by Malcom, Anne
I’d braced when they’d arrived, not in the way Luke had suggested. More emotionally. Readied myself for flashbacks, something I was used to and still got when I smelled something, saw something or felt something that reminded me of my marriage.
PTSD was most likely what it was. I didn’t have the money for a therapist to tell me that, but I didn’t really need an overpaid professional to tell me my husband’s continual and brutal abuse left emotional wounds.
I did not get a single flashback when Rosie bowled through the door without knocking, grinning and a bottle of tequila in each hand. Her eyes went around my living room, with none of the distaste or judgment I might expect a woman with a three-thousand-dollar purse hanging from the crook of her arm to have at my shabby chic—and that was being generous—living room.
“Oh, you are a spiritual queen,” she deduced, without saying hello. She dumped the alcohol and the crazy expensive, beautiful purse on the coffee table and her eyes zeroed in on my Tarot cards. “You are so doing me later,” she decided.
Luke emerged from the hall where he’d been wiring up something, grinning at his wife. “Who is doing you later?” he asked, voice warm and teasing and sexy enough to make my knees weak.
Rosie’s eyes turned mischievous. “Well you, much, much later.” She winked before she moved her eyes around the room. “Is my child around here somewhere?”
I gestured to the back yard. “Playing with my neighbors and my kid.”
To say Nathan had taken to Rogue was an understatement. He was in love with a beautiful little boy to entertain and teach all sorts of things.
Her eyes lit up. “Great, I’ll leave them to it.” She picked up the tequila. “Where’s your blender?”
And that was Rosie’s entrance.
Polly’s was a little more subdued and she did greet me. She also presented me with a small wrapped box. I took it, surprised. A lump formed in my throat when I opened it.
“Agate—grounding and strengthening,” she whispered. “I was worried it was a risky thing to give someone, considering that people have some strong opinions about crystals.” She looked around the room. “Now I see it was the right choice.”
I nodded, unable to say anything more.
She smiled warmly, obviously understanding that I couldn’t speak.
I didn’t have to, because of Heath emerging from behind her, a beautiful little girl in his arms and an equally beautiful little boy at his side.
He was older. Had to be about eleven. Tall, gangly, but in a way you’d know he’d grow into it. He had deep caramel skin and piercing blue eyes that radiated with a deepness no child could have. Because a deepness like that was carved out from pain. Suffering. None of which lay behind those eyes right at that moment, but it had been there.
“This is Ziggy,” Heath said, ruffling the boy’s already messy hair. “He’s our son.”
Ziggy had a reaction to this. A palpable glow went over him, his aura. A happiness that could only come from people who had experienced true suffering.
He was theirs. Completely. But not by blood. Birth. By heart. Soul. It was something anyone could see, feel. It was beautiful.
“Hey Ziggy,” I said, smiling. “I’ve got a little boy named Nathan who is quite a bit younger than you but is sufficiently mischievous to provide you with entertainment. He’s out back.”
Ziggy’s eyes lit up even more and he tipped his head upward to Heath in a silent question. Heath smiled down at him in a way that hit my heart. Pure adoration. Dedication. The exact way a father should look at a son. Robert had never looked at Nathan that way.
“Of course. Go and raise hell, Zig,” Heath said.
The quiet boy rewarded his father, and everyone around him with the widest and most beautiful smile I’d ever seen.
He held out his arms. “I’ll take my buddy,” he said, voice quiet but clear and strong.
Heath smiled even wider and handed the little girl to his skinny awaiting arms. She immediately made a little sound of happiness and curled into Ziggy’s chest.
I bit my lip to stop from crying at this as Ziggy moved through the living room, slowly, carefully, purposefully.
“His sister is his best friend,” Polly explained, eyes shining with happiness. “He’s only just become ours.” She paused. “Well, he’s been ours since the second we saw him, but we’ve been having a tough time with adopting him. He’s been legally our son for just under a month.” Her voice was low, happy. No, happy was too light a word for it. Because her eyes were deep too. Carved out with pain, filled up with happiness.
Heath put his arms around his wife and kissed her head. “He’s only just started getting comfortable talking around people,” he explained.
“Well, I’m sure Nathan will do enough talking for the both of them and the rest of the people at the party,” I said.
Lucy and Keltan arrived then with their beautiful little girl, Amelia.
Everyone made themselves at home, and I loved it. It felt like home.
Lance and I hadn’t spoken.
Not one single word since I’d called him an asshole in front of a supermarket cashier.
I knew I wasn’t angry with him. I knew that it was my own issues that made me angry and ashamed enough to project onto him.
That didn’t make him any less of an asshole.
I was sure he knew his fair share about male pride. About the human race. The way he looked at people told me he was collecting information, making all sorts of deductions, learning everything about someone by the way they tied their shoelaces.
He worked as a private investigator, or security guard or whatever. I was sure knowing and reading people was part of his job.
Therefore he was likely to know about female pride. About a mother’s pride. How powerful that was. How penetrating. Whatever he’d deduced about me, about my situation, should have told him to know better than to do what he did.
