by Karen Cimms
Fortunately, I was a lot quicker and a lot less drunk. I took a giant step back as Fish stumbled forward. “Unh-uh-uh!” It was like back in the old days when I had to smile and ward him off. “Better not let Chase see you.”
“Fuck ’im.”
“Don’t you go worrying about that now. That’s my job, babe.” On that note, I scampered off to pass out the rest of the goodies on my tray.
I made a beeline across the yard to where my husband sat with Wally and some of the other guys, watching the kids play with sparklers. Chase held out an arm and patted his knee as I approached. I handed him my last Jell-O shot and took a seat. His arm curled around my waist, holding me into place, and he kissed my bare shoulder. Despite the afternoon heat, goose bumps sprang up along my arm.
“You having fun?” I asked.
“I’d be having more fun if you’d stay put.”
I snuggled in. “Me too, but Diane needs a hand. Once I put the berries on my cake, I’m all yours for the rest of the night.”
“Promise?”
“You play your cards right, and I may even go home with you.”
He rubbed the scruff along his jaw. “We’ll see. My wife’s pretty jealous.”
“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me at all.” I planted a kiss on his lips before I rose from his lap. “I’ll be back in a little bit. Twenty minutes, tops.”
“I’m going to hold you to that,” he called after me.
A metal bowl and the beaters to Diane’s mixer were already chilling in the freezer. All I had to do was whip up the heavy cream, frost my sponge cake, and then decorate it with blueberries and strawberries to look like the American flag. Easy-peasy.
I was adding the last strawberry just as Fish came inside. He needed to use the bathroom, he announced, only as soon as he saw me, he made a beeline toward me. I removed his hands from my ass and told him to behave himself. This wasn’t a barroom, and I was no longer a barmaid. I tolerated it back then and I shouldn’t have, but the occasional pat on the fanny often resulted in a bigger tip at the end of the night. I should have stopped it then, but I didn’t—so I sure as hell was stopping it now.
The thing is, it’s impossible to reason with a drunk.
“How about you pop one of those strawberries between your tits and let me have a bite?” Fish said as he followed me out into the yard.
I stopped short and glared at him. “I’m going to ask you one more time to knock it off. Don’t talk to me like that again. Understand?”
Apparently not, since he brayed like a donkey. Asshole. At this point, the best I could do was ignore him. You’d think his wife, who was here somewhere, would try to reel him in. She must have been trying to ignore him too.
But Fish had no intention of being ignored, at least not by me. He followed close behind me, laughing even as his palm cracked across my ass.
As I spun around, I caught a glimpse of Chase near the back door, digging another beer out of the cooler. The rest happened so quickly, I didn’t have time to react.
Chase flew at him. Before I knew it, Fish was on the ground and Chase was on top of him, pummeling him.
“Chase! Stop!”
I wanted to grab him, but in that moment, I didn’t see my husband. The man in front of me, beating the shit out of a stupid drunk, was a stranger.
The collar of Fish’s T-shirt tore under Chase’s grip, and his ball cap rolled to the ground behind him. With each thud of Chase’s fist, my stomach turned in on itself. Someone screamed for Wally. Diane most likely, but all that registered was the sound of Chase’s voice, cursing and threatening, and the sickening thud of his fist. Each hit reverberated through me. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t move.
Fish’s wife miraculously reappeared, screaming like a banshee. When it looked like she was about to jump on top of Chase, I held her back. Not that I blamed her for trying to save her husband, but because mine had snapped.
By the time Wally and Bobby pulled Chase off, blood was running from Fish’s nose, one eye was swollen shut, and my cake was upside down in the grass. Fish rolled onto his side, gasping. Thick globs of crushed berries smeared with whipped cream clung to the back of his shirt and bits of fruit and sponge cake sprouted from his thinning hair.
Forget being psychic. I wished I had the ability to disappear.
Other than the hum of the pool filter and the squawk of a crow in the black walnut tree near the barn, there was silence. Even the music that had been blasting just moments before had been turned off.
