Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

  Because he hadn’t asked.

  Hell, he didn’t even know until yesterday morning what her surname was.

  Because he hadn’t freaking asked.

  It could be they had a screwed-up relationship that was a vicious cycle of this kind of shit that he’d just get caught up in.

  It could be, Greta and everything about her being the exact opposite of the nominal he’d experienced with her mother (but it was more than enough), this was a long time coming.

  Again, he had no idea.

  He hadn’t asked.

  He’d just laid her out and walked out.

  Walked out on her.

  Again.

  But this time, he’d done it ugly.

  “Fuck,” he whispered.

  You think you escaped narrowly, I’m clueing into the fact that maybe the one who escaped was me.

  He stared at his opened door in front of him and repeated a whispered, “Fuck.”

  He lifted his hands, rubbed them over his face, and since he couldn’t do dick about that now—he needed to catch a killer, deal with his daughter, try to decide if it was right or would cause World War III if he backed his son’s play to live with him exclusively, come to terms with the fact his wife had divorced him over not buying her a goddamned ring, and he needed to let Greta have some time—he’d sort it out later.

  However that needed to be.

  You know how it needs to be, asshole, he thought. And this time, you’re fucked.

  These thoughts occurred to him when he made it to the front of his desk, so he leaned into his hands on it and dropped his head.

  That all sounds really complicated, Hix.

  No, sweetheart, all that is really fuckin’ simple.

  It was simple.

  It was.

  And he’d complicated it again being a dick.

  “Fuck,” he whispered.

  It was good it was beers with Donna, Tommy and Toast that night.

  He was going to need them.

  Lock This, Baby

  Greta

  “THAT WAS FUN, we won! Now pizza!” Maple cried, dancing in front of Lou and me, holding Andy’s hand, Snow on his other side, walking so close to my baby bro that their arms were brushing.

  Andy, in his Glossop Raiders sweatshirt, turned and grinned at me.

  He’d had a blast at the game. The Raiders won. And it hadn’t been the torture for me I’d thought it would be.

  It was the Friday after the Friday that Hix had walked into my house and gutted me.

  I wanted to say I was over it.

  I wasn’t over it.

  I wanted to say I was glad for Faith but not for Hixon that a sketch had been in this week’s Guide of the man who killed Faith’s husband and rumor around town was that the sheriff had everything he needed, including a witness who saw Nat pick up the guy who killed him, they just needed to find that man.

  But I was happy for him.

  I wanted to say that I hoped like hell they found the guy so Faith could have some closure and not so Hixon could also put this behind him.

  But I hoped like hell they found this guy—for both reasons.

  I also wanted to say he hadn’t looked amazingly handsome in the picture the Guide printed of him and his deputies in full uniform standing at the gravesite at Nat’s funeral last Sunday (fortunately, they’d printed that picture, not one of Faith or her kids).

  And he didn’t.

  He’d looked devastatingly handsome.

  And I knew he’d looked devastatingly handsome before I’d even seen the picture because I saw it firsthand seeing as I’d been at that same funeral.

  I’d also gone to pains to avoid the spear of his eyes I caught twice from where I was sitting and he was standing with his deputies at the side of the chairs set up for funeral-goers.

  And, even though Lou had used her magical powers to put the hush on any talk about Hixon and Hope Drake around me, I still heard my fair share. And I wanted to say I wasn’t skimming the range of emotions between interested and concerned when gossip reported that Hixon had instituted a veritable freeze-out of his ex-wife, and it was a known fact his son was angling to live solely with his father (thus giving rise to speculation both had learned why Hope had divorced her husband).

  But I absolutely was skimming that range of emotions.

  What I wasn’t doing was seeing, speaking to or sleeping with Hixon Drake.

  This regardless of the fact that he’d called on Sunday after the funeral, a call for obvious reasons I did not take, however he’d left a message in his lovely, deep voice that said simply, “Greta, we need to talk.”

  I had not replied.

