Ilsa didn’t smile at my sad attempt at humor. Instead, she swallowed hard and looked down at my chest. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I urged, pressing a firm kiss to her forehead, holding her tight against me.
“I don’t know if it means anything,” she whispered into my chest, “but I won’t ever lie to you again.”
“You didn’t really lie to me. You didn’t give me a lot to go on, but you didn’t lie.”
“I wasn’t honest.”
“I think you did what you had to do to protect Max, even to protect me. That’s pretty valiant, actually.”
“But Cody—”
I tipped her face up to mine and pressed another quick kiss on her lips to quiet her argument. Then I kissed her just a little longer because I had missed her and it felt so incredibly wonderful to have her close to me.
And I kissed her another moment more because I really, really wanted her and Max to stay.
“Where’s Max?” I finally asked when I pulled back a bit, touching my forehead to hers once again.
“Inside. Sophie’s got him. She said she needs practice.” She pulled back to look up at me, slightly shocked. “Is she…?”
I laughed. The baby fever talk hadn’t really died down much over the last few months.
“Not that I know of, yet… Brannon finally talked her into marry him first.”
Ilsa’s eyes softened. “Awe, they’re getting married? When?”
“Probably pretty quick,” I replied. “I think they were hoping you’d come back soon, so you could be here.”
“Me? Why me?” The confusion in her eyes made me smile down at her.
“You’re part of us, a part of our little group. You and Max.” I shrugged, “Plus, I’ve been kind of miserable lately. I think they felt bad doing something so happy with a wet blanket like me around.”
A flash of guilt crossed her features. “You’ve been miserable?”
“I’ve missed you,” I said honestly, and the emotion in my voice made it sound rough.
“Why? I kinda wreaked havoc on you,” she murmured regretfully. “You shouldn’t even want me now that you know everything.”
“I realized something while you were gone. I may not know much about your life and your past, but all that is just… I don’t care… because I know you. I know who you are inside, and I love you.”
“Cody…” she trailed off breathlessly.
“Just tell me if there are any other big things coming,” I grinned, and she smiled tearfully in response. “I can handle it if I brace for it. You’re worth it.”
“No more skeletons in my closet. Nothing else to hide. I’m an open book now.”
Relief flooded through my body, making my knees turn weak as I lowered my lips to hers once more.
“Good,” I said, placing a short, firm kiss to her lips. “I can’t wait to read you.”
Ilsa had given up her apartment before she left, so she and Max stayed with me at the Mofos’ house for a bit.
Honestly, I tiptoed around the idea of getting a place, like I had suggested right before things had gone to shit before. I was somewhat hesitant to bring it up again, though. Everything was so new and a bit fragile. I didn’t want to send her running.
So, as much as I didn’t want to be without her, not even for a minute, I tried to give her some time to adjust. To come to terms with the horror of Simon’s psychotic episode. To find closure in his death.
After she disappeared from the hospital, she went to Indianapolis and essentially sold everything she suddenly solely owned. She set aside a little money to start fresh, just enough to leave Indy behind her.
She donated the rest to the women’s shelter that had been too packed to take her in. Her endowment turned out to be a pretty hefty sum considering the house, cars, and other belongings. When she gifted the money, she set strict parameters for them to use it to increase the capacity of their facility. More beds so more women could find their way out of their own nightmares.
While she was in Indy, her parents came to see her, apologizing and saying they thought she had just been overreacting. They tried to ease their own guilty consciences by offering her support. They claimed they wanted to bond with their grandson, a child they’d never shown any interest in before.
But it was too little too late.
Ilsa more or less told them to fuck off before she drove out of Indy… and headed for Montana.
She came to see me in spite of the self-reproach festering in her heart, the staggering and suffocating awareness that Simon could have killed me. If his aim had been just a little bit better, or if he’d only been a little bit faster or stronger.
She shouldered that guilt, unable to imagine that I wouldn’t blame her, that others who loved me—my parents and my friends—wouldn’t blame her as well. So much that she almost didn’t come to see me at all.
In the end, though, she simply had to.
She loved me.
As much as I wanted to fix everything for her, to magically make it all better, I knew she needed to deal with the traumatic events that had taken place. More than ever, she needed patience and understanding. She needed me to love her like nobody ever had before. She sure as hell didn’t need me turning into a chick and demanding all kinds of commitment.
As it turned out, I didn’t even have to. I had a little help.
She’d been back in Ophir for about a week when, one day while I was at work, my mom stopped by.
At the hospital after I’d been shot, Ilsa had stayed beside me until she knew I’d be okay. From what the doctors and nurses and my friends said, she didn’t leave my side.
Not long before my parents got to the hospital, though, she panicked and ran. She disappeared into the night, unable to bear witness to the pain she’d caused. She thought my parents would hate her.
She thought my parents should hate her.
Because she still thought that way, she damn near had a heart attack when my mother pulled up to the house. With an ominous weight in her chest, she took a deep breath, opened the door, and, as she told me later, things sorta went down like this…
“Hi, sweetheart,” my mom said.
Sweet. Concerned. Worried.
And Ilsa was all like, Wait, what?