Zac began to cry, but before I could move, Mom scooped him up and carried him off. Izzy stared at Chase from the edge of the pool where she’d been swimming with her friends.
Wally helped Fish to his feet, and Diane materialized at his side with a bag of ice. As Fish and his wife shuffled off to their car, I heard her muttering something under her breath that sounded a lot like it was my fault her husband couldn’t keep his hands to himself.
Chase stalked off to the barn, head down. I scanned the group of stunned faces, searching for my mother. I found her, holding Zac, standing under the black walnut tree. We locked gazes, and with a lift of her chin, I knew she’d take care of my kids.
I dropped to my knees and began to scrape up what was left of my cake. A hand covered mine.
“Leave it,” Diane said. “What I don’t clean up, the dog will eat.”
I pushed past the feeling of hands around my throat. “I’m sorry we ruined your party.”
“Bullshit. You didn’t do anything. I don’t even know why Wally invited that jackass. I think he had one too many beers at Blondie’s the other night and invited half the bar.” She dragged a paper plate through the mess at our feet and deposited the remains onto the platter that had held my cake. “I heard you tell him to stop, and he wouldn’t.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think he deserved the beating Chase gave him.”
She shrugged. “Maybe not.”
The yard was still eerily silent, and I had the feeling everyone was staring at me. Maybe they all felt like Fish’s wife. Maybe I had asked for it.
“Do you mind if I go?”
“You don’t have to do that.”
Tears prickled my eyes. I didn’t want to cry. Not here, not with everyone watching. Despite most of these people being our friends, by tomorrow, what happened would be all over town, based on probably only a fraction of the truth. The thought of Lorraine and Dylan getting wind of this made my stomach turn. I could only imagine what they would have to say, especially Lorraine.
“Yeah, I do.” I pulled my sunglasses off the top of my head and slipped them on, even though the sun had begun to set. It wasn’t much to hide behind, but it was better than nothing.
Diane followed me for a few steps. “What about Chase?”
“What about him?”
I didn’t stop walking until I reached the truck parked on the street. I pulled out my spare set of keys, climbed in, and went home.
Alone.
Chapter Fifteen
I was losing my damn mind. I stared down at my bruised and swollen knuckles. Fucking great. The same damn knuckles that had just healed. It would serve me right if I’d broken my hand again, although I was pretty sure I hadn’t. Fish was fucking old, and his face had felt soft beneath my fist.
Maybe I overreacted. But he had no right to touch my wife. No fucking right. The image of his hand slapping her ass had my hand shaking around the bottle of Heineken I’d grabbed from the fridge in the barn.
“You okay?”
I glanced over my shoulder to see Wally in the doorway.
I threw my head back and drained the remaining half of the bottle. I was getting very good at drinking lately. It seemed to be the only thing I was succeeding at these days. That and upsetting my wife.
“Who the fuck knows?” I grabbed another beer from the refrigerator.
“I’d tell you to slow down, but since Rain just left with your truck, I don’t have to worry about you driving.”
> “Shit.”
“What’s come over you, man? I know seeing Fish touch Rain pissed you off, but you didn’t need to go all Incredible Hulk on his ass. Diane said Rain was handling it. She told him to stop.”
“But he didn’t, did he? He slapped her ass in front of everyone. In front of our kids, for fuck’s sake. What was I supposed to do?”
Wally picked up a wrench from the workbench and pointed it at me. “If it had been me, I would’ve told him to get his fucking hands off my wife. I would’ve made it clear that I’d seen what he did and that this would be his only warning. And I’m pretty damn sure he would’ve listened. Especially if that old battle-ax he’s married to heard me.”
“Why’d you even invite him?”
The bastard chuckled. “So it’s my fault now?”
I picked at the label on my bottle. “No. Sorry.” I tossed the bottle in the trash. “I need a ride home, I guess.”
Wally shook his head. “You need to give Rain a chance to cool off. Diane said she was pretty upset.”
“All the more reason I should go. Let me just grab the kids.”
