by K. Bromberg
“Hey, Zander, you okay, buddy?” I ask gently, as I lower myself ever so slowly onto the mattress next to him.
He just continues rocking but lifts his head up to look at me, tears staining his face and utter heartbreak reflected in his eyes. Because no matter how much time passes, the memories will always be there burrowing their tentacles of destruction as deep as they can so he will never be able to forget. He might be able to move on at some point, but he will never forget.
“I want my mommy,” he whimpers, and if my heart could shatter into a million pieces, it would for this little boy, who I love more than anything.
I ever so slowly pull him into my lap and wrap my arms around him, nestling his head under my neck so he doesn’t see the tears I’m crying for him, his lost innocence, the part of him he’ll forever ache for—his mother.
“I know, buddy,” I tell him as I rock him. “I know. She’d be here if she could. She never would have left you if the angels hadn’t needed her.”
“But—but I need her too …” He sniffs and there is nothing I can say to that. Nothing. So I press a kiss to his head and just hold him tighter, trying to let my love for him ease some of the heaviness in his heart, but know it will never be enough.
We sit there for a bit, him drawing comfort and solace from me as much as I am from him. He calms down some as minutes tick by, my hand smoothing over his hair and back as I try to figure out something to make him smile. “Hey, bud? Colton’s on his way over.”
I feel his body jerk to attention as red-rimmed eyes look up at me. “Really?”
And as if on cue, I hear commotion outside the front of the house. Even with the windows and blinds shut I can hear the purr of an engine, the clicks of the camera shutters, and the questions being called out.
“Yep, in fact I think he just got here.”
Grateful for Colton’s timing and the instant spark it puts in Zander’s eyes, we rise and head toward the front of the house. I make sure the boys are in the family room so when I open the front door, they’re out of the camera lens’ way.
Colton pushes into the narrow opening of the doorway with a muttered curse as the door shuts behind him. He looks at me, lines of frustration etched in his face, and a brown grocery bag propped under his arm. He smiles. “Hey.”
“Hiya, Ace,” I say, stepping toward him to give him a kiss hello but his body stiffens. I immediately step away realizing one of the boys is behind me. Colton is always so aware of them and cautions kissing me in their presence, even a peck on the lips, because he knows how overprotective they are, and he never wants to upset that balance.
“Just kiss her and get it over with!” Scooter’s exasperated voice behind me has Colton and me bursting out laughing as I turn to face him, a smile plastered on my lips.
I feel Colton’s free hand on my lower back as he steps beside me and squats down in front of Scooter. “It’s okay?” he asks the little boy whose eyes have just become the size of saucers. “I mean, it’s not really polite to walk into another man’s house and kiss his girl … but since you’re one of the men in the house, I guess I could kiss her if you tell me it’s okay.”
Scooter’s mouth falls lax at Colton’s comment and his spine stiffens with pride. “Really?” The excitement in his voice has me putting a hand over my heart. “Yeah … it’s okay. As long as you don’t make her sad.”
“Deal.” Colton sticks his hand out, and they shake on it. My heart overflows with love, and I have to fight back the tears welling in my eyes for the second time today, but this time they’re from the pride I feel for two of the men in my life.
“Well then,” Colton says as he stands and looks at me, “the man of the house says I can kiss you.”
My smile widens as Colton leans in and pecks my lips in a brotherly fashion. “Eeeewwww gross!” Scooter says, wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand and turning to run into the family room to tell Zander.
Colton looks over his shoulder to make sure Scooter is gone and when he turns back his lips find mine without a second thought. It’s a brief kiss, but man does it pack a punch, more than reinforcing that he’s the drug I can’t live without. “Wow!” I say as he pulls back.
“He said I could do it.” He just smirks and shrugs. “Where’s our drunk skunk at?”
“Still asleep,” I tell him as I look down at the brown bag under his arm. “What’s that?”
Colton just grins. “A little something to make sure that he remembers this morning for a long time. Hair of the dog and all that.”