Not the greeting she’d had been expecting. She stood there gaping at my mom, feeling like her jaw had hit the floor.
“Can I come in?” my mom asked, seeming a bit nervous herself.
Ilsa nodded dumbly and stepped back.
Mom walked through the kitchen and into the great room, looking around before turning back to Ilsa.
“So where’s that sweet little boy of yours?” Mom asked with a soft smile.
“He’s upstairs, napping.”
Mom looked around the room again, decorated in beer signs and not much else. “This house…” she murmured, “it probably isn’t the best place for him.”
Ilsa’s heart sank, even though this was more or less what she had expected. She knew my folks were nice, that my mom wasn’t going to come in screeching at her or something. My mother’s words, albeit polite, compounded her self-condemnation.
“I know,” Ilsa replied sadly, and she steeled herself for what was to come. “It’s great for twenty-something-year-old guys. Not so much for an almost-toddler guy. I’m just figuring out… where to go next.”
My mother gave her a long, considerate look. “Do you love my son?” she finally asked.
“I do, very much. So much it hurts. Enough to—” Ilsa’s voice cracked, “—enough to leave.”
She waited for my mom to deal the crushing blow, to hear that she wasn’t wanted. That she would never be accepted. That she should leave and let me go if she loved me so much.
But my mom tossed a curveball her way.
“There’s a small house a couple blocks down from us,” my mom began. “It has two bedrooms and an adorable kitchen. There’s a park nearby. The neighborhood is wonderful. I raised my boys there.
”
Ilsa frowned in confusion, unsure where my mother was going with this.
“You’d probably grow out of it pretty fast,” Mom said thoughtfully, “especially if you have more kids. It could get pretty cramped.”
Ilsa remained quiet, completely at a loss, but still sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“But,” Mom continued, “it is a really cute place. It would be a wonderful house to start out in, and you’d be right down the street from us. Far enough to give you some privacy, but close enough that… well, I could help out with Max.”
“You could help with Max?” Ilsa repeated in wonder.
“Well, if you needed me to. I didn’t know if you were planning to work or maybe to go to school again since you weren’t able to finish before.”
“So… you want to be Max’s babysitter?”
My mom stepped closer and shook her head with a warm smile.
“Honey, my son loves you. That boy is kind of a carbon copy of his dad, so I know what I’m talking about when I say he loves hard… with all of his heart. There’s not a doubt in my mind that you are the one for him. He wants to marry you and spend the rest of his life with you. So, no, I’m not thinking I’m going to be Max’s sitter. I’m thinking I’m going to be Max’s gramma.”
Ilsa stood in shock while my mom’s words sank in.
And then she burst into tears.
When I got home, I found her sobbing on my mom’s shoulder.
“Sooo… what’s going on?” I asked cautiously as I walked in the door.
“Well, Cody,” my mom answered, “don’t be mad, but I think I sorta proposed to your girlfriend for you.”
“You… um… what?”
“She needs some time though, you know. She’s been through a lot lately, so don’t push her into doing anything too soon. When the time comes, we will help with the wedding and everything.”
I was starting to think my mom had cracked.
She smiled and used her thumb to wipe the tears from Ilsa’s cheeks, followed with a sidelong glance in my direction.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, son,” she said, “because you and your brother were my entire world, but I always wanted a girl.”
I raised an eyebrow and feigned insult. “Yeah, Mom… that doesn’t hurt my feelings at all.”
She scoffed at me. “Oh, you know what I mean. I just… you boys didn’t do anything fun.” She wrinkled her nose. “No, wait. That’s not right either. You guys liked cars and music and were fun in your own ways. It’s just…” Her hand came up to brush the hair out from Ilsa’s tearstained cheek, and my mother gave her a tender smile. “I didn’t get to buy pretty dresses or fix anyone’s hair or paint little fingernails.”
Yep, she had cracked.
She frowned back over at me. “You guys don’t even have a real appreciation for sparkly stuff.”
“Mom, you know Ilsa’s not a little kid, right.”
Mom looked at Ilsa with mock frustration. “He doesn’t get it at all,” she sighed with a roll of her eyes, making Ilsa giggle through her tears.
It was the most beautiful sound.
“Well,” Mom said, “I better get going.” She reached in her purse to pull out a slip of paper, handing it to Ilsa. “Here’s the address of that house, and there’s a phone number if you want to call about it.”
“What house?” I asked.
My mom continued on talking to Ilsa like I wasn’t even there. “I may have, um… already told them you might possibly be interested,” she said nonchalantly with a flip of her hand.
“Mom, what house?” I repeated, looking back and forth between the two of them.
“Ilsa will fill you in, darling,” she murmured, heading for the door and stopping to kiss my cheek on her way out.
I contemplated Ilsa as she stared at the piece of paper with the most incredibly hopeful expression I’ve ever seen.
“Oh, and Cody,” my mom said, “just to clarify, I wasn’t thinking of Ilsa as my own personal doll. I was thinking more along the lines of dressing up my future granddaughter.”
Leaving us with that little nugget, my mom smiled and closed the door behind her.
One year later…
I lightly tapped the drumstick on the snare, and again.
