by Liz Crowe
“Thanks,” she said, her voice small. “I needed this.”
“I know,” I said, brushing her hair off her face. We sipped in silence. When the pizza arrived, we ate it out of the box, staring at a brainless thriller I’d found, passing on all the rom-com options.
“You need to talk to him,” I said, as I poured the last drops from the second bottle into our now-greasy glasses.
“Fuck you,” she muttered, knocking back the wine like it was water. “I don’t have to do anything.”
“Okay, fine. But you will admit that all this extra drama you and the hot-head brewer cook up every day is not good for company morale. They’re already freaked out since Austin vacated his office. And Ross is a pain in the ass enough already, on a good day.” She shook her head. I kicked her thigh with my bare toe, hard enough to make her yelp. “You know I’m right. Get a handle on this shit or at least have your fights—and your fucking sessions—at home. I am ears to the ground, chica, and I am telling you people are getting weirded out and worried that Fitzgerald Brewing might fail.”
“Fail?” She jumped up, swaying a little until she got her bearings. “That’s bullshit.” She dragged fingers through her hair, staring down in dismay at the handful of strands that had pulled loose. I got up and grabbed her hands.
“You’re losing it, Evelyn. So help me I don’t know what you should do about Ross but I know one thing—you have got to get Austin back.”
“But…Ross is…” She bit her lip and other tear slid down her face
“I know what he is. And he does too. He said today he wanted to get you guys back together. He gets it—it’s fun and all, fucking your brains out on every available surface, but it’s not something that will last. You and Austin…you will last.”
She sucked in a breath. “Water? Please?”
I grabbed some while she headed for the bathroom. We drank and talked a little about the logistics of a threesome, which made my face hot and my body a little too tingly. She was so matter-of-fact about it, but her face told the real story. She loved them both. But she needed Austin in her life.
We called her a ride share, since she was in no shape to drive. She was determined to talk to Ross tonight, to hash out the real issues underlying their constant bickering. As we sat silent again, the TV droning on and filling the air with gunshots, expletives, car crashes and random explosions, my phone buzzed with a text. Thinking it was the ride share, I opened it and saw that it was, instead, from Trent.
I’m outside. Please let me in.
A sharp rap at the door made me yelp and drop the phone. Evelyn got up and opened it, the distinct non-surprised look on her face making my blood boil. I stood between them, pushing Trent back even as I got that usual melty all over feeling at the sight of him. “No. Sorry. You are not allowed to let him into my place.”
“Melody—”
I whirled on her. “Your ride is here. Go on and mind your own business for a while. God knows it needs some minding.” She grimaced and reached out to give me a tentative hug. “I know you did this. I’ll let you know if I ever forgive you.”
We stood side-by-side, watching her head up the stairs, like a pair of over-anxious parents seeing our precious girl out on her first date.
I blew out a breath, and turned to him, arms crossed. “I’m not interested in talking to you. I’m sorry you wasted your time coming here.”
He clenched his jaw. As I was noting how miserable he looked, I began closing the door, determined to stand my ground, to not get any more mixed up with him than I had—it was already going to take months of mental deprogramming to get him out of my head. His hand shot out. He stopped the door, sending it crashing back against the wall. After taking a single step, he was in my space, looming over me. I glared up at him.
He held up his hand. I glanced at it, saw the thing dangling from it and began backing away. “No,” I said, my voice as firm as I could manage.
“This isn’t for you,” he said. He pulled out the plain, ladder-backed chair I had next to a tiny table that doubled as a desk. “It’s for me.” He sat, and handed me the pitch-black blindfold. “Put it on me. And then start asking me questions. Ask me anything you want. Hell, do anything you want. But just fucking talk to me.”
I took it, pulling its silkiness through my other hand. My ears were buzzy, the way they always got around Trent.
“You owe me one good reason for ignoring me for this damn long.” He pointed to the blindfold. “Make me as vulnerable as you want. This is your chance.”