  I’d blocked his number too.

  I was learning.

  I was learning I didn’t need my mother’s malicious antics and I didn’t need some man I barely knew treating me like dirt.

  So I wasn’t going to have either.

  I was going to have Andy. Lou. Her girls. My work. My singing.

  And the rest could go to hell.

  Now I had Andy for the weekend. When I’d told Gemini my brother wanted to catch a Raiders game, he’d found an act to take my place.

  I’d also cleared my client schedule for Saturday.

  So I had a full weekend with my brother to look forward to and the Raiders winning to start that off was indication it was going to be a good one.

  “Race you to the car?” Snow asked Andy.

  “Yeah!” Andy yelled.

  She took off.

  Maple let him go and took off too.

  Andy, knowing he could beat them by a mile, shot another grin over his shoulder at me, this a goofy one. He gave it a few beats to give them a head start, then he took off after them at a sedate lope.

  “He’s da bomb,” Lou said from her place striding beside me as we walked out with the rest of the town from Raider Field.

  She was right.

  I looked up to her then back to where we were heading, watching the girls and Andy weave through the crowd, the girls just going for it, Andy stopping every once in a while to say, “Hey, sorry,” and “pardon,” and “gotta keep up with the girls.”

  In other words, they were going to beat him by a mile.

  I watched them start to pull away in a break in the crowd and did it noting, “It’s weird, you know. I get so pissed . . . I still . . .” I shook my head. “I grieve for the life he could have had. Then, I realize, if he’d had that, I wouldn’t have this Andy and I don’t know whether it’s right or wrong to feel blessed I have this Andy when he could have had so much more.”

  “It’s never wrong to love someone just as they come,” Lou told me.

  I glanced at her before again looking ahead. “You’re right. I know that. But I’m not sure it’s healthy I’m still holding on to some of that, Lou. It happened nearly a decade ago.”

  “My grandma died when my mom was twenty-two. And to this day, on Grandma’s birthday and the anniversary of her death, you handle Mom with care and don’t mention her red eyes. That was over four decades ago, Greta. I think what would be unhealthy is if you tried to stop yourself from feeling grief. The life he could have had that your mom took from him will always be something he lost. So it’ll always be something you wished he had. Just feel what you feel, babe. And . . . shit.”

  I looked up to her after she said that last word to see her gaze narrowed on something in the distance.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Hixon,” she hissed.

  My eyes flew to where she was looking and there he was. Standing talking to a bunch of people just inside the chain link fence that ran around the field, wearing a navy V-neck sweater with a T-shirt under it and faded jeans—making that simplicity look awesome. His younger daughter was not too far from him looking like she was doing a pirouette with two other girls who were doing the same.

  Shit!

  “We have to get by him without him seeing me,” I said under my breath like he was standing one foot away,
not thirty, doing this grabbing Lou’s arm and getting close to her. I gave it a yank. “Move to my other side.”

  “Why?” she asked. “He should see you. You look fine. You always look fine. But with that pink in your cheeks and that cute jacket and those jeans that make your awesome ass look even more awesome, he should get a load of what he’s missing.”

  “Lou,” I snapped.

  “No,” she returned calmly, moving a half step away, forcing my hand to fall from her arm. “Screw Hixon Drake.”

  Fabulous.

  I kept walking, giving in, but ordered, “Don’t look at him.”

  She said nothing.

  We carried on and I hazarded a glance up at her.

  She was looking right in his direction and I knew by the way she was skewering something with her eyes, it was him.

  “You’re not helping,” I told her.

  “He’s not looking at me. He doesn’t even know I’m here.” Her attention came to me. “He’s looking at you. And I’m glad. Because right about now he’s probably missing a little of that action and I’m not just talking about the fact you are fine and he was tapping that. I’m talking about the fact pretty much everyone knows he now knows Hope is a spoiled-rotten bitch and pretty much everyone knows, after he escaped a full lifetime of that, he let a great thing slip right through his fingers.”