Therefore I was mad at him.
In between smiling at my kid, at the people who surrounded me and filled me with joy, I glared at the man in question.
He didn’t seem at all affected by my glare, or me at all. But every time I happened to look in his general direction, my stare locked with his empty and hard one.
I tried to tell myself he hadn’t spent the entire night staring at me. And if he did, it was likely because he was watching for me to do something insane as I’d acted like a total crazy person every time I was in his presence.
That and it was his job.
Obviously neither Nathan or myself needed protection tonight since the entire Greenstone Security team was in my back yard, but he had made it clear how seriously he took his job. And without humor. Or emotion.
I was totally talking myself into thinking it was anything more than a job to him.
Luckily, I was distracted by the happiness, the warmth, the company and the laughter of the evening. My friends blended in seamlessly with everyone from Greenstone Security. Nathan lapped up the fact there were other kids around, and the males who taught him how to grill a hot dog. I was right, he hit it off with Ziggy, who wasn’t as outgoing or outwardly as nuts as my little boy, but it worked. My kid was kind. Sensitive. He saw that Ziggy was different in beautifully painful ways, so he made sure to treat him exactly how he’d treat any other kid.
My heart hurt a little seeing Keltan hand him the tongs and stand beside him while he grilled.
I’d always promised myself I’d do everything with my son, I’d play catch with him, I’d go to any sports game he decided he liked. He would know how to change a tire and the oil in his car before he was allowed to drive it. I’d teach him the things that a father would teach him. I’d make him into a good man. Nothing like his father.
But there was a gaping hole in any young kid’s life when they didn’t have a father. Different for girls and boys, but with Nathan, it was that male role model to look up to.
I couldn’t let myself dwell on it because I wasn’t allowed to.
My happiness didn’t let me. The women around me didn’t let me.
It was in the midst of my pure happiness that my cell phone rang. It was a surprise I even heard it since we had music playing, laughter, and chatter drowned out the low vibration. But I’d just happened to walk into the house and heard it on the kitchen counter.
I snatched it up and answered without looking, heading back into the back yard.
“You made a mistake, pumpkin.”
I stopped in my tracks, the smile that had been almost constant for the entire night frozen on my face.
“Which of them are you fucking?” Robert continued, his voice cold, even.
My body responded to that tone, erupting in shakes, bracing for the hit that would always accompany the faux calm.
“Or are you fucking them all?” Robert spat. “I shouldn’t be surprised. You always were a whore. I snatched you from the gutter and you act like trash when you don’t have me to discipline you. You’re using that pussy of yours to get men to come into my home and take away my son? Big mistake, Elena. I’m gonna show you just how big. When I get my hands on you, I’ll—”
I didn’t hear anymore.
Because my phone was snatched out of my shaking hand by a large and strong hand that most definitely wasn’t shaking. A hand attached to a muscled arm, an iron jaw and hard eyes.
Lance held the phone to his ear for exactly seven seconds.
I counted.
He didn’t say a word.
Didn’t move a muscle, which was a feat considering all the muscles he had.
After those seven seconds, he moved the phone from his ear. To smash it right against the concrete at our feet.
I watched it shatter.
Then I watched Lance’s boots move away from me. I had to lift my head to watch him tear through the back yard, then disappear from sight as he rounded the house.
Lance
Keltan was waiting for him after he emerged from the gates, wiping the blood off his knuckles with the back of his shirt.
Lance expected him to be.
He was sure Heath or Duke would be down the street, waiting in case he needed backup.
Lance never needed backup.
That was kind of the point.
But Keltan was here, leaning against the SUV, arms folded, expression clear.
Lance wondered how long he’d stayed at Elena’s. Long enough to get her to talk to him, tell him what happened in order for him to know to come here. Long enough to likely calm her down, get her to stop fucking shaking, wipe some of that cold, vacant terror from her eyes.
Lance clenched his bloodied fists with the mere memory of that expression. That faraway expression that was miles from the beautiful, full smile that had spread to her whole body, fuck it’d spread to the whole back yard, crept through all the layers of his skin, his scar tissue, snaked through until it found something inside him still able to feel.
Yeah, that happiness had affected him.
Warmed him.
And the loss of it, the absence of it had chilled him. He’d watched it drain from her just like he’d watched her fill up with it since everyone had started arriving. Though she didn’t have those smiles, that warmth for him. It intrigued him, that anger that he’d not seen her direct toward anyone else. He treasured it, that menace. It was obviously rare, precious. Because she gave everyone her smiles, the warmth dancing in her eyes. But he was the only one that got that cold fury that had begun in the wine aisle at the supermarket.
It had come from a place of pride. A place of hurt.
He’d seen it all mixed in her eyes like the most potent, delicious and dangerous cocktail on the planet.
He was already fucking drunk on her when he’d made sure not to even sip that shit. Because she shoved it down his throat. With her stupid fucking awkward words that made his cock hard and his mind intrigued. With her thinking that thirty bucks on wine was expensive, with her trying to stand up to him when she was wearing the bruise as evidence of another man’s violence.
