I turned off the lamp and put my tablet on the bedside table, cuddling deep under the covers. We laid there, not saying anything, for what seemed like a long time. In the silence, there was an undercurrent of tension, where it almost felt like we were both waiting on the other to be the first to break, and then finally…
“Charlie.”
There was something in his voice I couldn’t ignore. A little raspier than usual, from the smoke in the air, and edged with pain, need, and… passion. My body still recognized it, and responded. The way he spoke my name… nothing else needed to be said.
My eyes were adjusted to the bit of moonlight streaming through the gap in the curtains, so I used that to find him, then straddled him in the semi dark. I lowered my face to his, touching foreheads, brushing my lips against his, little sucks, gentle bites, before I finally pressed my lips to his and kissed him.
I felt it immediately. That ever-present sense of rightness that occurred when I was with him, and that light shone even brighter now. I pushed my tongue into his mouth to gain entry, then sucked his, pulling an appreciative groan from him.
Nixon’s hands slipped up my legs, then up my oversized tee shirt, gripping and kneading my ass before he slid them up to cup my breasts. As I reached behind me to free him from his boxers, the decision to skip panties suddenly felt prophetically right.
He sat up, capturing my mouth in another kiss as I slid down onto him, eliciting another, louder groan. In the dark, Nixon’s hands touched and teased everything he could reach as I began to ride him, wrapping my arms around his neck to draw him close.
Damn he felt good. Heavy, and thick, and right, and familiar, and… like home.
I cupped his chin, tilting his head back so that he was looking at me in the shadowy light. “Tomorrow,” I whispered, “we have to talk.”
“And what about tonight?” He dropped his mouth to my neck, teasing the area with openmouthed kisses before he looked up at me again.
“Tonight… I love you.”
Nixon’s eyes widened for a moment, and then he gave me a little grin before pulling me into another kiss. “I love you too.”
fifteen.
charlie.
Lucky.
That’s how I felt when I woke up to the aroma of breakfast sausage and sweet potato pancakes.
Not because it meant that Nixon was cooking for me — that was a perk, of course — but because it meant that he was still able to. Because he was here.
Alive.
Out of nowhere, a sob built in my throat, and I rolled over, burying my face in my pillow. Somehow, even though he’d used my soap, the pillowcase, the sheets, everything, all of it smelled like him — a scent I could have easily never experienced again.
When I saw him last night, looking so out of it, so distraught, it was as if my own feelings were suspended, in favor of tending to him. Now, he was safe, and well enough to be up cooking my favorite breakfast, and I guess my body was tired of holding on to that well of relief, because it overflowed in a stream of uncontrollable tears.
I kept my face tucked into the pillow so Nixon wouldn’t hear, and stayed there, hoping for eventual calm, but it didn’t come before the door to the bedroom swung open. Nix came in humming under his breath, his footsteps padding across the floor as he approached my side of the bed. One of my heavy porcelain plates made a distinctive thump as he sat it down on the bedside table, then knelt beside the bed.
Neither of us said anything for a moment, until Nix reached up, running a hand across the small of my back. “You ignoring me this morning?”
At that, I turned my head toward him, and as soon as he saw the moisture on my face, his eyes brightened in understanding. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything I was out of the bed and wrapping my arms around his neck, nearly knocking him to the floor. He righted himself quickly, chuckling as he returned my embrace.
I burrowed my face in his neck as I broke into a fresh round of sobs, and he squeezed me tighter, pulling me closer as he gently rubbed my back. It was surreal, thinking about the fact that I may have never felt this again. What if he had been lost in that fire, before we’d ever even talked it through?
But I didn’t want to think about that.
As my tears subsided, I sat back to look at him. Run my fingers over his short hair, gently tug his beard, cup his face in my hands, and just touch him, because I could. Because he let me. Nixon endured my harassment, then planted a kiss on my forehead.
“You done?” he asked, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
I nodded. “For now.”
