by Kara Hart
He just holds his hand over my mouth and kisses my forehead, continuing to thrust upward eagerly. “I’ll protect you and Aidan,” he says. This fantasy is something I want to dive headfirst into, but I know it’s not a reality. Tomorrow, he’ll be gone. Just like last time.
“Always?” I ask him, still.
He flips me onto my back and spreads my legs further apart. “Always.”
“Cum for me,” I tell him.
He fucks me, holding my legs and body in place. His whole body is against mine, pushing me further into the mattress. I’m dripping and he’s growling, as he stares into my eyes. He’s so handsome that it actually frightens me, and his eyes are the color of the dark ocean.
Wave upon wave of emotion hits us on the shores of our desire. He slides his thumb in my mouth and groans louder than he should, pupils growing. “My girl,” he whispers. “You’re so fucking beautiful. You’re an angel.”
“You said that to me last time,” I whisper.
“This time I’m not going anywhere. I’ll stay right where you want me too.”
He thrusts harder than before, holding my ribcage. His fingers tense up and he pulls out this time. He moans, “Oh, God, baby. It’s coming.” His cum shoots out, onto my pelvis and he kisses me quick and sloppy. Our tongues slide and writhe on their own, desperate for the slippery touch.
After we’re done, he holds me in his arms and promises never to leave. I don’t know what just happened, but he can’t stay here. It’s not fair to Aidan to bring him into his life so fast. I still don’t know if he’s right for me, or if he’ll even come through on his promises. This is what men do when they want to cum. They say things, outlandish things, that they don’t even mean.
But for tonight, he’s holding me and I don’t want him to let go. I want to hold his hands over my tits, while he spoons me to sleep. I want him to keep whispering that he loves me, and that he thought of me every single night overseas. I want to feel his warmth for as long as it’s okay. And when we sleep, I want to dream that we’re happier, and in a much better place than this.
I want to feel like I’m still here. Because lately, it’s felt like I’m just another single mom, lost in her duties. I’m not just that. I’m so many things. And I deserve so much more.
Walker
Is it pathetic that I’m lost in her eyes right now? I can’t even say anything. I just want to stay here forever. I don’t want to go back to my shithole apartment. I don’t want to deal with anything anymore. I have enough money saved that I could take care of Aidan with her. I could give her more than she has now.
“I want you,” I tell her over and over again. “Let me stay here with you. You have that extra room. I could move in and help you. I have money, Erica.”
“You’re out of your mind,” she says. “Seriously. We’ve been over this so many times. It’s not good for Aidan and it sure as hell ain’t good for me either.”
“Fine,” I sigh. I’m not going to press the issue. She clearly needs some time and that’s okay for me. I’m soaring right now. I can’t believe my night with her. I’ve been waiting for this moment for half a decade and now I’ve got it. I just need to find a way to continue it.
“You should probably go,” she says before breakfast. “Aidan will wonder why you stayed. He’ll start to think things.”
“Like I’m his father?” I smile.
“Come on, Walker,” she pouts. “Please just respect my wishes. I don’t want to cause him any more stress than he has already endured.”
“I understand.” I kiss her, and kiss her, and kiss her some more. I breathe in hard as she pulls away. She tastes and smells so fucking good.
“I’ll miss you,” I tell her as she shuts the door behind us, out front.
“I’m sure you will.” She rolls her eyes.
“No, I really will. I’ll be sitting in my apartment all day, thinking about you,” I say. It’s the truth. There’s nothing for me back there. I’ll be staring at my blasted wall. I’ll be drinking a bottle of fine Scotch, while I watch the sun go down. I’ll be all alone, again. Like all Americans say, this sucks.
“You’ll survive,” she says. She kisses me one last time and sends me on my way.
Another day, but what to do? I drive home, get to my apartment, and I’m soon back inside that grey building, lifeless and cold. “Dammit,” I sigh.
I look at the bottle of Scotch on the counter. “Well, you’ll never leave me.” I smile to myself and grab a glass, pouring it to the top. I place two ice cubes inside and sip the dry contents. It burns just right.