Without a word, I put the cover over his eyes, and fastened it in back with the long ribbons, giving it a tight yank for good measure. He put his hands on the chair arms and wrapped his long fingers around the ends. His jaw kept clenching, unclenching. I could hear his teeth grinding together.
I pulled another chair over and placed myself in front of him, our knees and toes nearly touching. Resisting the worst possible urge to touch his face, to soothe and calm and reassure, I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, studying his face—or as much of it as I could see. “Tell me about Sheila.”
He sucked in a breath, blew it out and seemed to deflate all over, like a day-old party balloon. “We met at a party, not unlike the one I took you to, with dancing and masks and expensive clothes. I was twenty-four years old, a raw rookie at the scene but one with promise, I was told. I had my first liquor store going gangbusters and was trying to scrape up a loan to buy the second one. I was basically living in back of the store for the time being, saving as much money as I could. But spending it on the things I loved. Like the Dom and sub parties.” He took another breath. “Sheila was trolling for a rich husband, as it turned out, but she was good at faking it. She snagged me. We had some…some admittedly amazing times together.” He slumped back in the chair, as if it hurt to admit it.
“But she lied about birth control. And within a few months, after we went out on real dates and she had her hooks in me good, she broke the joyous news. I was not overjoyed. But I am a man who does the right thing. So we got married.”
He blew out a breath. I waited.
“I grew up without a mother—or more precisely without the attention of the one I had. My therapist says I project my need to be nurtured onto the wrong women—at least one wrong woman. I was shuttled around between my mother’s sisters for years. They all hated her, resented her for being the prettiest one. And they took it out on me after my father had her committed to an asylum.”
I bit my lip. My hands were itching to touch him. But I kept my distance.
“I remember her in snippets. Her hair—it was long and blonde. Her smile which was wide and sweet. Her voice, a beautiful voice, she used to sing me to sleep. Or maybe I’m just making that up, who knows?” His breathing was getting ragged. “My father…” He stopped and swallowed hard. “He was a fucking asshole.” Trent shook his head. I could tell he wanted to pull off the blindfold. I admired his control, keeping it in place. “He used to beat the living shit out of me and my half-sister, Kayla. Then when she started to look less like a little girl and more like a woman he…he…” Trent stopped. I held my breath. “Anyway, she ran away when she was seventeen and I was almost thirteen. That’s when my mom lost it and my father had her committed.”
I got up and walked to the window, closing my eyes at the thought of his sister at the mercy of a horrible bully—the one man in the world who is supposed to love you unconditionally. My father had loved me, but my mother had shielded him from the ugly truth about me—for his health, she’d claimed.
“My mom got out of the asylum when I was nearly seventeen. I’d lived with cousins and aunts for years, never made to feel welcome. Always knowing I was this giant burden to them. But she got out and I thought…I thought everything would be fine. Kayla was long gone. My father had left, supposedly to work on an oil rig. It would be me and my mom and we’d be fine. That lasted about a month.”
He shifted in the chair, gripped the arms ever tighter. “
I was a good student and a few of my teachers knew my home life was shit so they’d made a project out of me. They were bound and determined to get me into a good college, on a full scholarship. So I wrote essays and took practice SAT exams on weekends, when I wasn’t playing football, of course.”
I looked at him. His beautiful mouth was turned up in a smile. “Then one Saturday I stayed later to do another practice reading session—not my strongest subject. When I dropped my bike on the lawn, I saw a strange beater truck in the drive.” As I watched, his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed a few times and he licked his lips, as if trying to get rid of a nasty taste.
I knelt next to him, laid my head on his knees, my need to prove something to him vanished like so much smoke. He didn’t touch me, stroke my hair or in any way indicate he noticed I was there. He was so tense, like a violin string, pulled tight. I ran my hand down his calf, cursing myself for being so selfish, for thinking I was the only one with the shitty backstory.
