by A. J. Downey
Goddammit, this was so fucking complicated, and it didn’t need to be. Why couldn’t people just mind their own fucking business?
“Are you mad?” she asked as I dished up two bowls of melting pralines and cream ice-cream.
I looked up, and over at my beautiful woman and shook my head, she stood, hugging herself, having quickly added her bulky coat over herself, in an attempt to cover. I laughed a little.
“That coat isn’t going to save you, you know. You could be wearing a burlap sack and it would probably bring on the same reaction.”
She slipped up onto one of the counter stools and blushed furiously, crossing her arms and leaning forward on them to watch me with utter fascination as I finished splitting up the pint of ice cream between the two bowls.
She made me feel both powerful and sexy when she watched me like that. I didn’t think it would ever get old, either. I was pretty sure it would break my fucking heart if she ever decided she was bored with me or that I was too old for her, but those were troubles I didn’t want to borrow for now; not when we had so many heaped in front of us.
I slid her bowl over to her with a spoon and leaned over the counter to eat mine, keeping the expanse of whatever stone it was between us. She edged her hand out and I covered it with my own to reassure her. She’d been through so much, and we’d discovered that the bullying had had its effects; not being able to fully trust social cues being one of them. Made me wish I’d nipped that in the bud a lot sooner and made me less regretful over how it’d been handled.
“I’m not mad, Angel. I’m just frustrated, like you.”
Silence pressed between us and she put a spoonful of ice cream in her mouth. She sucked on it, and it drove me fucking wild, but I held my place across the counter. Finally, she spoke, her voice solemn and a little sad, “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
I sighed, and nodded, “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
Chapter 22
Maren
I didn’t think things could get worse after yesterday. I was even beginning to get my hopes up about this job interview, but now, it felt like everything was crashing down, the timbers burning and I was utterly crushed under the weight and the rubble.
I kept listening to the phone ring as I stared through the gently falling snow at Soul Fuel’s front door. So close, yet so far away…
“Yes, hi! I know that Nox, I mean Landon, is probably in with a client but it’s an emergency and I really need to speak with him.” I waited and stared blankly at the Ol’ Ladies of The Sacred Hearts MC laughing at the counter inside, praying they wouldn’t look out the window, desperate that they wouldn’t see me. Not just yet.
“Maren, what’s wrong?” Nox asked through the phone line and despite how hard I tried not to cry, an errant tear snuck free.
“I just got a call from Three Tree Hospital, it’s an hour and a half north from here… They have Sage. I guess he left school and somehow caught a bus up there and I have this stupid interview and the school never called me, and I need this job and I don’t know what to do!”
Dammit! I’d meant to hold it together, I’d meant to keep my cool and be an adult, like the adultiest adult, and here I was, crying and begging Nox for yet another fix, but honestly I was at the end of my rope and I just wanted someone, anyone, to tell me what to do because I just didn’t know with this.
“Okay, slow down, take a deep breath,” Nox murmured, and he breathed with me over the phone until I was calmer.
“Interviews don’t take long, so pull it together, go in there and do what you need to do. Sage is at a hospital, Baby. Nothing is going to happen to him there. I’m going to come get you and we’ll go get him together, okay?”
“Okay,” I said and it was a plan, it was a good plan.
“Why did he even go up there in the first place?” Nox asked, confused.
“Because our mother is there,” I said miserably.
Silence on the other end of the line for several heartbeats, “Okay, you know what? Doesn’t matter, go in there and crush it, I’ll come pick you up and we’ll talk about it on the way.”
“Are they going to take him away from me for this?” I asked, heartbroken.
“I don’t know, but I can tell you one thing, we’re going to rain some fucking fire down on that school of his.”
“Yes, we are,” I said, some of that fire raining down on me finally catching in the center of my soul.
“Go to it, Baby Girl. You don’t want to be late. Freshen up that makeup or whatever and I’ll be right there.”