My phone rings hours later when I’m much more drunk than I thought I’d be. Lazily, I answer it without looking at the screen. “Hello?” I cough, adjusting my eyes.
“We’ll find you,” a voice says into the receiver. It’s not Hawk. It’s not anyone I know. The voice is younger than Edward’s even, but it’s muffled and creepy. “We’ll find you and we’ll kill you. You and your kid.”
“Who is this?!” I scream, but the phone clicks and I know he’s gone.
I throw my glass against the wall and it shatters. “Shit,” I mutter. I have no patience left for this. None whatsoever. Hawk will find me. I always assumed that. I just didn’t think he’d find me so damn fast. I shouldn’t have answered the call.
I groan and place my palm against my forehead. “Oh, God,” I sigh. How in the hell am I going to tell Erica about any of this? I thought I could keep it under wraps. I thought I could handle it without her knowing. But of course, she’s going to find out. Hawk doesn’t play by the rules. He’s old school about things and he’s as dirty as they come. If you cross him, he’ll find out what you hold dear and he’ll exploit it as much as he can.
They’re in danger. My son is in danger.
Now, more than ever, it’s apparent what I have to do. Erica doesn’t think I’ll stick around, but I’m in this for the long haul. Now, I need to move in with her and it’s not just because I want to. If I’m not close to them, I’ll have no way of making sure they’re safe. I told her I’d protect her and Aidan and I intend to do that in any way that I can.
Losing them would be like losing myself. I can’t do that. I can’t be without them. My boy. The woman of my dreams. Nothing would destroy me more. Hawk can take my wealth. He can take away my freedom. But if he even lays one finger on the people I love, he’s in a world of pain. I’ll unleash a storm on him.
I’ll take him down. That’s a fucking promise.
Erica
“You look happy.” Jake, my boss, enters my office, right as I’m packing my things.
“It was a really good presentation,” I say. “I can’t believe we got the Chicago Burger account.”
“You got the Chicago account. Not anybody else,” he says.
“Thank you, Jake,” I mutter.
“It’s good to see you smiling again. For a while there, I thought we might lose you,” he says. Lose me? “But now, you seem fully invested. It’s really great. Thanks for being a team player, Erica.”
He walks out of my office before I can get a word in. So, I guess those days of being sick really hurt my reputation around here. Jake being nice wasn’t Jake actually being nice. It was him holding something over my head. Great.
Despite that little interaction, I feel pretty good. I mean, on the one hand, I shouldn’t jump into this thing with Walker again. I need to hold him at a distance, until he really proves himself. On the other hand, I finally have some life in me again. I feel real, not like I’m just Aidan’s mother.
Renata is much more skeptical. “Do not. I repeat, do not do this,” she says. “You want your heart smashed into a million pieces again?”
“No,” I sigh. “Of course I don’t. But what the hell am I supposed to do? Aidan has his father back.”
“Aidan does not need to know,” she says. “Imagine if he found out he was his dad and then he just mysteriously left again. Imagine what that would do to him?”
“Yeah
.” I lower my eyes. “I know. I guess I shouldn’t be hopeful.”
“Just be wary and keep your eyes peeled for signs,” she says. “Because once he starts feeling weird about the whole daddy role, he’s going to dip. Trust me, men are like children.”
Her boyfriend just broke up with her, so I have to take some of what she says with a grain of salt. Still, she does have a point. I need to be extremely cautious. Aidan is my baby. I need to think of him above all. “You’re right,” I tell her. “I’ll be careful.”
She leans back on the couch and looks at me weird, for a good few seconds. “What?” I laugh. “Why are you doing that?”
“Because I want to know,” she says. “Was the sex incredible?”
“Ren,” I laugh. “I thought you said I shouldn’t engage with him anymore. Now, you’re asking me if I thought the sex was incredible?”
“Well, I need to know! I haven’t had sex in a week. Greg dumped me and I’ve been a wreck. Let me live through your excitement, dammit!” she exclaims. “Or not. What do I care?”