For a long moment, I just stared at him, couldn’t pull my eyes away. Then I reached to touch his face again, and pressed my forehead against his. “Nix… last night… I saw them putting Mr. Parker’s body in that ambulance, and I thought it was you. I…” I stopped as a fresh round of tears bubbled forth, and Nixon pulled me back down to his shoulder. “I don’t know what I would have done if that had been you. If I’d lost you, I—“
“Shh. You didn’t though, right? I’m still here.”
“I know, but—“
Nixon tipped up my chin and kissed me, effectively shutting me up. “But nothing. It was a long night… I want you to eat, okay? Can you do that for me?”
I gave him a reluctant nod, then accepted his help back up, and into the bed where he put a tray across my lap, then placed my plate in front of me.
“Eat,” he gently commanded, then left me alone in the room. A few moments later, I heard his voice again, but no one else’s, and concluded he was on the phone. I glanced over at the bedside table.
My phone.
My brow furrowed in confusion for a moment, wondering how he was able to use my phone, when it had a lock code on it. He certainly hadn’t asked, and I hadn’t told, but then I remembered that this was Nixon, who knew me like the back of his hand. It probably hadn’t taken much to figure out that I still used the same randomly made up code I’d used when we were together.
I laughed a little, then began to eat, quickly realizing that I was hungrier than I thought I was. I finished my plate, took a shower, dressed in lounging shorts and a tee shirt, then changed the bed to fresh linens. When I was done, I went to find Nixon.
I found him in the kitchen, face contorted in pain as he stretched his shoulder. From where I was, he couldn’t see me, so I continued watching as he cursed under his breath, then stopped the stretch to rotate his arm.
“Nix…”
When he heard my voice, he tried to shift his expression, but I’d already seen it. “What’s wrong with your shoulder?”
“Nothing. Just feeling a little stiff this morning.”
“Your expression didn’t seem like it was nothing.” I lifted an eyebrow at him as I ventured further into the kitchen, and placed my plate in the sink. I whipped around to face him when something occurred to me. “Nixon, did you hurt yourself last night?”
“Ah, damn, Charlie don’t start fussing over—“
“You refused treatment, didn’t you?”
“Baby—“
“Mmhmm.” I tried to fight a smile as he reached up to scratch his head. “You want me to massage it for you?”
He grinned. “I mean… I’m not gonna refuse an opportunity to get rubbed on.”
“Of course not. Come on,” I said, leading him to the living room. I directed him to the floor in front of the couch, went and grabbed the coconut oil from my bathroom, then sat down with him between my legs.
I started with the left side, which was the one giving him problems. He talked to me about fire investigations and insurance claims while I kneaded and massaged until his grunts of pain disappeared. Nixon grabbed me by the leg, kissing the inside of my knee before he looked back, his eyes filled with gratitude.
But you said it was nothing. Men.
I simply smiled, then moved to his other shoulder. He was talking about how long it might take to know anything when my hands stilled over his skin.
I tuned him out as I focused on the ink tattooed in his skin at that spot.
“Noah.”
Nixon grew quiet, then wrapped an arm around my leg as he slowly turned around.
A lump formed in my throat as I met his gaze. “It’s a good name.” I ran my fingers over the tiny footprints, surrounded by angel wings. Below that, the date of the day he should have been born. Above it… his name. “Thank you, for naming him. He deserved that.”
“Baby… come here.”
Tears pricked my eyes as I moved down to the floor with Nix, and allowed him to pull me into his arms. He cupped my head against his chest, and I relaxed into his embrace, allowing both of us something we’d never had before: I let him hold me while I cried over our lost child.
Nixon said nothing, but kept me tight against him, gently stroking my back as I let out quiet sobs. After a few long moments, the tears stopped, and that’s when he finally spoke.
“You know… this kinda feels like the same thing, you know?”
I pulled back, looking up at him with confusion. “What does?”
“Losing Pot Liquor. It’s like losing another baby.”
