In Too Deep

by Lexi Ryan

  “I don’t take pictures for the money. I do it because it makes women feel good about themselves.”

  “And that’s probably why you’re so damn good at it.” He studies me for a beat. “You’re so afraid that everyone’s going to look at you and see the trailer park girl who took off her clothes for money that you’re afraid to try to be someone else.”

  “But that is who I am.”

  “That’s who you were. That’s where you’re from. It’s not who you are now, or you’d be getting ready to get on stage and not sitting here with me. They all want what you have to offer. I have guys trying to call in favors with me so their wives get bumped up the schedule.” He presses a kiss to the top of my head. “If you’d believe in yourself just a little, you’d be amazed what life has to offer you. You’d be amazed who you could become.”

  Does he want me to be someone else? The last conversation I had with Nic, we fought about Mason. He said Mason was just another rich boy who manipulated women with his money. He accused me of selling myself to Mason. “Just like you sold yourself to Clarence.” I told him he was an asshole. Told him he could go fuck himself because he would never be able to love someone like Mason could. Then he got the text from Mia asking for help, and an hour later, he was dead.

  “I’m not pregnant,” Mia says, and it sounds like she’s crying.

  I push my phone closer to my ear and frown. I called to ask her a question and this was her greeting when she answered the phone. “Did you just say you’re not pregnant? Like that’s news? Were you trying to be pregnant?”

  She sighs. “No, not yet, but my period was late and I started thinking maybe I was. After the initial panic, I decided I liked the idea. Then I told Arrow and the look on his face made me love the idea. But I’m not. I just started and I have cramps and I don’t even know why I’m crying. Except that I’m not pregnant and I guess I was already feeling attached to the baby I’m not actually having.”

  “Oh, sweetie.” I push aside the stack of prints I’d been working with when I called her and prop my elbows on the kitchen table. “You’re still on the pill, right?”

  She sniffs. “Yeah. I know. It’s really effective. I was stupid to think I might be.”

  “I don’t mean that.” I bite my lip. I don’t think I’ll ever be okay with my best friend living across the country from me. “I mean, you can stop taking it now, right? If you both want a baby, you could try.”

  “I don’t think we’re ready yet. I just . . . I think I wanted the excuse to fast-forward to growing our family, you know? It doesn’t change the fact that we’re still young and it would be better to wait. It just made me really think about life and family and . . . I miss my brother.”

  To anyone else, the mention of Nic might seem unrelated, but I understand what Mia means. Her mother left before Nic died, and then when Nic died, it was just her and her father. Half her family was gone.

  “I think I might want a lot of kids,” she says softly, and the sound of tears has left her voice. “Not yet, but when we do start. Like four or five brats who will always have each other. I don’t want them to be alone.”

  “You’ll be a great mom.” I look at the stack of pictures in front of me and let my fingers hover over the image of her brother leaning against a spray-painted brick wall. I’m sliced by a pang of guilt for never telling her about Faith. She thinks she’s lost her brother forever, but part of Nic is still here.

  Mia draws in a deep breath. “I’m sorry about my outburst. How are you?”

  I rub the back of my neck, mentally debate telling her about the amazing sex Mason and I are having, and then decide against it. “I’m good. I’m going through some old pictures of Nic.”

  “Oh, Bailey,” she says. “Honey, don’t do that to yourself.”

  I shake my head as if she can see me. “It’s not like that. I was just . . .” Putting together a scrapbook to give to your niece when she’s old enough to know who her biological parents are. “Do you remember the name of that restaurant that paid Nic to spray-paint a graffiti-looking mural on their wall?”

  “Abby’s at Sunset,” she says, a smile in her voice now. “He was talented, wasn’t he? I’d forgotten about that.”

  “He always said he was useless with a pencil or paintbrush, but give him a can of spray paint and he’d give you the Sistine Chapel.”

  “He was such a punk,” she says affectionately. “Oh, wait a sec, Bail.”