“It was amazing.” I smile and think back on it. “It was passionate and sweet. Heavy and…” I can’t think of the word I want to use.
“Deep?” Renata asks.
I cover my mouth and blush, nodding. “Very deep,” I admit.
“Ugh,” she sighs. “Well, he is really hot. I get you on that. I just worry about you, baby girl. I don’t want to see you hurt again. These last six years have been rough.”
“Oh, come on,” I smile awkwardly. “I haven’t been that bad. Have I?”
She looks at me like I’ve had a blindfold over my eyes for the last six years. “Are you serious right now? You’ve been a fucking wreck,” she says. The truth hurts. “Not trying to be a bitch, but the only times I’ve seen you get cheerful is when you’re playing with Aidan. I’ve missed seeing you this excited.”
“Yeah, well. I’ll probably all crash and burn soon enough,” I say. “It seems to be a reoccurring pattern for me.”
“Stop that,” she says. “Who knows? Maybe we were actually right this time. Maybe your luck is turning around for you. Maybe this time he’ll stay.”
“Do I even want that?” I ask, more to myself than anyone else.
“I don’t know. I can’t answer that one for you, babe,” she says. I look outside the window and see Aidan running around by himself. He’s got a huge imagination, but he’s lacking in friends and role models. Not that he doesn’t look up to me in a lot of ways, but he wants his father. It’s the one thing he brings up nowadays, more than anything.
“I hate that he’s good with him,” I say. “He’s trying hard.”
“It would be damn cute to see Aidan with his dad,” she nods.
“I just get the sense that he’s not telling me the full truth,” I say. “Like, maybe he’ll stay, but he’s hiding something from me. I don’t even know what it is, but there’s something.”
“Another woman? Women? He did do that service. You sure he’s done?” she asks.
“Ugh,” I sigh. “I don’t think it’s that. He seems to want to be around me all of the time. If he was working, I’d know it. I can’t put my finger on what it is. It’s just that something is off and if my intuition is right, all hell is going to break loose.”
“Leave it to me,” she says. “I’ll get to the bottom of it.”
“Ren, don’t. Seriously, I’ll figure it out on my own,” I say.
“Okay.” She side-eyes me. “I’m curious though.”
“Please don’t. I don’t need any more trouble.” I tell her.
“We’ll see,” she says. “We’ll see.”
Walker
She invited me over again, so I’ve made myself look as good as possible. To make up for the dinner that I ruined, I bring over dinner from one of the best Vietnamese restaurants in town. When I ring the doorbell, I hear running footsteps and a funny little yell coming toward the door.
“Who is it?” Aidan asks me.
“It’s me,” I say.
“Who’s me? What’s the password?” he bellows, sounding mighty.
“The password?” I ask aloud. “Girls drool.”
He inches open the door and peaks out. “That’s not the password,” he says. “But I’ll let it slide because I like it.”
He swings open the door and I see Erica standing behind him, arms crossed. Aidan turns around and jumps. “Girls drool, huh?” Erica smiles. “I’ve seen you drool plenty of times, mister.”
“Uh oh.” He smiles.
“Wrong move to let me in, buddy. Turns out, I was a spy for your mom all along!” I reach over, pretending like I’m going to tickle him. Erica follows my lead.
“No!” he screams. “Mom, help!”
She grabs and picks him up in his arms. The tickling ensues, and he wiggles endlessly. “Kisses for you!” Erica kisses his stomach, until finally we set him down and he falls onto the carpet, laughing and kicking us away.
“You’re torturing me!” he jokes. When he catches his breath, he runs toward the kitchen.
“I brought pho,” I smile and hold up the container filled with soup, and bags of onions and jalapeños. “I’m sorry about the other night.”
“Oh, I love pho!” she says. She nearly hugs me, or at least it seems like she’s about to, before she corrects herself and heads toward the kitchen after Aidan. “Come on. Let’s eat.”