“Okay.”
“I love you,” he said and my center melted just a little in a good way.
“I love you, too, Nox.”
We disconnected and I sucked in a deep breath. He was right, I could do this. I fixed my face in the rearview mirror and squared my shoulders. A few deep breaths and I got out of the car.
Everett straightened up behind the counter and Mandy backed out of the kitchen with a cake balanced on one of those round trays with a pedestal. She smiled at me and tried to blow a stray red curl off her forehead.
“Could you get the case, Evy?” she asked and Everett was already moving to slide it open. I went up to the opposite side and looked in from the front. Mandy set the cake down but it wasn’t showing right.
“Twist it a little that way,” I said pointing the direction and Mandy smiled up at me and gave the little tray a twist. “Perfect.”
I smiled and Everett and Mandy smiled back. I shifted a bit nervously and they both came around the counter.
“Right, glad you’re here and that you could make it. We know how tough things are with Sage right now.” Mandy was wiping her hands on her apron as she spoke.
Everett asked, “What will you have?”
I blinked and wondered if they knew for a second, but dismissed the idea pretty quickly answering, “Um, a caramel toffee mocha?”
“Coming right up,” she said and went to the coffee bar to do her thing. That left just me and Mandy.
“Question for you,” she said looking me over thoughtfully. I tried to smile despite my nervousness and nodded, waiting for her to ask. I mean, this was an interview after all. Finally, she leaned back in her seat, and asked: “Have you thought about what you want to do once you’re out of school?”
I blinked, and shook my head, “I honestly haven’t thought that far ahead, I mean, I will still have Sage and there’s no money for college. I’ll need to work full time, I suppose.” It rattled me that I hadn’t thought about any of this in any kind of depth and that my senior year was almost through.
Mandy smiled gently, “Any interest in cooking?” she asked.
“I love to cook, I mean – why?”
Everett came back and handed me a paper cup with lid, I smiled and said thank you, but was really confused by this turn of events and line of questioning. Mandy smiled at me and patted my knee reassuringly.
“What Mandy is trying to say is that we have had absolute shit luck with finding anyone to help her with the chocolatier side of the business. No one that’s come up has had any kind of discipline or wants to deal with the early or late hours. We feel like it might fit your schedule better, what with Sage. A few hours before school, a few hours after…”
“Wouldn’t I need to go to culinary school for this, I mean, after I graduate?”
“If you wanted to,” Mandy said with a shrug. “If you like it enough; I guess it could be an option, but I didn’t. I learned from my grandmother and I have a degree in business – not culinary arts. I figured I would teach you the same way I was taught,” she said with a charmed little smile. “With love and patience.”
I sat back and took a drink of my coffee, looking from one to the both of them, “You’re serious,” I said startled.
“I need the help with a toddler and a four-month-old at home,” Mandy said slightly embarrassed, although I don’t know why she would be.
“With the location here, and the location down in Florida,
Mandy can’t keep up production on her own. She needs help, you need a flexible job. You could even do some of the work from your own kitchen at home when it comes to the chocolates. We really need the help. The way I see it, we’d be helping each other out.”
“Uh, yeah!” I said, looking over the challenge in front of me. I could do this. I certainly could give it my absolute best try.
“Is that a yeah as in you’ll do it?”
“I mean, I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’ll try, I’ll do my very best.”
Mandy looked excited, and Everett looked relieved, “Let’s fill out some paperwork,” Everett said and got up to go in back.
“You’re sure I can do this?” I asked Mandy.
“I think you can do anything you put your mind to, Maren. You’ve done it so far, and I can see a lot of why Nox is so head over heels for you.”
“He is?” I asked hesitantly.
Mandy smiled and nodded, “Over the moon and willing to fight anyone who disagrees, you know, with the age difference.”
I blushed furiously and whispered, “Nothing’s happened yet.”
Mandy sighed, “I know waiting has to be hard, but it really is for the best.”
