by Susan Sey
“Yeah, fools don’t last long around here. And that’s why, when the FBI uses your books to put everybody but you in jail, somebody--God, everybody--is going to connect the dots.” She swallowed back a choking wave of terror and pulled her hand away from his. “They won’t hesitate, Ty. They’ll kill you.”
“Not if I give them other dots to connect.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What does that mean?”
“That deal I made with the feds? It’s a little more complicated than I first made out. I’m not getting jail time, but I am getting probation and a shit load of community service.” He twirled the clinic key absently through his fingers. “Service I was already planning on, but still. It’s something. The Dog Crew sees me take a slap, get a record, do my probation. Top it off with Jass’ disappearance and--”
“Wait, Jass’ what?”
“She can’t stay here, MJ. You know that. People around here look at her and see a traitor. They look at that baby and see the enemy. And Jass, she looks around and sees nothing but the bastards who killed her lover. Her baby’s daddy. Is it such a stretch to think a girl like that might turn a stolen lap top over to the FBI and disappear?”
Mary Jane lifted skeptical brows. “Disappear where exactly?”
“Michigan, I think. Some little town outside Detroit. Bunch of apple orchards or something? I don’t know. She has family there. But it’s a fresh start and the FBI is willing to get her there clean and quick.”
She struggled against the hope trying to sneak onto her face. “It’s risky,” she said finally. “Really risky.”
“I know. But what else can I do? This is my home, MJ. And you’re my heart. I won’t leave either of you behind, not ever again.” He reached out, took her hand. “This is my fresh start, too. Right here.”
“Are we talking about me or this building?”
“For now? Let’s talk about the building. I have plans for this place. You want to hear them?”
“Your business plan? Yeah, that I’d like to hear.”
His smile broke slow and warm over the perfection of his face, and Mary Jane wanted to throw herself into his lap and promise him anything. But she was just old enough, just wise enough, just burned enough, to hold back.
“But beyond the professional?” she said. She slipped her hand free, folded it into her lap. “I don’t think so. Not right now.”
“I’m a patient man, MJ. I can wait. But for now--” He held out his hand for a shake, all business. “To the future.”
She looked hard into his eyes, wondered what she’d find there tomorrow, the day after. She was a fool, she told herself. But she shook his hand.
“To the future.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Nixie slid a perfect omelet from the sauté pan onto a plate and flipped off the burner. She smirked at the stove.
“Played you like a fiddle, mon ami.”
The stove maintained a stony silence. She almost wished it would start talking to her again. It was all in her head, of course, but even a make-believe fight with a snooty stove would be a nice change of pace from the non-conversations she’d been having with nobody all week.
She sat down at the pretty café table cozied up to the window in her breakfast nook, forked up a fluffy mouthful of rosemary and goat cheese omelet and chewed with a determined enjoyment. She had conquered the damn stove. She had reclaimed her life. She was--
The doorbell rang and she leaped to her feet, her heart pounding into her throat, hope blooming in her chest.
She was goddamn lonely, was what she was.
She raced to the door, flung it open without even checking the peep hole.
“Mom.” She didn’t bother to disguise her disappointment. What, she really thought Erik was going to turn up at her door one of these days with a bouquet of roses, a ring and a couple tickets to Fiji? After everything she’d said, she was darn lucky anybody rang the bell at all.
Still, it had been barely a week since Sloan had dealt out her final rejection of motherhood. Just because Nixie had other, larger wounds didn’t mean this one wasn’t still bleeding. “What are you doing here?”
Sloan strolled into the apartment with an assurance that had Nixie backing up automatically to make room. “What, I need an excuse to visit my only child?”
Nixie shut the door and followed her mother into the apartment, the old bitterness welling up, tightening her throat. Nixie seized on it with a shaming gratitude. After the past week, she was used to living with a constant, weeping ache, but at least this was pain from a different source. That was something.