“Colton,” I warn as I notice the shape of the bag looks a little too similar to a six pack. “I can’t give him beer! I’ll get fired,” I shout at him in a hushed tone.
He has the gall to just stand there and chuckle. “Exactly. That’s why I am.” And with that, Colton strides down the hallway to my right into Shane’s room. Colton’s words earlier that Shane won’t listen to me has me walking down the hallway to see what he’s going to do.
Colton pulls the blinds up, and bright light floods the room, before he looks over to his dresser, a huge smile spreading on his face. Within seconds, the pair of speakers that Shane’s iPod is plugged into blare to life with a base thumping beat. Shane springs out of bed instantly, shouting and covering his ears and does a double take when he sees who is standing in front of his bed, arms crossed over his chest and eyebrows raised.
They stare at each other for a moment before Shane grabs the pillow and pulls it over his head to stop the sound and block the bright light. “Stop it!” he yells. Colton laughs and walks over to the iPod and flicks it off. “Thank you!” Shane’s muffled voice says from beneath the pillow.
“Uh-uh,” Colton says to him as he bounces on the bed beside him and pulls the pillows from his hands as Shane then uses his arms to cover his eyes. “By the smell of your room and the look on your face, I’d say you tied one on nice and hard last night. That right, bud?” He laughs, an amused borderline sinister laugh, when Shane doesn’t respond. “Is your head pounding? The room spinning? Your eyes hurt? Does your stomach feel like you want to throw up but there’s nothing there?”
“Shut up,” Shane groans as he tries to pull the covers over his head, and Colton just yanks them back down.
“Nope. You wanna hang with the big boys—get plastered like they do—then it’s time to wake up and take it like a man.” From my vantage point in the hallway I watch Colton prop his back against the wall and get comfortable before he digs into the brown paper bag. I hear the crack of the beer can opening and Shane immediately sits up in bed, and looks at Colton like he’s lost it.
“Are you fucking crazy?” Shane croaks in a panicked voice.
“Yep,” Colton says as he looks over at Shane and grins. He takes a sip of the beer and then holds it out to Shane. “Sure as hell am. Drink up, son.”
“No way!” Shane says as he backs away from the can like it’s on fire. “You can’t give me a beer!”
Colton raises his eyebrows. “I believe I just did. Now quit using that as an excuse. You were grown up enough to chug it down last night, right? So it’s time to remind you just why you liked it so much.” Colton shoves the beer back at him. “C’mon, take a drink. I dare you.”
“What the—”
“Drink!” Colton pressures him. “What? You’re cool enough to drink with your friends but not me?”
“It’s going to make me puke!”
“Now you’re catching on!” Colton says with a smirk as he reaches with his free hand back into the bag and grabs another beer. “I’ve got five more here for ya when you finish this one.”
Shane’s eyes grow huge and his face pales when Colton’s words hit him. “No way! I’m going to throw up.”
“Good,” Colton says as he gets in close to Shane’s face. “Drink this,” he says. “I want you to remember just how good it tastes coming back up the second time around. The next time your buddies push you to drink or you want to drink to look cool for the ladies …
I want you to remember how fucking cool you look bent over the toilet throwing this back up because I guarantee you from experience, it’s not a pretty sight.” Colton backs away from him and returns to his position against the wall, a smug smile on his face. He leans his head back but angles his eyes over to watch Shane. “You sure you don’t want this beer? Don’t want to remember what it tastes like?”
Shane shakes his head, a little shocked at the verbal lashing his idol just gave him, as am I.
When Colton speaks next, his voice is eerily calm. “Now that I’ve got your attention, a few ground rules, shall we?” He doesn’t wait for Shane to respond. “How’d you get home last night, Shane?”
The question surprises me, just as it does Shane. “Davey brought me home.”
“Did Davey drink last night too?” The quiet calm in Colton’s voice has Shane averting his gaze, which makes my heart sink.
“He had a few.” I can hear the shame in Shane’s voice; he knows it was wrong.