“I know,” I murmured.
Everett returned with the new employee papers in a manila folder just as Nox came through the door.
“Here,” she said. “Take these with you and fill them out, bring me copies of these,” she said pointing to a list of documents written on a post-it, “and bring it back to me as soon as you can.”
“Tomorrow,” I said standing up. Both of the women hugged me.
“Tomorrow would be great,” Mandy said.
“Thank you both so much!”
“Absolutely, now go get your brother,” Everett winked and I blushed furiously.
“C’mon, Angel. I’ll drive, and we can talk,” Nox threw an arm around my shoulders and it was like instant comfort.
“Okay,” I agreed and dreaded the conversation and the road ahead… although this time, for the first time in a while, it felt like I was finally on the right street. I clutched the new employee paperwork in my hands like a talisman and followed my boyfriend out into the snow.
Chapter 23
Nox
She was silent for the first ten minutes of the ride. I took us onto the freeway headed north and waited her out, rubbing the top of her thigh, massaging the muscle and wishing I could get my hands onto her shoulders to ease out the major tension riding them. Finally, when she spoke, it was in a quiet tone almost full of defeat.
“It’s a mental hospital. My mother was committed when I was seven and Sage was around one.”
“What for?” I asked when she’d fallen silent again for a little too long. I kept my tone even, gentle, and most importantly, non-judgmental.
“She tried to drown him, I was there and called the police. She had post-partum depression and I guess it was really bad and led to a psychotic break and she tried to drown my little brother. She was committed for being a danger to herself or others – the ‘others’ in her case being her own children. My dad suddenly became a single parent, and for whatever reason, my mom just got worse instead of better. Sage doesn’t know why she was committed, just that she’s really sick and that we’ve been waiting for her to get better.”
“I take it there’s no getting better?” I asked softly.
Maren shook her head, “She won’t take her medication, and when she does and she gets better, it never lasts. It’s really bad, Nox and I don’t know why, but after dad died, Sage got it into his head that she would try harder, and that she would come home.”
“Ah.” It was the best I could say. I mean, I got it to a certain extent. Rush and I languished in foster care because of our mother’s drug addiction and unwillingness to kick her habit. Hell, at this point, she was probably dead. Not that Rush or I would ever know. We just took it for granted that she was. This was a bit different, though, more tragic somehow. I mean shit, mental illness wasn’t a habit you could kick, it was your own mind and body chemistry attacking you daily… and for it to be bad enough to try and kill your own kid?
“I understand why you didn’t want to tell me,” I said quietly when she’d been silently staring out the window for too long, “but it doesn’t change the way I feel about you any.”
“Doesn’t it?” she asked. “I mean, things like this can be hereditary. I could have the same crazy lurking in the back of my brain waiting for the trigger to set it loose.”
I chuckled lightly and said, “Angel, you forget you’re your father’s daughter too. Seems to me you take more after him than you do your mom. I somehow think you’re gonna be okay.”
“That’s the problem, though, Nox. We just don’t know, now do we?” she said solemnly and I sighed.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said.
“It does, and that’s why I’ve decided I’m never having kids. I don’t want to go crazy, or pass this down or –”
“Seems legit,” I said interrupting her with a shrug.
She turned to stare at me and I could see the wheels turning, as she was silently judging whether I was making fun of her or not. I wasn’t. I’d never really banked on having kids of my own. I’d even contemplated a vasectomy in recent years to ensure I didn’t have any mistakes with a random club girl or hookup. I was thirty-six. I didn’t know if I could handle being a dad at forty-two like Archer, even if Noah was Grind’s and not his… he’d taken on the responsibility and that was Archer for you.
Of course, I’d sort of done the same thing with Sage. Maren settled back in her seat and kept watching me, I squeezed the top of her thigh and let her gather my hand between hers, curling my fingers around it and aching to touch more of her, to comfort her better. Kind of hard when I was driving, though.