“Dorinda took them.”
Fuck it. I chugged half the bottle. “Husband of the year and father of the year.”
“It wasn’t your best day, no.”
It was after eleven by the time I got a ride home. Dennis and his girlfriend dropped me off, both of them were silent during the fifteen-minute ride. I guess everyone thought I was a giant ass.
Other than the porch light, the house was dark. I still hadn’t come up with a way to justify what I’d done other than the same old bullshit excuse I’d given her since we met. When it came to Rain, I couldn’t seem to reel in my jealousy. She’d reined in her appearance and changed the way she looked and acted, but I was still a maniac. I hated that she felt she had to do those things for me, but if it kept other guys from thinking they could hit on her, I was glad she’d done it.
Which only proved that I was a jerk.
I flicked the light on in the living room. A blanket was folded up on the sofa with my pillow sitting on top. At least it hadn’t been waiting for me on the front porch. I toed off my sneakers and grabbed a bag of frozen peas for my bruised knuckles and a cold beer, then collapsed on the sofa.
I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be in my bed, lying beside my wife, telling her how sorry I was—again. The sofa wasn’t made for sleeping. It wasn’t even long enough to accommodate my body. I rolled to my back, shifted until I got into a position that didn’t have my ass sinking in between the cushions, and rested my ankles on the arm of the sofa.
I threw the bag of mushy peas on the floor. I could just go sleep in Izzy’s room, since Dorinda was keeping her and Zac for the night, but why should I?
An uncomfortable sofa and the beginning of a hangover? Yeah, that would be my penance.
Chapter Sixteen
By the time Chase woke up, I’d done two loads of laundry and hung the damp sheets on the clothesline. I came inside to find him leaning against the counter, fresh from the shower, holding a cup of coffee left over from the morning. I couldn’t bring myself to meet his eyes, so instead I focused on a bead of water traveling from the wet hair touching his shoulder, down over his abs, and into the waistband of his running shorts. It never failed to amaze me how I could be mad as hell at him yet still turned on.
He set the cup on the counter. “I’m sorry.”
I hadn’t been sure what I wanted to say to him, but hearing those two words set me off. I dropped the empty laundry basket at my feet, kicked it across the kitchen, and watched it roll into the living room.
“Sorry? Does that even mean anything to you anymore? How many times are you going to tell me you’re sorry and then a week or two later, do the same thing again?”
He gripped the edges of the counter with his hands. “What do you want me to say? I’m sorry I hit him, but he had no right—”
“You’re right. He had no right to touch me. And I told him that. He’s a drunk, Chase. He doesn’t get it. He’s also twice as old as you, at least, and you beat the daylights out of him. What if Wally and Bobby hadn’t been there to pull you off of him? Would you have kept going until he stopped breathing?”
I wrapped my arms around my waist, shivering despite the warm July morning, and tried to control my voice. “You scared me. And you scared our kids. And that’s not okay. I can’t live this way.”
His head snapped up. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
I hadn’t meant to say that. The words had just fallen from my lips. I couldn’t take them back, but if I could, would I?
“I don’t know what I mean. All I know is that I love you, but this … whatever it is of yours is destroying what we—”
“I’m destroying us because I came to your rescue? What? I should just stand back and let some jackass put his hands all over you? Hell, if you’re missing that kind of attention, maybe you should go back to working in a bar or posing naked with strange men. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Far be it from me to treat you like a wife deserves to be treated.”
His words were like shards of glass flying at me, piercing my skin, my heart. He picked up the mug he’d set on the counter and slammed it into the sink, shattering it and spraying coffee all over himself, the walls, and the floor.
I grabbed my purse and keys from the kitchen table.
“Where are you going?”
There was fear in his eyes, and something else. Sorrow, maybe. Resignation. I had no idea.
“I need to get away from you right now before I say something as ugly as what you just said to me.”