  It felt like my heart skipped a beat after the first part of what she said, and that skip was more like a walloping thump so I kinda didn’t hear the rest of it.

  “How lame would it be if I raced you to the car?” I asked.

  “Super, double, extra lame,” she answered.

  Ugh.

  We made it through the gate without incident, and then I stepped it up in my high-heeled boots to get to the car.

  I didn’t run. I didn’t dilly-dally.

  I wanted to be able to say this was because I wanted to make sure Andy and the girls had made it safely to the car.

  But it totally wasn’t.

  It was the pounding that woke me up.

  But when I was awake, I heard the rain.

  Shit!

  Rain.

  I tossed back the covers and raced out of my room, across the hall, to the room I thought of as Andy’s, even though he didn’t sleep there very often.

  I threw open the door, heard the source of the noise but didn’t see Andy, so I closed it, and there he was on the opposite side of the door, standing, hands to the wall, slamming his head against it.

  “Sweetie,” I whispered, rushing to him, putting my hands on him. “Shh, just rain. It’s just rain,” I soothed.

  Fingers curled tight around his biceps, I pulled back.

  He kept slamming his head against the wall.

  “Andy, darlin’, please, stop doing that.” I pulled harder. “Come away from the wall.”

  He didn’t stop even as he resisted my pull.

  “Andrew!” I snapped. “Come away from the wall!”

  I tightened my hold and gave his arms a yank, only for him to give my hands a powerful shirk at the same time his body jerked forcefully to the side.

  I lost hold, falling back a step, and when I went to move forward and regain it, he lifted an elbow and drew it back sharply, catching me in the eye.

  I cried out and fell backward. Tripping on the edge of the rug under the bed, I fell further, hitting the end of the bed, sliding down it and falling to my ass on the floor.

  “Ta-Ta.”

  I blinked the stars out of my eyes and looked up at him.

  He was turned, arms crossed, hands cupping his elbows, swaying and looking at me, and I didn’t know if he understood he’d put me where I was and felt bad or if he was still freaking about the rain.

  “Ta-Ta, Ta-Ta, Ta-Ta,” he chanted then lunged forward, coming to his knees, putting me in a tight grip and yanking me to him as he fell to his ass, burrowing into me as I slid my arms around him. “Ta-Ta, Ta-Ta, Ta-Ta, Ta-Ta, Ta-Ta.”

  “It’s okay.” I ran a hand over his hair. “It’s okay. I’m here. You’re okay. I’m okay. It’s all okay.”

  I didn’t know it was forecast to rain.

  If I knew, I’d have taken him back to the home.

  He wasn’t good in the rain.

  The doctors didn’t think it had to do with the damage to his brain. Not in that way.

  They thought it had to do with the fact it had been raining hard when he’d had his accident and this was the way his mind dealt with that psychological trauma.

  “Let’s get you to bed, yeah? Let’s get up in bed,” I cooed.

  It took a while for me to get him up but I did, got him in bed, and then I slid in with him.

  He rocked as I held him in my arms, shushing him and fussing him until he fell asleep.

  I kept doing it until the rain stopped.

  And I continued to do it until I felt certain it wouldn’t start again.

  Only then did I slide away, tuck him in then go downstairs to grab some ice for my eye because it hurt like hell.

  I took the ice in a Ziploc bag wrapped in dishtowel with me when I returned to bed.

  I did it with my door open, Andy’s open, but even so, I didn’t get much sleep.

  Andy was up, sitting at a stool at my kitchen island, scooping up a spoonful of Trix from one of the huge bowls I used for ice cream during my PMS times (and other times besides, if I was honest) when I walked down in the morning.

  I kicked myself for oversleeping but was relieved like crazy he just got himself a bowl of cereal and didn’t do what he sometimes did before I learned (or more accurately Keith and I had learned) not to oversleep.

  That being walking out the front door and taking a stroll.