“Last I checked you didn’t have a child,” Nixie said, taking a savage satisfaction in spewing some of the ugliness inside onto somebody else. “You had a mission and that was plenty for you. Why the sudden desire to play mommy?”
Sloan stopped in the living room, her hands folded in front of her, her eyes alive with a shimmering pain that matched Nixie’s own. That small display of honest emotion was enough to startle Nixie into silence but what came next stunned her into utter disorientation.
“I deserve that,” Sloan said quietly. “That and more. God knows, after what I’ve done to you over the years, I have no right to give motherly advice. But your little speech the other night was possibly the bravest, most courageous stand I’ve ever seen another person take. You inspired me, Nixie. We were both just enduring life, but you stood up and said no. You demanded more and now I am, too.” She reached one tentative hand into the space between them but it faltered and dropped before she made contact. “I have never been more proud of you. God knows I haven’t acted like it, but I do love you. And that’s why I’m going to say this to you.”
Nixie frowned, caught between the old bitterness and a ridiculous flutter of hope. “Say what?”
“Get dressed.”
Nixie squashed the stupid spurt of disappointment. This was Sloan, after all. What had she expected? She waved a hand at her yoga pants and tank top. “I am dressed.”
“No, honey, dressed. We’re going out.”
Nixie glanced toward the window, to the bustling streets of DC. Where she ought to be carving out a new life for herself with the freedom she’d paid so dearly for.
A life that wouldn’t include Erik. His choice, not hers, no matter what she said. A life that might include Sloan, though not the mother she’d always longed for.
“I’m not ready yet,” Nixie said. She looked away, didn’t want Sloan to see the fear, the raw hurt that simply wouldn’t abate. “I need more time.”
Sloan didn’t falter this time. She reached out and took Nixie’s chin in long, cool fingers, forced her to meet those famous silver eyes. Eyes that held compassion but not a single spark of sympathy.
“No,” Sloan said. “No more time. I know something about heart break, Nixie. When your father died, I thought I’d died with him. God knows I wanted to. The grief, my God. It swallowed me whole and I let it. I hid inside that insane sorrow because it was easier to let it define me than to get over it and risk that kind of pain ever again.”
Nixie stared at her mother, trying desperately to keep her chin from wobbling. “I can see the wisdom in that,” she managed. Please, she thought. Don’t let me cry in front of Sloan.
“It wasn’t wisdom, Nixie,” she said gently. “It was cowardice. And it cost me everything from my self-respect to my precious baby girl.”
Tears rushed into Nixie’s eyes and she tried to turn away but Sloan held fast.
“Don’t misunderstand, Nixie,” Sloan said. “I’m not excusing myself. Grief is no justification for what I’ve done to you. But you need to know that I love you. I have always loved you. But I wasn’t brave enough to act on it. I couldn’t get out from under the pain you’re trapped under right now. The pain I can see in your face.”
Nixie stopped struggling, just let her mother touch her cheeks with gentle fingers, brush away the tears that fell there. Because she finally understood. She understood it all. Only now with this great beast of
anguish crouching inside her, the one she was terrified would never leave, could she grasp the kind of pain that would drive a woman’s heart as far underground as Sloan’s. The knowledge didn’t erase a life’s worth of scarring, but it gave her enough room, just barely enough room for a new perspective. For forgiveness. For putting down some small part of her burden of pain.
She reached up, laid her hands over her mother’s and closed her eyes, soaking in the simple comfort of her touch.
Sloan cleared a suspiciously tight-sounding throat. “But I was a coward, Nixie, while you most assuredly are not. There’s too much of your father in you for that and you’re done hiding now, do you hear me?”
“I’m not hiding,” Nixie said, unconvincing even to her own ears.
“You’re done pitying yourself, too.” Sloan went on as if Nixie hadn’t spoken. “The kind of life you’re after, the kind you splashed out for last week? It costs, Nixie.” Sloan put both hands in Nixie’s shoulders and drilled her with an uncompromising gaze. “Now the only question is, are you willing to pay for it?”