Somehow he’d found out about the photo shoot with Antoine. If he hadn’t been acting like such a goddamn jackass, I could’ve tried to explain it to him. I could’ve told him I didn’t know there would be a male model involved. I could have told him I was done with all of that. I’d even tell him that I recently got a call for a men’s magazine shoot that paid more than what we both made in a month, but I’d turned it down without a second thought, even though that money would have meant finishing the bathroom we’d been working on for two years.
Right now, he didn’t deserve any explanations.
He crossed the kitchen in two easy strides and wrapped his hand around my arm. “Don’t,” he said, his voice much softer. “Don’t leave. We need to talk.”
“I don’t want to talk to you right now. I’m going to my mother’s to pick up Izzy and Zac. I need to try and explain to them what the hell happened yesterday.”
His grip tightened. “Let me go with you. We’ll talk to them together. Let me fix this.”
I tugged until he let go. “After what you just said, I can’t trust that you won’t tell my kids their mother’s a whore who was asking for it and you had no choice but to act like a goddamn caveman.”
I didn’t wait for him to respond. I knew he would never say anything bad about me to the kids. I was positive of that. But I wanted to hurt him just like he’d hurt me.
As the screen door banged behind me, I couldn’t decide who I liked less at that moment, him or me.
Chapter Seventeen
I gripped my hair in both hands and pulled until it hurt, until it felt like I would tear out pieces of my scalp. She made me crazy. I loved her so much, but I was losing my fucking mind.
Leaning back against the kitchen counter, I raised my leg and kicked back until the heel of my foot connected with the cabinet beneath the sink. The door splintered. “Fuck!” More cheap fucking shit in this cheap fucking house. I’d been awake less than an hour and I’d shattered a coffee mug and busted a cabinet door. Between broken shards, coffee stains, and now blood oozing onto the floor from my foot, the kitchen looked like a crime scene.
Not to mention the damage I might have done to my marriage. If I had half a brain, I’d go back to bed and sleep for a week. Or check myself into some kind of rehab for guys who had everything they ever wanted but were determined to fuck it up.
>
Instead, I decided to drink. Who cared that it was just a little after ten o’clock in the morning? I sure as hell didn’t. And I would have bet anything that Rain didn’t care what I was up to right now either.
I pulled down an unopened bottle of JD from the cabinet above the refrigerator. The fumes didn’t appeal to my empty stomach, but I wasn’t drinking for enjoyment. I needed to calm the fuck down, and this was the only way I knew how to go about it.
I dug through the junk drawer until I found a rubber band, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and set about cleaning up my mess. The cabinet door was history, and a new kitchen wasn’t even on the horizon yet, not until I finished paying off the loan I’d taken to buy my half of the Sunoco station.
The way my foot was bleeding I probably needed a few stitches, but I couldn’t be bothered. There was a box of butterfly bandages in the bathroom and a bottle of peroxide. I ran my foot under cold water to clean off the dried blood and then poured peroxide over the gash.
“Son of a bitch!” That fucker burned. I clamped down, watching it bubble and fizz. When it stopped, I patted it dry, put on a few butterfly strips, and hobbled back into the kitchen to clean up the rest of my mess.
There was no way of fixing or hiding what I’d done to the cabinet, and I couldn’t leave it like that. Someone, most likely Zac, would end up cutting themselves on the splintered particle board. I unscrewed the cabinet door and carried it into the garage. I cut a leftover piece of plywood to replace the broken front—perfect, except the cabinets were poplar and the plywood was obviously plywood. Since that part of the kitchen was visible from the front door, anyone who came into the house would see the piss-poor job I’d just done on the cabinets.
Rain was meticulous. She took pride in our shitty little house, including the tiny little kitchen. I was already on the shit list, and this sure as hell wasn’t going to help me get back in her good graces.
I reinstalled the door on the cabinet under the sink and stepped back.
“Yeah, that’s not noticeable at all.”
I grabbed the bottle of Jack from the counter and sank to the floor. My foot throbbed. I took a pull from the bottle and shivered at the burn as the whiskey slid down my throat, hoping it would slide all the way down to my foot and numb the pain.