He knew she couldn’t afford to feed everyone that would be at her place. He didn’t want her paying for that shit. Lance lived simple, his main expenses being weapons that were scattered throughout his shitty apartment. Money did little more than pile up in his accounts since he had nothing, and no one to spend it on.
It gave him a rush, spending it on shit for this party.
Shit for Elena.
It gave him more of a rush that she was so against him doing that shit. She was independent. Fiercely so. It was clear she did not want to exist on handouts, or help from the people around her who obviously adored her and her son and wanted to help her.
Life hadn’t been kind to Elena Phoenix, previously Hudson, originally Pérez.
Lance had looked her up and saw that shit. Saw the doctor’s records. Looked into her parents. They had a long list of priors. Of offenses. Her father was currently serving time for beating the shit out of a hooker. Mother was still living in the trailer park that Elena grew up in. Surprised the fuck out of him. She did not look like a woman that came from that. Did not speak or act like a woman that came from shit.
Life had been hard to her, it should have calcified around her, carved sharp edges, jaded her.
It hadn’t.
By some miracle, she was all soft and round, even when her body was all skin and bone. She was soft everywhere she should be and everywhere she shouldn’t.
So watching that happiness leak from her eyes with the single phone call, hearing that fuck’s threats to come into her life and try and make it even dirtier than he had, Lance was not having that.
He did not give a fuck about Keltan’s orders to leave that fuck alone.
He didn’t give a fuck about anything but that deadness in Elena’s eyes. The way she shook.
He couldn’t comfort her, he wasn’t physically able to do that. So he did what he could. The only thing he could. He made that fucker bleed.
He didn’t greet Keltan as he approached the SUV, he just waited.
“He still alive?” Keltan asked casually.
Lance nodded curtly once.
Keltan raised his brow in surprise. Lance wasn’t known for losing his temper. And when he did, he wasn’t known for leaving anyone alive when they made him lose it.
“Elena didn’t want that,” he said by answer.
Keltan’s look of surprise only intensified. “And that’s what stopped you? A client’s wishes?”
Lance gritted his teeth at the knowledge behind the fucker’s words, his eyes. He didn’t know shit.
So he didn’t reply.
“This is gonna make it more complicated,” Keltan continued. “Leaving him alive.”
Lance nodded. He knew that it would. Leaving rats alive just meant they could continue being vermin. Better to exterminate.
But he couldn’t.
Him.
The firm’s resident grim reaper.
Because of a client.
A woman.
A kid.
He clenched his fists, relishing in the burn from his bleeding and bruised knuckles.
“Could blow back on Elena and Nathan,” Keltan said.
“I won’t let it,” Lance hissed, the very thought of fresh bruises on Elena’s face making his trigger finger itch.
Keltan nodded. “I know, brother.” He clapped him on the shoulder and Lance stiffened with the contact. Keltan didn’t move his hand. “She’s good. Recovered well after you left. Got her people there with her. Duke’s down the street at the house.” Keltan paused. “Assume you’re gonna relieve him of that duty?”
Lance only nodded once.
Keltan grinned, more knowledge in that fucker’s face. “Welcome to the club, brother.”
Elena
Lance didn’t come back.
I pretended I didn’t notice.
Surely there was enough to distract me.
Like the fact him smashing my phone and storming off garnered quite a bit of attent
ion.
Keltan had been calm, collected and totally on his game at getting me to tell him what happened without having a panic attack. Then he’d seamlessly passed me off to a calm and smiling Lucy when he and a couple of the other guys left, presumably to follow Lance.
I didn’t get to wonder exactly where they were going because I had to focus on my son, who was perceptive as shit and even if he wasn’t, his favorite grown-up smashing a phone inches away from his mother caught his attention.
It was the superpower of a parent to mask all kinds of pain and panic so their child wasn’t faced with it. Burdened with it. Children were little sponges, so yes, they parroted curse words they’d heard at home at school or in church. But they also soaked up the emotions of a parent. I tried to make sure Nathan always soaked up smiles, jokes, stories, lessons. None of my pain, my worries, my sadness. The world would inject enough of that into him as he grew into himself. He would inherit my skin tone, my hair, my obsession with peanut butter, but he would not inherit my sorrows.
So his little face, asking what was wrong was the cold splash of water I needed to jerk myself out of whatever Robert’s phone call had triggered within me.
Luckily it took a smile, a hug and letting him have more pie to distract Nathan from the shift in the evening.
While he was distracted, Karen ordered me to repeat everything Robert had said, cheeks getting redder and redder as I did so.
Bobby got that scary look on his face again.
As did Logan.
And Esther.
“I’m fine,” I told everyone.
They did not believe me.
But they pretended to, because they knew calling bullshit on me when I was this fragile would break me.
And the people around me, worried for me, angry for me, murderous for me, they would do everything that it took for me not to break.
Everyone trickled out at different times, but everyone staying long enough to help me clean something, wrap up leftover food or drain leftover wine. It irritated me that two bottles of the wine I’d convinced Lance I wouldn’t drink were gone.
