by E. L. Todd
She rolled her eyes and looked away.
“You think I’m pulling your leg?”
“You’re always pulling my leg.” She drank the bottle again because she forgot it was empty.
I tried not to laugh. “I’m really not.”
“Anyone who looks at us knows I married up.”
I shook my head. “You’re wrong about that. Unless you’re referring to my wealth.”
“No, you know what I’m referring to. Women want to jump your bones every day.”
“Well, they don’t get to. Only you do.” I pulled her closer to me.
“You could have an affair and I would never know.” She released a heavy sigh.
My eyes narrowed on her face. “Excuse me?” I didn’t appreciate being insulted like that.
“Honestly, if you wanted to have an affair I would never know. The woman wouldn’t say anything because she’d just be happy to be with you. It’d be so easy for you to sneak around…”
I was about to snap.
“But I never worry about that. Do you know how nice that is?” She looked over the balcony and to the city below. “I never worry you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be. When you don’t come home right away I don’t worry you’re lying to me.”
I released the air from my lungs and relaxed. “I’m glad you never worry about it.”
“Because you love me so much.” She wrapped her arms around my neck. “Beautiful or ugly, you still love me. I’m so lucky.”
My lips stretched into a grin. “I’m the lucky one, baby.”
“You’ve given me such beautiful kids, and now I have a grandbaby on the way…” She hugged me tightly. “I’m so glad I don’t have to live without you.” The melancholy in her voice touched my heart.
“I’ll never leave you. I’ll always be right here.”
She snuggled close into my chest.
My hand glided up her back and I breathed in her scent. Just holding her felt amazing. My injury didn’t cause me pain, and I could roll around with my wife without causing further injury. This moment in time was special because I knew I’d been given a second chance. If our souls weren’t so tightly intertwined, I would have slipped away to a place I could never return from.
She saved my life.
I kissed her forehead then lifted her from the chair and carried her into the suite.
“Where are we going?” she mumbled. “Are you ordering more champagne?”
“I will…if you do something for me.” I lay her on the bed gently then pulled her shirt over her head. Her tiny waist led to wide hips. Her perky tits were still just as kissable as the day I married her.
“I’ll do something for you…” She pulled me on top of her. “Whether you order that champagne or not.”
***
Scarlet and I stood in the elevator and watched the different floors light up as we moved. Our reflection could be seen in the steel doors. Our image was distorted but visible.
Today was my first day back to the office, and my wife insisted on coming with me. Honestly, I wanted her there anyway. She always made transitions smooth, and when I couldn’t find the right words to say she carried them for me.
I held her hand in mine, and my thumb moved over her knuckles.
“They’ll be excited to have you back.”
“You think?” I wasn’t so sure. “Mike probably had the time of his life.”
“No, he missed you.” She gave me a quick smile. “He told me.”
I wasn’t sure why I was so nervous to go back to work. Perhaps I was afraid I wouldn’t uphold the image I’d been projecting my entire career. Would I be as strong? Or would be people think I was weak because I was out of the office for so long? When people looked at me, would they only think about the scar on my back? Or would they see me as the man I used to be?
Scarlet could read my mind. “You’ll be fine, dear.”
“You think so?”
She kissed my cheek. “I know so. And even if you aren’t, you need to retire anyway.” She gave me a playful look. “And we can play golf all day and make love on the beach.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad. Maybe I’ll sabotage everything on purpose.”
She smiled. “Fine by me.”
The doors opened and I stepped onto the floor with Scarlet beside me. I was too busy looking at her to notice what was right in front of me.
Everyone started to clap the moment they saw me. Mike stood beside Cortland, Skye, and Conrad and they applauded loudly. Everyone else who worked for me was there too. Balloons hung from desks and tables, and there was a banner that said WELCOME BACK. Five hundred people stood there and kept clapping as I walked further into the room. The attention made me feel a little self-conscious, but it was definitely a warm way to come back. “Thank you, everyone.”
Mike broke the line and came to me first. “Glad you’re back on your feet.” He hugged me tightly and clapped me on the back.
I returned his embrace. “Thanks, man.”
“Of course.” He patted my back again before he stood back.
Everyone else flooded to me. Skye reached me first and hugged me tightly. “I’m glad you’re back, Dad. It’s not the same without you.”
I held her and closed my eyes. I was so thankful I got to hold my daughter again and know I would be meeting her child someday. “Thank you, pumpkin.”
Conrad came next. “You’re looking good, Uncle Sean. You’ve been lifting?”
I smiled even though I knew the compliment was meaningless. “Something like that.” I hugged him then moved onto Cortland. “I’m surprise the place didn’t fall apart without me.”
“Fall apart?” he asked with a laugh. “We were up by ten percent the entire time. Once you walked through the doors we plummeted all over again.” He clapped my shoulder with a grin on his face. “Kidding. I’m glad you’re back. It’s too quiet when you aren’t around overreacting to everything.”