“Eeeehhh! Wrong answer!” Colton says as he turns his head to look at him again. “You wanna be stupid and get drunk? That’s one thing I can get. You want to step in a car and let someone else drive you who’s drunk—because let’s face it you were shit-faced so how do you know how many Davey had—that’s something I won’t tolerate! You have way too many people who love you in this house. Care about you, Shane—Ry, the boys, me—we don’t want something to happen to you. So let me rephrase the question, okay? I’m not going to ask you if you’re going to get drunk again because then you’ll have to lie to me. Here’s my question: Are you going to get in a car with another person who’s been drinking?”
Shane swallows loudly and shakes his head no. When Colton just stares at him, he says aloud, “No.”
“Good! Now we’re getting somewhere …” Colton says, pounding his hand against the wall loudly that has Shane jumping and grabbing his head, while Colton belts out a laugh. “You sure you don’t want this beer?” He offers again to a frantic shake of Shane’s head. “I love a smart kid so listen up, I don’t care how the fuck you get home, call me if you have to, but don’t do it again. Last thing … why?”
Shane’s eyes lift up to meet his. “What do you mean why?”
Colton stares at him long and hard and it drives me crazy that I’m not close enough to see the unspoken words pass between them. “To be cool? To impress a girl? To cover the pain from your mom? You don’t have to tell me, Shane, but the answer is very important. It’s something you need to answer for yourself.” I see Shane’s head lower and I suck in a breath with concern. Shane shifts and leans against the wall like Colton, legs crossed out in front of them, arms crossed over their chests, and heads angled up at the ceiling. The sight of them together like this is priceless, and I know this is one moment that will forever be etched in my memory.
Colton blows out a breath and when he starts speaking, his voice is so soft that I strain to hear him. “When I was little I had some bad shit happen to me. Really bad shit. And no matter what I did, or how good I was, or how hard I tried … nothing mattered … nothing stopped it. No one helped. So in my seven year old brain, it was my fault and even some days now, I still think that way. But the worst part was living with the pain and guilt from it.” He sighs and turns his head from the ceiling and waits for Shane to do the same so they’re looking at one another. “Shit, I started drinking when I was a helluva lot younger than you, Shane … and I drank because it hurt so fucking much. And after some stupid stunts and some situations I was lucky enough to walk away from, my dad sat me down and asked me the same question I just asked you. Said the same things I said to you. But then he asked, ‘Why drink to cover it up because hurting is feeling and feeling is living, and isn’t it good to be alive?’” Colton shakes his head. “And you know what? Some days I thought it was bullshit, that I would never be able to spend a single day without thinking about it or hurting from it or feeling guilty about it … and fuck, those days? I wanted to drink. At fifteen Shane, I wanted to drink to deal with it … but my dad would sit me down and repeat those words to me. And you know what? He was right. It took time. Lots of time. And it never, ever goes away … but I’m so glad I chose to feel over being numb. So glad I chose living over being dead.”
I don’t realize that I have tears sliding down my cheeks like Shane does until Colton reaches out and hooks an arm around his neck and pulls him close. He gives him a quick, but gruff man-hug that causes a sob to shake through Shane’s body. Colton presses an uncharacteristic kiss to the top of his head and murmurs again, “Remember, hurting is feeling and feeling is living, and isn’t it good to be alive?”
My heart is in my throat, my breath robbed, and any hope I ever had of walking away from this beautiful disaster of a man is completely stolen from me forever.
The damaged man helping the broken child.
He releases Shane from the hug and I can immediately sense they are both uncomfortable with their show of emotion. Colton shoves off of the bed and laughs when he offers Shane the beer again and he pushes it away. He gathers the bag with the rest of them and starts to walk toward the door but turns back. “Hey, Shane? You stink, dude. Take a shower and get dressed, we’ve got some baseball to go watch.”
Colton walks out of the door and stops to stare at me, so many emotions swimming in his eyes as he sees the tears staining my cheeks. I say the only thing I can. “Thank you,” I mouth. He nods as if he doesn’t trust himself to speak and walks down the hall.