Nixie stared into her mother’s eyes, into the mingled sternness and compassion she found there. Into the bottomless love she’d been looking for all her life.
She sighed. “Yeah, all right,” she said. “No point wasting a good scene, I guess.”
Sloan smiled. “There’s my girl. Now go get dressed. I want to show you something.” She paused. “Some make up wouldn’t kill you, either.”
The cab that dropped them at the clinic didn’t linger. If it hadn’t been Sloan Leighton doing the asking, Nixie doubted the guy would’ve ventured into Anacostia at all. As it was, he shot away from the curb like he’d been fired from a cannon.
Nixie wished like hell she was with him.
“It’s Sunday,” she said. “The clinic’s closed until noon. Can we please go home now?”
“No,” Sloan said, tucking a hand into Nixie’s elbow and hauling her toward the alley. “You need to see this.”
“For the last time, see what?”
Sloan tapped a few buttons on her cell phone. “We’re here,” she said and flipped the phone shut. Nixie frowned at her.
“Who was--”
The clinic’s rear door swung open. “Come on in,” Mary Jane said. “They’re just starting.”
Sloan hustled Nixie into the narrow hallway, a finger to her lips as they followed Mary Jane toward the front of the building.
“Starting what?” Nixie asked, but nobody answered. They moved into the receptionist’s pen where Tyrese sat twisting idly in Wanda’s chair. Nixie blinked at him in surprise. He nodded at her then turned back to the scene unfolding in the waiting room.
Nixie followed his gaze to the rows of ugly chairs, and her heart took a hard thump when she saw Erik sitting there with his mother and Missy Jensen from Channel Four News.
She didn’t think, didn’t blink, didn’t breathe. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from him, the planes of his face, the warm wheat of his hair, that super-hero jaw of his. Those lightning strike eyes. Those strong, square hands on the knees of his jeans. Everything in her rose up and yearned toward him.
I am an idiot, she thought. I’m an idiot and my heart has a death wish. But she didn’t look away.
Sloan’s hand found hers, and Nixie gripped it with desperate strength. “Mom, what is this?” she asked.
“Just listen, okay? Listen to him. Give him a chance.”
Mary Jane took her other hand, squeezed it and gave her an encouraging smile. Nixie resigned herself to living through whatever the next ten minutes would hold and turned her attention to the waiting room.
“So Erik,” Missy said, camera man hovering behind her shoulder, “you’re a pretty private guy.”
Erik nodded. “I grew up on the campaign trail. I learned early on to guard what’s private or find it on the front page of The Post.”
“I think it’s fair to say you’ve done an excellent job. Most people have no idea you’re Senator Larsen’s son, nor that you share a cause.”
“Children’s health, yes.” He smiled but his eyes stayed serious. “Part of keeping my private life private means not playing the mommy card every time I want or need some attention, even when it’s for a good cause.”
“And yet we’re here today because you and your mother have co-authored a bill that would provide funding to expand neighborhood clinics like this one. After so many years of refusing to let your mother get involved with your professional life, why the sudden change of heart?”
“Change of heart. Funny you should use that phrase.” Erik paused. “I did have a change of heart. And I owe somebody an explanation for that.” He swiveled in the chair, shaded his eyes with the flat of his hand and squinted toward the receptionist’s pen. “Nixie? Will you come out here please?”
“What?” Her eyes flew to Sloan’s, wide and panicked. “You dragged me out of my apartment to get humiliated on live TV again?”
“Now Nixie--”
“Oh no. I am so not going out there.” She yanked her hands free of the women on either side of her and headed for the rear hallway. Mary Jane and Sloan were fast on those short little legs, though, and tougher than they looked. The next thing Nixie knew, she was standing in the blinding glare of the spotlight.
“Nixie,” Erik rose to stand in front of her. “I have something to say to you.”
“And you feel like you should say it in front of a TV audience?”
“I hurt you in front of all those people, it only seems fair that I should fix it in front of them, too.”