  I hear murmurs in the background then a muffled “I started,” followed by more murmurs and a squeak from Mia.

  “Hey, Bailey, can I call you back tomorrow? Arrow just got home.”

  I chuckle. “Absolutely. Tell your hubby I said hi.”

  “I will. Love you.”

  “Love you too,” I whisper, and my chest aches as I end the call. I miss Mia. I miss open-mic nights at the Vortex and riding around in Nic’s rusty pickup squeezed between her and her brother.

  I flip through the pictures until I find one of the three of us that was taken shortly before Nic was arrested. Nic is giving a rare smile to the camera, I’m staring at him with total adoration, and Mia is watching me with worry etched into her features. She knew I was in love with him and never liked it. It wasn’t that she was jealous or that she didn’t want to share my attention. She knew her brother was trouble and was convinced being in love with him was going to screw up my life. To this day, she has no idea how right she was, but when I think of Faith, I wouldn’t change a thing.

  Ever since Nic died, I’ve been telling myself I was going to make Faith a scrapbook of the pictures I have of Nic. I know I can’t give it to her yet, but every month that passes, my memories grow dimmer, and I want to put together something she can have when she’s older and has questions about her parents.

  I have the whole day off and no client meetings until tomorrow, so I decided it was the perfect time to get to work. Earlier, I gathered all my photos and emailed them to a local drugstore to get them developed, and now I have them spread out across Mason’s kitchen table ready to be placed into the scrapbook.

  Only it’s a lot tougher than I anticipated. I wanted to put notes on each page, and I always imagined I’d have so much to say that it would be hard to have enough room. Now that I’m doing it, words are failing me. I want her to know we loved each other, despite our issues. But how do I describe young love, thrilling and overwhelming and too big to hold in growing hands?

  I’m not sure why it’s so hard to put this together. Is it because of what Mason said Wednesday night about who I was versus who I could become? Is it because sleeping in Mason’s arms the last three nights reminded me of exactly what I sacrificed for Nic? Or is it just because Nic’s memory has faded with time, and I’ve forgotten him enough that I don’t know how to paint the picture for the little girl who will never be able to meet her biological father?

  I’m so lost in my thoughts that I don’t even know I’m not alone in the house until I hear him speak.

  “This has gone on too long,” Christian Dahl says.

  I jump up from the table, backing away to put space between us. “What do you want?”

  He pulls a pen and checkbook from his suitcoat. “I want you to name your price.” He clicks his pen and arches a brow, and his facial expression reminds me so much of Mason that I have to remind myself he isn’t a friend. This man doesn’t care about me.

  Mason would never try to buy me off.

  “My price for what?” I ask, deciding I’m going to make him say it.

  “How much to make this charade end?”

  “I haven’t even been here a month. I told you it would be through the end of the year.” I hate explaining myself to him, but I hate talking about the end of my time with Mason as something inevitable even more.

  “I don’t want my son to get attached.” He cocks his head to the side. “Come on. Surely a girl like you could use some money.”

  A girl like me. This man will always look at me and see the woman
who shook her ass on stage for extra cash. He’ll always see the girl who dared fall in love with a drug dealer. It’s a wonder that Mason came from him. How could such a caring, unjudging, understanding man come from such an angry, bigoted one? Mason, who hated what I did but could understand it. Mason, who sees a human being when he looks at me and not a poor chick scraping by, desperate for cash.

  “I don’t want your money,” I say. “I should never have taken it to begin with.”

  “But you did, and our actions speak louder than our words. I think Mason would agree.”

  I recognize the threat for what it is, but he doesn’t fool me. He doesn’t want Mason knowing about our arrangement any more than I do. “I had my reasons then, but I won’t take your bribes now.”

  “I don’t think you understand how much I’m prepared to pay you. You have some significant debt that I’m sure it would feel good to be free of.”

  I wrap my arms around my stomach. I always feel cold when this man is around. “Why do you hate me so much?”