“You’ve got them now, Jax?” I ask as I watch Scooter buy some sugary crap from the snack bar with the cash I gave him. Shane refused. Fucker’s still green in the face. He won’t be eating anything for a while, unless he wants it to come back up.
Ah, sweet memories of being a teenager and getting lit like a fucking Christmas tree. I can’t help but feel sorry for him, but fuck if it’s not kind of funny watching this rite of passage.
Jax adjusts his baseball cap, sets his bat down and walks over to me. “Yeah, I got ’em.” He reaches out to me and we shake hands. “Thanks for …” He lifts his chin over in Shane’s direction.
“No prob.” I laugh. “He had nothing on my first dance with the bottom of the fucking bottle, but I talked to him.”
“Thanks. Did Ry change her mind? Is she not coming?”
“No,” I shake my head as I watch Ricky take a swing and rip the ball out of the infield during his batting practice. I whistle so he knows I saw him and he has the cutest fucking grin on his face when he looks at me. I know more than anyone that acknowledgment in any form goes a long fucking way. “She is. I guess Zander had a rough morning so she didn’t want him paraded around in front of the press. So I brought the boys, hoping they’d follow me.”
Fucking vultures. I look out toward the parking lot by the Range Rover and see them all standing there, cameras slung around their necks, long range lenses pointing at me; hoping to catch … fuck if I know what at a kids’ little league game. But fuck, they maintain their distance and don’t bombard me when I’m with the kids, and I’m a little shocked. Since when do they have any goddamn manners? It’s not like I’m going to be doing anything exciting behind the bleachers and creating any more unfounded fucking illegitimate children. “Anyway...” I shrug “...it seems to have worked.”
Jax laughs as he looks at the mob of them in the parking lot. “Ya think? Craziness, man, to live with that all the time. Do you ever get used to it?”
“Can a car drive without wheels?” Stupidest fucking question ever but it’s Jax. Dude’s cool. Looks out for Ry.
“True,” he says with a nod.
I make a bit more small talk with him before I head out to give the parasitic shitbags by my car the close up pictures that’ll land them some money. That will hopefully keep them at bay for another goddamn day.
They hit me with their fucking cameras as I walk by, and it takes everything I have not to throw a punch because fuck if it wouldn’t feel good to just let loose and h
ave at ’em. Fucking Chase. Her words stop me only because it will harm Ry if I pull the reckless bad boy gone crazy that they’re pushing for with their bullshit fucking questions about her being a home wrecker.
Motherfucking promises. Fuck them all to hell. This is why I never make them. Never did before Rylee anyway. Who’d have thought the day would come that I’d be pussy whipped and fucking okay with it.
Add another layer of ice to Hell because it’s become the fucking arctic circle with the shit she’s changing in me.
I told her I was trying to be a better fucking man. Well, fuck me. Little did I know we were going to get thrown into this shit storm that was gonna pull us every which way like a motherfucking tug-of-war.
I’ve been good so far. Haven’t picked up my phone and ripped Tawny apart for this bullshit charade she’s pulling, for throwing Rylee to the fucking wolves to try and hurt me. But I know if I do it’s just going to prove that she’s gotten to me. And to her, that’s winning half the battle.
“So when’s the wedding, Colton?”
“Does Tawny know you’re with Rylee today?”
“Have you picked out names for your son yet?
Another cameraman jostles me from the side, and I whirl on him, fists clenched, jaw grinding. “Back the fuck off, man!”
Rylee. Rylee. My fucking Rylee. I have to repeat it over and over to help me ignore their bullshit lies and prevent myself from losing my shit.
At least the guy backs off so I can open the fucking door to the car. Thank God for expensive ass cars because the minute I slam the door shut the sound silences and the tinted windows make it hard for the cameras to get their shot of me about to go apeshit. As much as I need to sit here and calm the fuck down, there’s no way I can with the circus surrounding me.