“Of course,” she muttered. “God forbid any small humiliation in my life should play out behind closed doors.”
“That’s just it. That’s what this is all about. I’m done pushing the women I love away because they have the guts to live bigger lives than I do. I’m done closing doors. I’m finally ready to open them up.”
She stared at him, her stupid, hopeful heart jammed in her throat. “What does that mean?”
“It means I’ve finally pulled my head out of my ass and asked my mom for her help keeping the clinic open. It means I, of my own free will, called up Missy Jensen--a card carrying member of the press corps, as you know--and asked her for this interview.” He hesitated, then pushed ahead. “It means I love you, Nixie and I’m ready to do whatever it takes to be with you.”
“You love me.” Her head felt like a kaleidoscope, with shattered bits of pain and joy and doubt twirling around in a pretty but incomprehensible pattern. “Since when?”
He lifted his shoulders in a rueful shrug. “Probably since your dive into that trash heap in Mattie Getz-Strunk’s front yard.” He frowned. “Maybe sooner. But for sure by the time Daryl Johnson offered you a hit off the Bounce blower.”
“I see.” The kaleidoscope went a few degrees brighter as a big chunk of hope dropped into the mix tumbling around in her head. “Definitely before you proposed to Mary Jane, then.”
He had the grace to look chagrined. “That was actually why I proposed to Mary Jane.”
She frowned. “Okay, now you’ve lost me.”
Wry humor mixed with the naked vulnerability in his eyes and Nixie’s heart hammered. “I was afraid, Nixie. I was afraid of what loving you would cost me. I was afraid of always being second in your heart when there’s no room left in mine for anything but you. The whole world loves you. How could I compete?”
“Oh, sure.” Nixie nodded sagely. “Because love is definitely a competition.”
He smiled at her. “And I’m a bad loser.” His gaze softened and he rocked forward as if to take a step toward her but caught himself at the last second. “Marrying Mary Jane seemed like the ideal solution. We love each other in exactly the same way to exactly the same degree. We’d have a nice comfortable life together. A win-win solution, I thought. Except--”
He broke off and looked at her very directly. Another chunk of hope and a big scoop of joy joined the wild tumble in her heart but she forced a cool
tone. “Except?”
“Except then I’m a coward. Because it was never about your fame, or the press, or your travel schedule, Nixie. I rejected you because I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“That you’d make a fool of me.”
The cool fell away and Nixie gasped. “I would never--”
He cut her off. “That I’d love you too much. More than you’d love me, and the whole world would sneer at me for not leaving. Exactly the way I sneered at my father for not leaving my mother.”
She stared at him, riveted by the sight of this incredibly private man confess so baldly to vulnerability. And not quietly, either. No, he’d gone for the grand gesture, confessing in front of her, their parents, their friends and anybody else who happened to be watching Channel Four.
“But I’m no coward, Nixie,” he said. “I love you, and I will for the rest of my life if you’ll let me.” He clenched his hands in his pockets. “If it’s not too late.”
Nixie forgot about the camera. She forgot about Missy Jensen, forgot about their audience of thousands. Joy and love booted doubt right out of the kaleidoscope and projected a riot of light and color and hope and love onto her mended heart. A smile bloomed on her face, and he held out a hand to her in silent question. She ignored the hand, and with a little cry, threw herself into his arms. When he caught her they were both laughing.
The Senator cleared her throat and turned to Missy Jensen. “So. Maybe now is a good time to bring out Mary Jane Riley, Erik’s partner in the clinic, and Tyrese Jones, our neighborhood liaison. He owns the building and has some interesting plans for expanding the clinic to include a day care and a community center.”
Missy and her camera turned dutifully to the Senator while Nixie showered Erik’s face and neck with dozens of tiny kisses, strung together with a lot of I love yous, a few you jerks and a half-dozen how could you be so stupids.
He laughed. “I love the way you talk while you kiss.”
She drew back, a little embarrassed. “I do that?”
“All the time.”
“Should I apologize?”