“Shut the hell up,” I said with a laugh.
He gave me a quick hug. “Now, no more injuries. We got a place to run.”
“I’ll avoid those knife fights from now on,” I said sarcastically.
“Good,” Cortland said. “Because you obviously aren’t very good at them.”
“Asshole,” I mumbled.
He shrugged. “You know me. It’s all out of love.”
To my surprise, Roland was there as well. “I know I don’t work here but…I wanted to see you walk through those doors.”
Seeing my son under any circumstance was fine by me. “Thank you. I’m glad you came.”
“You look good, Dad.” He patted my shoulder.
“You can thank your mother for that.” I smiled at him before I turned to Ryan. “I know for certain you don’t work here. Because if you did, I would have fired you.”
“Still a dickhead, I see,” Ryan said. “I thought almost dying would clean up your act. I guess I was wrong.” He gave me a wide smile before he hugged me. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Probably three.” Ryan nodded toward Scarlet.
I spotted the large cake sitting across an entire table. “I get cake?”
“Any reason for cake is a good one,” Mike said. “Besides, everyone in the building was so worried about you. They deserve a celebration.”
“They were?” I asked.
“You know how much they love us.” He looked around at the crowd. “You think I asked these people to come up here. They wanted to see you, Sean.”
I felt a shot of warmth through my body. “That was nice of them.” All I could think about was my father. He always told me employees were investments, not workers. They had to be nurtured, respected, and even loved. I followed his advice and had a very happy work environment because of it. PIXEL was even voted one of the top ten companies to work for in Forbes Magazine.
“I was surprised too,” Mike teased. “I didn’t think anyone liked you.” He winked then approac
hed the cake. “Alright, who wants a slice?”
A few people raised their hands.
I turned to Scarlet, who was standing right beside me. “You knew about this?”
She shrugged. “I may have…”
“You’re good at keeping secrets.”
“For a short period of time.”
I pulled her into my side and gave her a warm kiss. “It feels good to be back.”
“I told you that you were worried over nothing.”
“Do you ever get tired of being a know-it-all all the time?”
She gave me a playful glare. “I’m not a know-it-all. I just know a lot more than you.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Arsen
If you told me I would be sitting across from my mother at a Starbucks, I would have told you were smoking something, and whatever it was, it was strong as hell.
Her tea sat in front of her but she didn’t touch it. She only had eyes for me, like I might storm out of the coffee shop at any moment.
I ordered the first thing I saw on the menu. I never went out for coffee so I wasn’t sure what to order. I think it was a mango iced tea…or something like that. I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t even taken a drink yet.
Sherry looked down like she couldn’t think of anything to say. Her wrinkles were more apparent now that I was this close to her. It felt too…normal to sit across from her at a table. I would rather talk to a drug dealer than her.
“How old is your daughter?”
I didn’t want to mention Abby, but since my mom already knew she existed I didn’t see the point in hiding anything. “She’s six.”
She nodded slowly like that was the most interesting thing she heard all day. “She’s beautiful, Arsen. And she looks just like you.”
“Thank you.” She was beautiful. She was the most perfect thing in the world. Every time I looked at her, I forgot about every bad thing that ever happened to me.
“What’s she like?”
“Smart—too smart.” There were too many other qualities she had for me to list. “She’s sweet and thoughtful. She’s caring and gentle. Her favorite animal is the unicorn and her favorite color is pink.”
Her eyes softened. “She sounds like an angel.”
“She is.”
“She’s in kindergarten?”
“She just started first grade. She’s far more advanced than the other kids in her class…but I’m pretty biased.”
She smiled slightly, but it looked awkward as she did it. It was like she forgot how to make the facial expression. “She’s smart like her father.”
“I’m not smart.” I said it abruptly and without thinking. “I didn’t learn how to read until I was twenty-five years old.”
“Just because you’re aren’t an academic doesn’t mean you aren’t smart.”
“Well, I have a lot of street smarts,” I said. “Because I had to learn how to survive on my own.”
Her eyes filled with sadness.
I didn’t mean to make a jab but I wasn’t going to downplay how much I had suffered.
“Your wife is beautiful.”
“She is,” I said. “But she’s not my wife.”
“Oh…it seemed like she was.”
“She lives with me. And she’ll be my wife soon. I haven’t asked her yet.”
“Six years is a long time to be together without a marriage proposal.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “You’re one to judge.”
“I’m not judging,” she said quickly. “But that girl must really love you to stick around that long.” She held up a hand. “I meant no offense.”
“She and I haven’t been together that long.”
“She’s not Abby’s mother?”
“No.” I shook my head.
“Oh, now I understand.” She nodded slightly. “It looks like she loves her as her own.”
“She does,” I said without hesitation.
“You have a beautiful family, Arsen. That makes me very happy.”
I looked at my cup because I didn’t know what to say.
“So…how did you get here?”