“He was…hurting her. Right in the living room. He had her…” He gulped and lifted his face to the ceiling. “He had her pinned on the floor and was beating on her, like some kind of a sick animal. There was blood…everywhere. She yelled at me to leave. I yanked him off her mid stroke and beat the ever-loving crap out of him—my own father.”
A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. I tried to touch his face but he flinched away from my fingers. “No. I’m going to finish. You won’t ever understand me otherwise.”
I laid my head back on his knee, keeping my arms around his legs.
“He was lying there, not moving. My knuckles…” He lifted his right hand to his lips as if smelling the blood there again. “My knuckles were shredded. When I turned to check on her, she was lying in a heap, not moving either. I remember…I remember standing there between them, thinking who in the fuck lives like this? Hand to mouth. Going to bed hungry or feeling guilty for taking a bit of food from a cousin’s plate. Always afraid that my father would come home drunk and beat on me or molest my sister or…or…” His voice broke. His head hung low. “I swore to myself, right then and there, that my life would be different. I would work harder, reach higher, be successful and, above all, rich. Rich as fucking God, I thought as I stood there, trying to decide which of my parents were dead.”
“Mi Dios,” I said with a sigh.
“I was going to be rich, successful and most of all I was going to treat women the way they were meant to be treated. Not like shit. Not like…like a hole to stick my dick in and run off. I would be fucking different.” He bit off these last words, spitting into the room. Veins stood out on his neck. His cheeks were flushed red.
I got up and lifted the blindfold from his face. He grabbed my hands, stopping me. “No, god damn it. You have to hear the rest and I need this privacy. You’re the only one who knows all of it. But I can’t look at you while I tell it.”
I ran my fingertips along his jawline, willing him to relax. He shivered and leaned into my hand. “My mother died a week later, from a cerebral hemorrhage.” He wiped trembling fingers across his lips. “My father… He…he died too. I killed him. I guess. He lived about a week longer than she did, in a coma. I sat with him, watching him sleep, hating his guts and wishing I had the nerve to cover his face with a pillow and finish the job.”
“In the end, he died when I wasn’t even there, the old fucker.” The chuckle that burst from his mouth was not a pleasant one. “I got there one morning to sit my vigil and his bed was empty, stripped, erased. I stared at it for a while, then I told them I didn’t have any money and I didn’t care what they did with his body.
“I rode my bike home and sat in the cold, empty house for a few days, as if I were in a coma too. Then I got my ass in gear, went to school and focused even harder on getting into the best college possible. I did it too. I lived in that rat hole of a house as long as I could, before the authorities came and booted me out. But I was eighteen by then, so they couldn’t stuff me in a foster home or anything. I lived out of my car for a while, then a friend took me in and let me crash on his couch for a year.”
“I worked three jobs while I went to school in Ann Arbor and graduated in three and a half years with a business degree and a great job as a manager of the liquor store. And I worked and worked and worked my ass off and when the old man wanted to sell the place, he let me buy it off him—he even financed me. The rest, well, I got into the scene, thanks to that same friend who let me live on his couch. I started going to parties. I made more money. I met Sheila. She got pregnant. We married. We divorced. She got Taylor at first, which killed me. But she left the house one Friday night, drunk off her ass, seemingly forgetting that our baby was still in her crib. I got custody and not by being nice, either.”
He slumped back again, still not touching me or acknowledging me in any way. He sat, silent, all his words spent, it would seem.
“I didn’t know what I wanted out of life. I mean, I had fun. I got to have sex the way I preferred it. But I never let myself get close. I rejected closeness. Went out of my way to keep my sexual partners at a distance.” He put a hand on my head. “Until a few months ago, when I walked into a diner after bolting from one of my so-called parties. And I saw the most amazing creature dressed in an awful pink uniform shirt with her name on it, holding a pot of weak coffee and flirting with a roomful of truckers.
“I’m about as fucked up as they come, Melody. But so help me I do love you. I made a decision about you. And I don’t make decisions lightly. I need to know why you won’t let me back in your life.”