  “It’s not personal, Miss Green. This isn’t about you. This is about me protecting my son and my family’s assets.”

  “Why don’t you let him decide whether or not he needs to be protected? What are you so afraid of? That he might truly love a lower-class peasant like me? That he might decide he wants me to remain his wife?”

  “We had an agreement.” His voice is cold and hard. “Are you prepared to pay me back if you can’t follow through on your end?”

  I don’t have that kind of money and probably never will, but in a flash, I realize I’m not powerless against Christian Dahl. He has as much to lose as I do, and he’s just as scared of losing Mason as I am. “If that’s what it takes, I’ll figure out a way.”

  His nostrils flare. He doesn’t know what to do with me. This is a man who truly believes he can buy anyone and anything. And I helped confirm that belief when I took his money.

  “Right. I forgot. You have access to all kinds of money now that you’re married to my son.” He tucks his checkbook back into his pocket. “But you forget that I know about your child.”

  I turn up my palms. “Whoopdidoo,” I say. “Ex-stripper from Nowhere, Indiana, let her sister adopt her daughter. Call the papers. Everyone’s going to want this story!”

  I hold my breath until I see that angry twitch of his jaw. If he called my bluff and told Sarah that he knew the truth—or worse, if he told Faith who her real mom is—Sarah would push me out of her life out of panic alone.

  Christian laughs, and the sound is hard and cold. “I’m not worried. I know my son better than you do, and I know you’ll be out of his life if he finds out the truth. I’ll just save my money and let this take care of itself.”

  Those words are a storm cloud growing in the sky, and as excited as I am about Faith’s party tonight, I know they’ll follow me.

  Christian combs his fingers through his hair. “Mason’s mother and I are having an anniversary party at the end of the month. Find a way to get out of it. I don’t want her to have to look at you on her special day.”

  I flinch. I’ve always considered myself tough, but Mason’s father has a way of taking my heart in his claws and ripping it apart. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I pulled some strings to get out of my later afternoon meeting so I could go with Bailey to her niece’s birthday party. I know she said I’m the only reason she was invited, but even so, I know what it means for her to let me in to this part of her life. I don’t want to miss it.

  When I drive into my neighborhood after practice, my father is heading out. I do a double take when I see his Escalade, and sure enough, when I look again, there he is. He has half his attention on the road and the other half on the phone in his hand, so he doesn’t notice me.

  What the fuck was he doing here? He knows I’m at practice all day long. He didn’t call and say he was coming. If he knocked on my door and I wasn’t there, why wouldn’t he call or text to let me know he was in town looking for me?

  It says something about the state of our relationship, that I don’t honk to get his attention or call that phone in his hand to let him know I’m pulling in.

  As I follow the road through the cul-de-sac to my driveway, dread tightens my chest. When I get inside, I find Bailey at the kitchen table, the makings of a scrapbook spread out before her.

  “You’re home earlier than I expected.” She smiles at me but cuts her eyes nervously to the pictures in front of her. Was she planning to clean it up before I got home so I didn’t have to be reminded where I stand? Or is she nervous because she was speaking with my father and doesn’t want me to know?

  I want to forget the worry in my gut and pull her into my arms.

  There’s nothing I can do about her feelings for Nic, but my questions about my dad are rooted in years-old baggage and probably a heavy dose of paranoia. Maybe he wasn’t here at all. Maybe he was visiting one of my neighbors. “Was my dad just here?”

  She straightens and gives me a plastic smile. “Yeah. He was.”

  So much for hoping. My eyes flick to the pictures spread out before her and stall. My kitchen table is covered with pictures of Bailey and Nic Mendez. Even when I have her living in my house, he finds his way in. Of all the times she could have done this, of all the places she could have assembled her precious memories of him, she had to do it here?

  I shove my irritation from my mind and try to focus on the matter at hand. “What was my dad doing here?”

