hurt him.”
“But…?” Cal prompted her.
“But I don’t know for sure,” Antonia said. She blew out her breath in frustration. “I don’t want to accuse him of something. I mean, we already don’t get along. I got into a fight with him today in front Daniel…and Bobby, too, by the way. Sorry about that. I know it’s very unprofessional and wrong and I shouldn’t have done that.”
“It’s okay,” Cal said. “Trust me, I’m sure Bobby has seen a lot worse.”
Antonia smiled sadly, then finally turned to look at her boss. “Weirdly, that doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Sorry,” Cal said. He returned her humorless smile, which looked more like a grimace on his face. “But I guess there’s probably not a whole lot anyone can do right not to make you feel better, huh?”
Antonia nodded. She swallowed hard around the bile that was creeping up her throat as she pictured the bruises on Daniel’s skin. “Yeah. I guess I just have to let myself feel this way. Terrified and fucking useless.”
“You’re not useless,” Cal said, his tone weirdly defensive, as if she’d just personally offended him. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not?” Antonia asked, shrugging at Cal. “It’s the truth. I can’t even get my son to t
ell me what’s going on. He’s five years old, and he’s already learning how to lie to me.”
“Men learn to lie to the women in their lives at a young age. I wouldn’t worry about it” Cal said, offering another smile, a little brighter this time. “Anyway, all you can do right now is exactly what you’re doing. Paying attention. Asking Daniel to tell you if something is wrong. Being concerned. It just means you’re a good mom.”
Antonia scoffed and rubbed her own arms against the chill of the room. “Yeah, right. I can’t even afford a good place to stay. Whenever you’re done with Bobby, we’ll be back living in some cramped shithole. Daniel’s going to grow up hating me, and he won’t be wrong to feel that way.”
“Hey, stop it,” Cal said. He shuffled closer to her on the bed until they were almost touching. “Don’t talk like that.”
“I’m just being honest with myself,” Antonia said. She sighed deeply again, feeling a heavy weight of despair on her heart. Either something was happening to her son, or she was freaking out over nothing. Either way, she wasn’t acting the way a mother should act. A real mother protects her children no matter what, Antonia thought. A real mother has things under control. Why can’t I just be strong for Daniel? Why does everything have to be a goddamn mess?
“Beating yourself up right now isn’t going to accomplish anything,” Cal argued. “Look, you tried to get him to talk to you. That’s all you can really do right now. So try not to think about it.”
Antonia sighed and rocked her head back, rolling her shoulders one way and then another in an attempt to get at least some of the tension out of her pent-up muscles. “I don’t think that’s an option right now,” she said, laughing bitterly at herself.
Cal was quiet for a long moment. Out of the corner of Antonia’s eye, she could see that he was frowning, his usually blank and expressionless face wrinkled with frustration. “How can I help?” he finally asked in a low, soft voice, barely audible even in the silence of the room.
Antonia was caught off-guard. For a long time she couldn’t come up anything to say. Finally, after several long silent moments, she cleared her throat and said honestly, “I don’t think you can. Thank you, though.” She paused for a moment then said what was on her mind. “You know, you really surprised me tonight. I thought you hated kids.”
Cal seemed to flinch a little, like she’d crossed a boundary by saying that. Oh, well. She couldn’t exactly take it back now. “I don’t…hate kids,” Cal said haltingly. “I just don’t know how to be…” He let his sentence trail off, sighing to himself and staring down at his own lap.
“I’m sorry,” Antonia said. She turned to face Cal and scooted a little bit closer until their legs were touching slightly. “I didn’t mean it as an insult. It’s just that you don’t seem like you want to be around Bobby very much.”
“I guess that’s fair,” Cal said. He nodded to himself and then turned to meet Antonia’s eyes again. “I mean, look. I only met him a couple weeks ago, like two days before I met you. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. Nobody ever trained me for this.”
Antonia let Cal’s words hang in the air around them for a long moment before responding. But eventually she murmured, “That’s kind of how I felt when I first had Daniel.”
“Oh, yeah?” Cal asked. He shifted around on the bed to fully face Antonia.
“Yeah,” Antonia admitted. She still felt a slight burn of shame climb up her back as she thought about how she felt in the weeks after Daniel’s birth. “During the pregnancy, I thought I would have Paul’s help, you know. He wanted a baby. I thought everything was going to be okay. But when he actually got here…” Antonia’s words broke off, and she shook her head at herself, still disappointed in her heart for ever loving someone as weak and cowardly as Paul. “He didn’t help me at all. I was all by myself, and I wasn’t ready for that.”