I got up slowly, pulled him to his feet, wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him, and kissed him and kissed him. I lost myself in him, praying he’d feel my strength, sense my willingness to be here, present, fully with him. He kept on the blindfold as he sat back down and tugged my super not-sexy flannel pants down my hips, pressing his lips to my belly and wrapping his arms around me. I stroked his scalp, ran my fingers down his neck and back. Tears poured down my face as I made nonsense sounds, trying to soothe him.
“I need you,” he whispered, sliding his hands up my shirt and flipping open my bra with one practiced flick of his wrist. “I need to feel you.”
He lifted my shirt up and off, leaving me standing in nothing but panties. His nostrils flared. “Ah God, Melody. You scare the living shit out of me but I don’t care. I can’t care anymore. I want you.”
“Sh…sh…mi amor,” I said, pulling him to his feet. I unzipped his jeans and shoved them down, didn’t bother with the buttons on his shirt, just ripped it off him like some kind of crazy person. “Sh…sh…sh…” I kept saying as I led him to the couch and pressed him down, straddling him and taking him inside me with a tilt of my hips. “Ah…yes.”
He gripped my thighs and thrust up, leaning forward to take one of my nipples in his mouth. My tears wouldn’t stop even as the exquisite pleasure of having him inside me again, the sweet bite of his teeth on my nipple, the noises he made deep in his throat all combined to bring on a soul-shattering orgasm. I heard myself yelling as I ground against him, while tiny explosions went off behind my eyes.
Finally, I lifted the blindfold. His eyes were bloodshot, but his smile was wide. “Oh, Melody—my love,” he whispered, lifting me as he kept our bodies connected, then laying me back on the couch, muttering to me in Spanish and English. He stroked into me, making us both groan. I lifted my hips, wrapped my legs and arms around him. “I’m yours, mi amor.”
When he cried out into the dark room, his entire body shuddering with his climax, I tried, and failed, not to cry. I still owed him a direct answer to his question—why had I held him off for the last month, why I’d not let what I knew in my heart to rule my behavior. But for now, all I wanted was to feel his body against me, above me, inside me. The rest would, no doubt, come in due course.
Chapter Nineteen
Trent rolled over and pulled Melody close, burying his nose in the tumble of her fragrant hair. She sighed
and curved against him, fitting her head into his shoulder as he stretched his arm underneath her. He dozed, until the sun slanting into his window woke him fully. After kissing her shoulder and disentangling himself, he rolled and sat, rubbing his eyes.
He glanced over her shoulder at her, the lovely hourglass shape under a sheet, the tumble of hair. With a smile, he ran a hand down the swell of her hip. She didn’t move. She was easily the hardest sleeper he’d ever met—or slept with—in his life. As it was Sunday, he decided to try his hand at a little breakfast in bed action.
She was still snoozing away when he emerged from a shower and put on jeans and a T-shirt. The summer months had ushered in a cooling trend, and they’d left the windows open the night before. The breeze on their bare skin had been invigorating as he’d taught her a thing or three about how much fun a bit of candle wax play could be. But now as he went around the loft shutting them, he realized that time, as it tended to do, was marching forward. And in the weeks since reuniting, they’d spent way too much energy tiptoeing around the elephant in the room—the sixteen-year-old one with the ongoing disdainful looks and rolled eyes.
Taylor had decamped to her mother’s house—the house he still paid the mortgage on—after her four-week mandated house arrest, combined with expensive court appearances and lawyer meetings. It had been determined by Sheila, with some agreement from himself, that a change of environment for the balance of the summer might do her some good. Now that his ex seemed to have gotten her act together, maturity-wise, he didn’t worry about the two of them like he used to do.
And it left him free to move Melody in to his home, installing her where he wanted her to be, with her own part of the closet, dresser drawers and bathroom space. He hummed along with the Rolling Stones as he scrambled the eggs and added cilantro and crumbled chorizo the way she’d taught him. He sipped coffee, waiting for the oven toast to crisp, then put everything on a tray.