  “I think he just . . .” She stacks pictures into piles. Are her hands shaking? “He wanted to meet me.”

  That might make sense if A) my dad wasn’t a selfish asshole who couldn’t care less about the woman I’m married to since it doesn’t benefit him, or B) if she hadn’t already met him back at BHU when he came to town for a home game—more than once, if I remember correctly. “He’s already met you, Bailey.”

  “Right.” She taps a stack of pictures against the table, straightening them. “I mean he wanted to get to know me. We never had the chance to talk before.”

  Again, I’d like to believe that, but allow me to refer to point A. “He was here to talk?”

  She grimaces.

  “Bailey?”

  “He doesn’t want me coming to the anniversary party.” She swallows and lifts her eyes to meet mine. “The truth is, he doesn’t like me, and he thinks you and I are a passing fad.”

  “He’s such a dick.” I reach for my phone, and she puts her hand on my arm to stop me. “He had no right to come into my house and make you feel unwanted.”

  “But I am.” She drags her bottom lip between her teeth. “We’ve talked about this before, Mason. You and I come from different worlds, and we can’t blur the lines between them without consequences.”

  I mutter a curse. “What are you working on?” Even a scrapbook project about her love affair with a dead man is a better topic than my father and his continued efforts to control my life.

  “It’s a scrapbook of me and Nic.” She grimaces. “I’ve meant to do it forever, and I’ve never had the chance.” Her eyes skim over the open book and the two carefully laid-out pages before her.

  There’s a picture of them in front of a run-down trailer, Bailey on Nic’s back, her arms around his neck. There’s another of them lying on a blanket in the sunshine. Yet another shows Nic alone, holding his hand up in the universal symbol for “don’t take my picture right now.”

  “You must really miss him,” I say, and before she can answer, I turn on my heel and leave the room. I don’t want to hear about how much she misses a piece of shit who would have stomped on her if he thought it would get him ahead, and I hate this sick feeling in my gut that tells me she’s not telling me the whole truth about why my dad was here.

  The drive to my sister’s house is laced with the same tense silence we suffered through on the way to Lindy’s party. If that’s a sign of the night to come, maybe I should have chosen to stay home.

  Mason pa
rks on the street in front of Sarah’s mustard-yellow split-level and cuts the engine. I reach for the handle, but he grabs my hand before I can open the door. “I’m sorry I’ve been in a shitty mood all afternoon.”

  Today’s been hard—his father’s visit was a reminder that my time with Mason has to be temporary, and then he questioned me about it and I felt as if I’d been caught in a lie. “It’s fine.”

  “It’s not.” He squeezes my hand. “I’m fucking jealous, Bailey. I walked in and saw you working on that scrapbook, and I just felt like Nic was back in our lives. I have you living in my house and sleeping in my bed, but you’re still spending your days thinking about him.”

  I snap my head up, and he’s studying me with those intense green eyes. Is that what he was upset about? The pictures? “Oh, shit, Mason. I’m sorry.” I should have realized the reminder of Nic would upset him. “It’s not like I’m fantasizing about Nic. I just have more free time living here than I’ve had in a long time, and I’ve been meaning to get that project done forever. But it can wait. If it upsets you, I can finish it after I move back home.”

  He closes his eyes and turns away. “It’s not where you do it that upsets me. Only that you want to.”

  “They’re just pictures. Memories.” And they’re not for me.

  “I think you’re wrong about me,” he says, turning back to me.

  “About what?”

  “You think I’m spoiled. That I get everything I want.” He shakes his head. “You’re the only thing I’ve ever wanted enough to fight dirty for, and your heart still belongs to him.”

  My chest aches, because he doesn’t understand, and I want him to. I reach across the console and place my hand on his shoulder. If he knew Faith was mine, he would understand why I was making the scrapbook. But I promised my sister that I wouldn’t tell anyone, because she doesn’t want it getting back to Faith before she’s ready.