The glassiness in his eyes made my own well with tears again, but I swallowed them, in favor of listening.
“It’s almost the same pain. The same sense of… disillusionment. The same feeling like… this shit can’t be forreal, you know? Even though you know it is, cause you saw it for yourself. Just doesn’t even feel like reality.”
I nodded. Pot Liquor wasn’t just a business venture for us. It was kind of like a baby, and we referred to it as our love child often enough. Something beautiful, born of our desire to work, and grow, and build something together, based in the love we had for each other. Hell, we were still kids then ourselves. We were only 24 years old, with a little money in the bank, a little parental generosity, and a little, but still scary, small business loan.
The loan was long paid off, the parents’ kindness returned, and our own bank accounts were replenished… but now the restaurant was gone.
“You know, the guys are gonna go by. Eddie, Roman, Carter, and Grant knows all of that building safety stuff, so he’s gonna go with them. Get the stuff out of the safe for us, see if anything is salvageable. And I… I just can’t make myself go. I want to, and I feel like I should, but that’s just like…the final acknowledgement of this fucked up thing, and I don’t want to do that again.”
“Again?”
I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard, looking away from me as he nodded. “Yeah. The day they… the day Noah was born. You were knocked out, and… they let me hold him.” He shook his head, then ran his tongue over his lips. “I should have said no. But like I said, you were still unconscious, and I just felt like one of us should. You think doing a certain thing will make you feel better, until you’re actually doing it, and you realize no… this made it a lot fucking worse.”
Yeah.
I did.
He was telling me something I’d never known about those awful two days. There was a lot I didn’t know, because the memories weren’t there, either unformed, because of my mental state, or blocked by grief. Oh, and I wouldn’t let him talk to me about it. I tried to just erase it all from my head, and by the time I realized that would never happen, Nixon and I were already broken up, and it no longer felt okay to ask.
As if he could hear the unformed question in my mind, Nixon pulled me close, planting a kiss on my head before he spoke. “I was hurt. Worst pain I’d ever felt when the doctor told us Noah had passed away. But you flipped out, so I was just trying to get you home, since they said you would probably go into labor soon, and that would be easier on you than if they induced. I remember not wanting to take you home, because you were… just devastated, you know? I got you home and I tried to calm you down, but you didn’t want me to touch you. You ended up crying yourself to sleep. While you were sleeping, I went downstairs, to… get myself together.”
He paused there, to clear his throat. This was one of the parts I did remember, and I was so used to Nix being the “strong” one that it didn’t surprise me at all for him to gloss over what “getting himself together” really meant.
“Anyway, I looked up, and you were there. I didn’t even hear you come down, or know how long you’d been there, but the look on your face was like you were hurt, and confused, and just… out of it. You didn’t say anything, just went back up to the apartment, and a few minutes later… something told me to go check on you. When I got up there…. It was a mess. You were in the kitchen, juice and soda everywhere, and while you were drinking, you kept saying “I’ll get him back for you,” like you thought I was blaming you, or something.”
He stopped again, shifting as if he was uncomfortable saying whatever happened next.
“Nix… what is it? Did… did something happen?” I pulled away, so that I could see his face, and he gave a heavy sigh as he dropped his eyes.
“You… uh… your eyes… it was like they were blank. Like you were in there, somewhere, but your body was on autopilot, and I guess… the grief just took over. You got a knife, and you started telling me that the baby was probably suffocating, and if you could just get him out, you could help… it was like something in you had just snapped. That’s when I decided to take you back to the hospital.”
I raised my hand to cover my mouth, trying to catch my suddenly short breath. “I… Nixon, are you serious?”