I want to talk to her about things, but I know it’s too early for any of that. Instead, we drink a little beer, eat a little soup, and I talk to Aidan as much as possible. The idea that I have a son hasn’t sunken in completely yet.
Right now, it almost feels like a dream, as if none of this is quite real. Then again, ever since I met Erica, everything has been quite dreamlike. I always thought something like this would be more planned out. Sometimes, however, that’s not the way things go. When I look at Aidan, I see myself. I see how I used to be when I was his age. He’s so lucky. He has a nice neighborhood, a perfect mother, and a bright future ahead of him. What he doesn’t have is a real father to be there for him.
“Aidan,” I say, “do you like sports?”
“I like basketball,” he says, while playing with his soup.
“We should play sometime,” I wink. “You in?”
He looks over at his mother who seems surprised by my gesture. “Can I, Mom? I’ll finish my homework. I promise!”
“You run a tight ship around here,” I tell his mom.
“I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t,” she says, glaring at me. There’s a slight distrust of me in her eyes, but she’s doing her best to be okay with things. That’s as much as you can hope for, sometimes.
My mother once told me, “You can do one hundred things right, but one thing can ruin everything forever.” It was one of the many cryptic sentences she was obsessed with telling me. I took it with a grain of salt. I met Hawk not too long after, and I thought that maybe that might have been the mistake that would ruin everything. But it wasn’t. I ran away instead of fighting. I left the woman I could have been giving love to, and the son that had been born. I was selfish and stupid. But I know that it’s going to be extremely hard to come back from. It could have ruined everything forever.
Aidan is excited beyond belief and for a second there, I think that it might even be possible to mend things completely. I feel like a father, for once in my life. I look at Aidan and I feel a genuine excitement and urge to pursue a better way of life. It’s fucking strange, to be honest, because before I met Erica, none of these feelings existed. I was on a path towards nowhere, headed down, down, down.
The dinner is great. We laugh. We bathe in the warmth of each other. We feel good, and that’s all we’ve ever wanted out of life. When Aidan goes off to bed, I’m not even relieved. I want more time with him. There’s so much I want to teach and tell him. I need to say how sorry I am.
“That was nice,” she says, washing the utensils.
I walk up behind her and w
rap my hands around her soft waist. I kiss down on her neck and smell her scent. I get hard and I make sure she feels it on the side of her luscious ass. “It was nice,” I say. My right hand moves up toward her tits and I do everything that I can not to stuff my face in them, but I do run my hand under her shirt.
She moans for a brief second, enjoying me. Ultimately, she ends with a long sigh. She pushes out from my grasp and walks to an opposite cabinet. “Where are you going?” I ask her, awkwardly adjusting my pants and clearing my throat of embarrassment. I keep standing and watch as she frantically reaches in the cabinet.
“I need a dry towel,” she says, finding nothing. I laugh and reach into a drawer right where she was standing originally, and pull out a few freshly dried dishtowels.
“You mean one of these?” I laugh. “Here. Take two.”
I toss a few towels over to her and she catches them. “You know where everything is around here now,” she says, looking away from me. Her face is red and I’m sure it’s hot. Is it from desire or anger? Or both?
I walk up to her and begin massaging her shoulders. She moans and tilts her head to the side. “We can’t do this,” she eventually says, for like the hundredth time now.
“Do you want me?” I ask her.
“What does that even mean?” she whispers. The only sound that can be heard is the sink continually running. I turn it off and the house is completely silent.
“It means…” I stop myself. She’s an adult, dammit. She knows exactly what I’m talking about. I’m not going to stay weak forever. I’m going to tell her exactly what it is that I want, and that I know she dreams of it every single night.
“It means, sit on my fucking face. Now,” I demand of her.
“Excuse me?” her eyes widen and her throat closes. I place my hand on her collarbone and I can feel her pulse resonate throughout her chest. It beats firmly, speeding up with each passing second. She tries to swallow, but she can’t. Her mouth is too dry, so she licks her lips quickly. It’s in these moments that she tries to cover herself with excuses. She doesn’t want me to see her weaknesses.