“There’s a lot to all of this, baby, and we can talk about it all when the dust is settled.” I raised her hand to my lips and kissed the back of it, “I ain’t scared of nothing that’s happened, I ain’t scared of what hasn’t happened yet, and I ain’t going nowhere on yah either, so relax; okay?”
“One disaster at a time?” she asked sardonically.
“Pretty much,” I agreed, nodding.
She sighed heavily and resumed her sightless staring out the passenger side window, the gears clearly turning in her head.
“What am I going to do about Sage?” she asked quietly.
“You mean ‘what are we’ going to do about your brother? I told you, I’m in this with you, Angel, and I’m not going anywhere.”
She stared at me, her expression softening at my words and it was beautiful. The kind of beautiful that made me want to love her until the end of time. Seriously heavy shit that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
“Right, what are we going to do about Sage?”
“They only thing we can do, really. Talk to him, for one; find out what the hell he was thinking.”
“And then?” she breathed out, and her face was so solemn like she was staring at a mountain that she’d just been told she needed to climb.
“Then we go from there, figure things out; maybe we get a hold of Pam and see about scaring him straight if nothing else works; but Baby, there’s no way this ends where he doesn’t learn the truth about your mom and what she did.”
Maren hung her head and nodded in defeat.
“You aren’t protecting him, not from this… you can’t,” I said gently.
“I know,” she murmured and I could swear it was accompanied by the pop and shatter of her heart breaking. I squeezed her hand and raised it to my lips placing a reverent kiss along its back, breathing in the earthy, herbal lavender scent that was purely Maren.
“It’s going to be okay, Angel,” I promised her. “It’s going to be tough, but okay.”
“I know, I just wish it were just tough on me. You know?” I smiled to myself a little. I did know, to a certain extent. Melody was like that with Noah, and pregnant with another now. Since Arch
er’d married her, he’d gotten to be a lot the same way. It was called being a parent, and Maren just seemed to have the gene. I liked it about her, her nurturing side, but I didn’t dare bring it up; not now. Not after the revelation she’d just made and her stated decision about having kids.
Honestly, I didn’t blame her much for making such a hardcore decision at seventeen. I mean, she’d probably been raising Sage for a while now, with her dad being so sick, and she’d be raising him for the next seven years or more. If she was still staunchly against children in the next couple of years, I’d be okay with getting snipped. That is if she hadn’t outgrown me by then.
Why the hell did that thought make my stomach damn near dropout? I wondered but didn’t have to for long because the answer swam right up out of the depths of my brain: Because you really do love her, probably more than you’ve ever loved anyone but your brothers.
It was a sobering thought. I hadn’t meant to or realized that I’d even given that big of a chunk of my heart away, but clearly, I had and now it was gone… resting in Maren’s hands. It was deep, like bottom of the ocean kind of deep level shit, and I shoved it heartily to the back of my brain for right now in an attempt to focus on the problem at hand; which was how the fuck we were going to salvage the rest of Maren’s tiny broken family without it breaking some more?
We drove into the deepening gloom of sunset, and on into the dark. I followed the directions that my GPS spewed at me, and held Maren’s hand tightly in mine the whole way; her hurt, her fear, a palpable thing, setting me on edge. This wasn’t a bully I could knock down a few pegs. This wasn’t a fight I could take on and win, this was something else. Something undefinable and I hated that. I hated that a whole lot.
We made a game plan on how to best handle the situation with her brother and I took the reins for the most part. Maren was afraid she would get angry, or yell and she didn’t want to drive a wedge any further between her and her little brother. The resentment he seemed to be harboring over his big sister suddenly becoming the parent was a palpable thing, and she was afraid if she came on too strong, that she’d lose him forever. It was a pretty valid fear, even if it wasn’t as gloom and doom as all that. Still, pushing him further away wasn’t what anyone wanted.