Almost reluctantly, he nodded. “When I got you to the hospital, your vitals were all over the place. They gave you something to calm you down, and once that worked, they decided to go ahead and induce labor. Then everything went wrong again. Your blood pressure dropped too low, and the labor wasn’t progressing, and then your vitals went nuts again, and they told me they had to get the baby out now, so they gave you a C-section, and I couldn’t go back there with you. Scariest fucking hour of my life, cause… shit, I thought maybe I was about to lose you too. Then… when it was all over… you just didn’t want to talk about it. None of it. You would get so upset, and shut down, or kick me out of the room, so I finally just stopped trying to talk about it.”
“And then… I started pretending like I was okay.”
“Yeah.” He drew me close again, tipping up my chin to kiss me. “Thank you, for not pushing me away again.”
I shook my head, swallowing back tears as they threatened to start again. “You don’t have to thank me for doing what I should do. I’m sorry for being selfish. You needed to grieve, and I was so busy just trying to get away from the pain that I didn’t even consider you. And I’m so sorry for that.”
Nixon kissed me again, reaching up to wipe away the stray tears that escaped down my cheeks. “You were distraught, baby. I didn’t quite get it then, but I do now. I can’t hold that against you. I’m not holding it against you… okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed, managing a little smile through my tears as Nix cupped my face in his hands.
When I met his gaze, Nixon’s expression turned serious again, the sadness in his eyes morphing into regret. “I’m the one who should be apologizing.”
“For what?”
He scoffed, then used his thumb to caress my face. “You know what.”
I did, but I looked away, leaning to rest my head on his shoulder. For a long moment, neither of us said anything, then finally, I cleared my throat. “Why, Nix? I mean… I get that I backed you into a corner, tried to force you into marriage but… you just walked away. Then slept with someone else. I can accept that I shouldn’t have made a demand on you, forced you to make a choice… but I need you to help me understand why you did what you did.”
Nixon sighed, then began stroking my arm. “Okay. You knew I loved you, right? Is that a fair statement to make?”
I nodded.
“And you knew that I would do pretty much anything for you, right? And that wasn’t just talk, either. Anything you wanted that was within my power to give, I gave it to you, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay. Baby… being with you, wasn’t something I took lightly. I knew, without a doubt, that I wanted you in my life, forever. That night, when you were listing off all your positive qualities, I agreed with every single one. Charlie, you were — hell, are — it for me. The one person I could see my future with, clearly, so I made sure to fulfill my roles, protector, provider, friend, lover… whatever you needed me to give you, I gave. Whatever you needed me to do for you, I did. But that night… it was like none of that mattered. Despite everything else, all of sudden I had to give you a ring in order to prove it.
And… I’m not gonna lie, that pissed me off. Especially when you knew my views on marriage. How many times did you have to talk me outta running away from home? How many days did me, you, and Carter skip senior year because you were trying to cheer me up after my parents got into it? I grew up with that shit, my pops drilling into my head to never get married, it fucks everything up… that’s what I saw. With my own eyes, I saw the clear difference. Before the wedding, they were happy. Afterwards, everything went to shit. I didn’t want that for us, baby. Never. But you were forcing me to choose. Confirm that I loved you by condemning our relationship to fail, so we could end up hating each other, or break up now and save ourselves the trouble. That’s what those choices sounded like to me.
So… I chose to walk away. I shouldn’t have. I should have stayed, forced you to talk to me, refused to make a choice between two fucked up options. But I was pissed off. It’s like… if a ring was the thing that proved my love, after I’ve spent six years doing my damndest to be the best man I could possibly be for you… what was the point anyway? You weren’t asking for time, for attention, for more affection, for me to give you flowers more often, take you out more, hell, to clean up around the house. You needed a thing. And I had the “thing”. I’d already bought the ring, before you got pregnant, because I knew you wanted it. I just had to figure if and how I could get around my own bullshit to give you what you wanted it. But then you demanded it. Everything I did wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough, unless I gave you this thing. I mean… I know better now, after my mom talked some sense into my head, but back then, right in that moment, it just felt like it was over anyway.”
Fall In Love Again (Serendipitous Love Book 3) Page 15