Pop. Pop.
“My turn!”
From my lap, lacking a bit of my coordination, Max did the same. Sorta.
Pop. Pop.
I reached up and lightly hit the cymbal.
Pshp!
Max squealed. “Aaaaahhhh! Me! Me! Meeeee!” And he wailed on it.
Pshhhhhhhhhppppppp!
Then I did a quick single stroke roll. Right-left-right-left followed by another right-left-right-left. Rapid and smooth. Max parroted his version, which meant banging on both drums as hard and fast as his little arms could go.
I went for the money beat—hats on eighths, kick on one and three, snare on two and four. Max’s focus tried to follow my movements, then turned his wide blue eyes up to me with a giggle. I did it again, and he giggled harder. I did it a third time, and he just kinda went nuts, wailing on my set with his sticks flying.
He needed a little practice.
He had a couple months before he turned three yet, though, so we had plenty of time. We had years.
I tapped on the double foot pedal.
WHOOF!
His eyes went wide and he looked up at me, wondering how I’d managed the deep thump of the base drum when I hadn’t moved my hands. I watched him closely and did it again. He grinned up at me like I was magic. One more time and he had me all figured out. He wiggled down to floor in a flash, putting all his little boy weight on the pedal as he tried to make it WHOOF, too.
God, I loved this kid.
Life was changing, but for the good.
The darkness of the past behind her, Ilsa came out of her shell, became more than I ever thought she could be. She was never going to be outspoken and in-your-face. It simply wasn’t in her nature. However, nowadays she easily smiled and laughed and chatted. Once a quiet shadow, doing everything she could to not be noticed, she suddenly felt free to show people the amazing, sweet soul inside.
She felt free to live.
Best of all, she felt free to love me.
And love me she did. That spark between us survived the trauma and the time apart. The embers stayed alive, burning inside our hearts while she was gone. When she came back to me, when we touched, it was like fireworks lighting the world around us. It was beautiful and awesome and even better than I had ever imagined.
We did end up moving into the house my mom had discovered. In fact, Ilsa got so excited telling me about it that we woke Max up from his nap and went to see it almost immediately. I wasn’t about to pass up this opportunity, and I made a mental note to buy my mom some fucking flowers for stepping in.
The house really was perfect.
A little craftsman style bungalow with a wide front porch and a picket fence.
No shit… a fucking picket fence that had Ilsa tearing up again and face-planting into my chest. Ilsa face-planting into my chest had Max face-planting into my chest with a giggle, thinking it was some kind of game.
The yard had daylilies growing along the front, and tall shady trees. There was an awesome man-perk, too. It had a huge garage—almost bigger than the house itself—that was insulated and heated, with enough room to park two cars and fit a drum set off to the side.
With the privacy and commitment of our place, Ilsa truly came alive and, quite honestly, I couldn’t imagine things getting any better. Yet every day, when I came home from work to what had truly become my family, the awesomeness surpassed what it had been the day before.
Through it all, Ilsa stayed Ilsa in name.
She told me Isabelle was a frightened, fragile creature who hid from the pain of life. A child of overbearing parents and a wife to a monster of a man.
Ilsa, though… Ilsa was free. Strong. Undaunted and full of hope. O
ccasionally afraid of the unknown, but brave enough to push through her fear to the reward on the other side.
So she stayed Ilsa, which totally worked for me. She was always Ilsa to me anyhow.
Ilsa was the love of my life.
Fast forward a few months, through winter and into spring. Christmas came and went (when we spoiled Max silly), as did Valentine’s Day (when I spoiled Ilsa silly). Things were perfect.
Except maybe for the whole K-pop thing.
I was outvoted there, though. Max loved it even more than Ilsa did. Something about the electronic beat really got his little toddler groove going, and he was so fucking cute it was hard not to get all warm and fuzzy watching him.
I still tried to steer him towards other music that was more to my taste. I played him AC/DC (he totally rocked out to Thunderstruck) and Nirvana (he wasn’t so crazy about them). Some he dug, some he didn’t. Sadly, I don’t think he liked any of it as much as K-pop.
In the grand scheme of things, though, I could live with K-pop if it meant I got to live with them.
Max and I had resumed our morning man time, although this morning we decided to do it out in the garage. Me with my coffee, him with his ‘mook.’ Sitting in front of the drum set while we played around with the beat that seemed to pulse through life around us. The kid was a natural.
I looked up to see Ilsa standing in the doorway watching us. Wearing flannel sleep pants and one of my old hoodies, her hair mussed from sleep, and holding a steaming cup of coffee cradled in her hands, she glowed with a contentment that warmed the air around her. The crisp spring morning shone in through the doorway behind her, the light catching in the facets of the rock on her left ring finger. A ring I’d placed there a few months before.
A year to the day from that night I had driven her up Pipestone Pass, I had gotten my mom to babysit, covered Ilsa’s eyes with a scarf, and put her on the back of my bike. As the sun set, we rode up the winding road, her arms wrapped around my waist and with her body pressed firmly up against me, holding me tight.
Easy Little Lick (Copperline #3) Page 19