“So what did you do?” Cal asked. His face remained calm, but his voice betrayed some sense of urgency, like he desperately needed to know the answer.
“I waited,” Antonia said, thinking back on those long hours where she stared down at Daniel, praying for the strength to take care of him. “In some ways I’m still waiting.”
“Waiting for what?” Cal asked.
“To feel ready,” Antonia said. “To feel like I’m not a total fuck-up ruining my child’s life. I still don’t know if that’s true or not.”
“You’re not a fuck-up,” Cal said, shaking his head at her. “You’re not.”
“Pfft. Thank you, but you don’t know me well enough to say one way or another,” Antonia said. She sighed deeply and stretched her neck from one side to another, trying to work out the painful kinks that had formed in her muscles over the past few hours. “Anyway, you can only do your best. Even if that’s woefully inadequate.”
“Hey. Come on. Stop talking about yourself that way,” Cal said. His brows furrowed in frustration as he glared at Antonia.
“You’re not the boss of me,” Antonia said a little sarcastically. “Oh, well, I guess technically you are, but I can still self-deprecate if I want. You don’t get to determine that.”
“Oh, yeah?” Cal said. He got to his feet, towering over Antonia, his eyes blazing with something that chilled Antonia to the bone. “I’m going to have to disagree with you on that.”
“What—” Antonia started to say, but before she could get any other words out, Cal swept her into his arms, picking her up easily as if she weighed next to nothing. “What the hell!” Antonia cried out, but her legs instinctively wrapped around Cal’s waist anyway, if only to keep herself from tumbling to the floor.
Now she was above Cal, suspended above his head and staring down into his eyes, which still seemed to burn with an emotion that Antonia thought she recognized but couldn’t identify. Antonia swallowed hard just to steady herself and wrapped her arms around his neck, licking her dried lips and meeting Cal’s piercing gaze as unwaveringly as she could.
“Stop fucking insulting yourself,” Cal whispered hoarsely.
“Or you’ll do what?” Antonia asked, her throat going dry as she saw Cal’s eyes fall to stare down into her shirt, his tongue poking out of his mouth as he looked at her cleavage.
“I think you fucking know the answer to that already,” Cal said. His hand dug harder into Antonia’s back, forcing her body closer to his as he walked around the perimeter of the bed. Before Antonia could prepare herself, Cal growled and tossed her hard on the bed, making her body bounce on the mattress with the force of his muscles.
The next second, Cal was on her, pinning her down to the bed with a hand on either side of her head. He stared down at her for several long moments, already panting as if he’d run a full marathon.
“What do you want from me?” Antonia whispered into the space between their mouths, unable to keep her eyes off his full, dark lips.
Cal licked his lips, his sharp white teeth bared as his eyes scanned up and down her body. One of his hands slid down to stroke her side. “You keep asking questions you already know the answer to,” Cal whispered. He leaned in, brushing his lips against her neck, applying soft feather-touches to her skin, over and over again until she shivered violently and clutched the back of his head with both hands, keeping him pinned in place with her arms.
Cal’s breathing, now echoing against her ear, only got harder and faster while his hand found the hem of her shirt, pushing it up and exposing the skin of her stomach to the cold air. Antonia whimpered and squirmed under his touch. His hand began rubbing her stomach, pushing her shirt up further until her bra was exposed. “You’re so fucking tempting, you know that?” Cal muttered into her ear, biting hard under her chin and making her squeal and arch up into his body.
Antonia could feel Cal’s grin on her skin, his teeth dancing over her flesh but making her wait for that gloriously painful moment when it would press down into a real bite again. “You like this?” Cal whispered into her neck, licking her collarbone back and forth until she f
inally stuttered out a response.
“Y-yes,” she whispered. A hot blush coursed up her whole body, making her woozy and light-headed. What am I doing? What the hell is going on? I can’t do this. I can’t fuck him again. I can’t! That little voice in the back of Antonia’s mind kept protesting on a loop over and over again, but with every swipe of Cal’s tongue it faded, her mind filled only with the sound of Cal’s breathing and his light, teasing laughter.
“Yeah, you fucking like this,” Cal said as he drifted back up to her ear, tonguing at her earlobe before skimming the edge of his teeth around the perimeter of the shell of her ear.
Antonia wrapped her legs around Cal’s waist, tugging him closer into her crotch. “Yeah, I fucking like it.” Her own voice was hoarse and shaky, her breathing speeding up as her hips twitched forward of their own volition, humping against Cal’s cock which was hard inside his jeans.
“You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you?” Cal nibbled along the edge of her neck. She moaned and gasped, tangling her fingers deeper into his thick hair.