“Long story.” It would take a lifetime to tell.
“I have the time if you have the patience.” She sounded nothing like the woman I used to know. She never raised her voice, and she was so docile. She had a defeated look to her, like the world had crushed her too many times.
“I dropped out of high school and got involved in drugs. I started growing and selling my own weed. I made a good living out of it for years.”
“What changed?”
“That woman I told you about.”
“Does she have a name?”
“Silke.”
“Beautiful…” She rested her hands on the table. Her veins stuck out and her skin looked loose.
“She made me fall helplessly in love with her. That’d never happened to me before. I’d always been a flower in the wind. I went wherever the next thing took me. But she…grounded me. She was different than all the other girls I met. She was…special. I knew she and I would never last. We were from two different worlds. She was a Harvard student and I was…a loser.”
Mom listened without blinking.
“But she didn’t care that I had nothing to offer her. She didn’t care I didn’t have any family. She loved me…for me.” Thinking about the past still pulled at my heartstrings. “She asked me to change and I decided I would. But when I went back to my place to destroy my weed, the police caught me. Since I had a lot of stuff on my record and I’d been caught in the possession of drugs before, I was thrown in jail for almost a year. That’s when I ended our relationship.”
Sadness filled her eyes.
“The only reason I got out of there was because her father knew the right people. He took me into his home and helped me start over. He paid for my education and even helped me open my own shop. He took care of me…for no reason at all.”
“That was very nice of him.”
“When I put myself back together, I went to find my daughter. I convinced her mom I was a reliable person. And then—”
“Where was your daughter before this?”
This is the part I didn’t want to admit, even to her. “When I found out the woman was pregnant, I took off.” I couldn’t look her in the eye as I said it. “I couldn’t be a father. I was a pathetic excuse for a human being. All I would do was cause her more grief than happiness. But then I realized it was just an excuse. I didn’t want to take responsibility for what I had done. When I finally found a stable job, I went to her mother and apologized. After months of begging, I was finally in her life.”
She looked at me without judgment in her eyes. She just stared at me. “We have something in common.”
“I’m nothing like you.” My words came out hostile and sharp like the edge of a knife. “Abby’s mother was a good person. She was a good girl. I knew Abby would be taken care of. You…you just abandoned me to strangers. And it didn’t take me twenty years to come back for her. I did it as soon as possible. Don’t compare us. You dumped me on the side of the road like garbage.”
She bowed her head and didn’t argue. “You’re right.”
I stared out the window because I couldn’t look at her anymore.
“But I do want to be in your life now…just the way you wanted to be in hers.”
“Or you just want something from me,” I said coldly.
“I don’t.” She held my gaze as she said it. “This is all I want…right here.”
I couldn’t distinguish her truths from her lies. “After Abby and I had a good relationship, I tried to get Silke back. It was a long process. She didn’t trust me anymore and I didn’t blame her. But fortunately, she still loved me. And I got her back.”
“What happened to Abby’s mother?”
“She passed away.” Her death still haunted me. Lydia and I never got along, but Abby missed her. I wish my daughter didn’t have to lose a parent. She was far too young to
understand that kind of pain.
“I’m sorry.”
I nodded. “It was really hard on Abby. But she’s managing.”
“Because she has a great father.”
“And a wonderful stepmother.” I shook my head slightly. “I’m so jealous of my own daughter sometimes. She has so many people who love her for no reason at all. She has grandparents and parents, and step-parents…” My hand balled into a fist. “And I didn’t have anybody.”
Sherry leaned back slightly, like the movement would make me feel better.
“I don’t know what you’re expecting. A fairytale ending just isn’t possible.”
“That’s not what I’m looking for.” She cleared her throat. “You and I both know that isn’t in the cards for either one of us. I just hope…eventually…you’ll understand that I really do regret what happened. I wish I’d turned around the moment I drove away. And that’s the honest truth.”
I looked into her eyes but still didn’t know what I was seeing.
“I’m glad that you’ve made such a nice life for yourself, Arsen. The only thing a parent wants is for their child to be happy.”
“You thought I would be happy in a foster home?”
She cringed slightly.
“What do you do now?” I asked. “I’m assuming your whoring days are over.” I couldn’t control my anger. My mouth was a loose canon.
She didn’t seem offended by my words. “I stopped doing that a long time ago.”
“And what do you do now?” With her age, there was no way she was still a prostitute. Those days must have ended long ago.
“I’m a janitor at a bowling alley.”
I didn’t react to her words, but I pitied her. “Still smoke like a chimney?”
“No…I quit a few years ago.”
“And the drinking?”
“I stopped that too.”
Could I really believe her? Could someone like her really stop such strong addictions? “Where do you live?”
“In the city.”
She can afford it off her salary? “In an apartment?”
“No…I live in a house.”
Maybe she got married at some point. That surprised me. Why would anyone want to be stuck with this woman? “You have a husband?”