  My relief didn’t last long when he turned to me, dropped his spoon into the bowl with a plunk and a splash of milk and stared at me.

  I knew why.

  I had a shiner.

  Crap.

  “Andy—”

  “Me . . .” He straightened from his slump over the bowl, his anxiety chasing away his ability to find words. “Bad. Me bad.”

  Unfortunately, since it was random what he would remember and what he wouldn’t, he remembered last night.

  I moved to him and put my hand on the island. “It’s okay.”

  His eyes were riveted to my black one. “Bruise.”

  “It’s okay, darlin’. It doesn’t hurt,” I lied then gave him a huge smile. “And it makes me look badass.” That wasn’t a lie, but unfortunately it didn’t make me look, say, Chuck Norris badass, and not just because Chuck Norris was so badass, he’d never get a black eye. It made me look trailer-trash-had-a-rougher-than-normal-night badass.

  His head twitched, he looked to me, his gaze moving over my face then his lips tentatively curled up.

  “Put up your dukes,” he joked.

  I did, punching him lightly with one on his biceps.

  He started laughing.

  Crisis averted.

  I moved in and gave him a kiss on the side of head.

  Then I moved back, leaned against the island and asked, “What are we gonna do today? You wanna go shopping for some new clothes?”

  He’d turned back to his cereal but he twisted his neck to frown at me. “No shopping.”

  Just like a man.

  “Wanna go to the shelter and play with the dogs?” I suggested.

  He liked that and they liked when we came. Those dogs needed love and attention and Andy had the capacity to give a lot of both.

  But he frowned. “They won’t let me take one.”

  This was new.

  And it was true.

  Maybe I needed to get him a dog.

  Of course, that would mean me taking care of said dog while Andy only had visitation.

  Next idea.

  “Parks and Recreation marathon?” I tried again.

  His face lit up. “Yeah!”

  He loved that show. We’d seen every episode at least four times.

  “Thank goodness
I got the stuff to make pulled pork so it can cook all day while we laze in front of the TV,” I replied.

  “Pulled pork, Ta-Ta, cool. Thank you.”

  He loved my pulled pork.

  “Right. We have a plan. I’ll get that in the Crockpot while you finish your Trix, and then get a shower. I’ll get cleaned up and we’ll spend the day with Leslie Knope and Andy Dwyer.”

  “Awesome,” he muttered, turning back to his Trix.

  I moved around the island to get the Crockpot out of the cabinet under it.

  Andy ate his Trix and got a shower as I put the pork shoulder in the Crockpot with the rest of my secret ingredients (secret to the extent Andy didn’t know them but the rest of the world did since the recipe was on the side of the spice packet).

  We watched Parks and Rec.

  When the time came, we pigged out on pulled pork, homemade macaroni salad and waffle fries. Not long enough after, we scooped up ice cream in my special ice cream (and Andy-cereal) bowls. Some time after that, I went to bed feeling like I weighed a ton and having a dull throb in my head from watching too much TV, not being active enough and eating way too much.

  I didn’t care even a little bit.

  On Sunday, Andy was feeling the pull to play with the dogs at the shelter.

  So we did that after I got a latte and Andy got a hot cocoa at Babycakes, during which Andy, as was his norm, charmed the pants off of Babycakes Watson, the owner, who had that moniker for reasons unknown to me.

  She also had a history of dogs she named the same thing, one after the other that replaced one when it had died. They were all poodles and she was currently on Babycakes IV (who was in attendance during our visit at the coffee house, then again, they always were), a standard red who had replaced the sadly departed Babycakes III, a standard blue who had died last year.

  After playing with the dogs (and cats) at the shelter, we came home and watched movies.

  After that, I took him for ribs at Po-Jack’s barbecue place in Morsprings to finish up our barbecue-themed weekend.

  Then my weekend with my brother was done.

  So I took him home, went back to my place, made myself tea, gave myself my moment and finally went out to my porch.

  Alone.

  Just as I’d done every night since Hix ended things.