Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

  Okay, well.

  Damn.

  That made sense.

  And damn again.

  Mom had a really bad guy in her corner.

  I hadn’t thought of that at the time, what with losing Hixon taking precedence and all.

  But I thought of it now.

  I bit my lip and looked away, considering the many atrocities she could inflict on me with these new resources.

  And Andy.

  Shit.

  “I’m sorry.”

  When those words came from Hixon, I looked back at him.

  He continued talking.

  “I saw your eye and I’ve not been in a good way about what I said to you, how I left it between us, you blocking my calls, me worried that they might be affecting your life and how that might be, and I didn’t curb my reaction. I should have, in a grocery store, in your living room, it doesn’t matter. But you have a black eye, Greta, and I’ve had a coupla those. They don’t feel good and there’s never a good way to get one. I just jumped to what I hope you get now are valid, if erroneous, conclusions about how you got yours.”

  Crap.

  That made sense too.

  And crap again.

  If something like that was swirling around someone I cared about and I saw they had a black eye, I might pin them against some shelves too to demand their story, and I wasn’t even a six-foot-one, built, badge-wielding alpha-male.

  I didn’t give him that.

  I snapped, “Fine.”

  “I still shouldn’t have pinned you in like that and forced a scene.”

  “You’re right. Thank you for your apology. Now you’re free to leave.”

  “Greta—” he started, his body moving like he was going to make a move to come to me.

  “Don’t,” I whispered and he froze. “Not again, Hixon. Just don’t.”

  “Corinne knows about us.”

  And another time that night, my head twitched in confusion at his sudden, bewildering announcement.

  “Sorry?”

  “My daughter. Corinne. Hope told her about us. She’s . . . not pleased. She sees it as a betrayal of her mother. On the other hand, Shaw already knew, talk in school, his girlfriend filled him in so he wouldn’t get surprised if kids said something to him. He’s cool with it. But he wasn’t cool with his mother sharing news he knows I would have shared when the time came to share it. He’s been having issues with Hope for a while, with what she did to our family, those came to a head, and right after Corinne blasted me, he called and asked to live with me. All this happened on the way to Becker’s. I actually hung up with Shaw getting out of my truck at the foot of the stairs to his house. Then I walked in and got hit with your mom and Becker’s form of fun. I took that out on you—”

  I interrupted him to confirm, “You did.”

  “And it was wrong,” he carried on.

  “It was,” I agreed.

  “And I regretted it almost as soon as it happened.”

  “And you show this by calling me the next morning and telling me what I should do when I run my mouth?”

  “Then I was pissed at Lou.”

  “I see.” I nodded. “And you took that out on me.”

  He bent and leaned into both hands on the back of the couch, his head tipped back to keep hold on my eyes, and I lamented the fact he looked amazing doing that too.

  “Right,” he started, “I get this doesn’t look good for me and I get why. I totally get that, sweetheart. But I’ll point out, I don’t usually have a nineteen-year marriage ending because my wife didn’t get a promise from me I’d buy her some fancy-assed ring for our twentieth . . .”

  He trailed off and studied me, not moving from his position.

  And I knew I gave it away.

  “You knew,” he said quietly.

  I pressed my lips together but they unpressed themselves to blurt, “I’m sorry, Hixon. Everyone knew.”

  “Right,” he muttered, oddly not looking pissed out of his brain, as he should be. “Whatever,” he kept muttering.

  Whoa.

  Whatever?

  When he spoke again, he wasn’t muttering.

  “I live in a shithole apartment not big enough for my kids when I have them, and I don’t like it much even when I don’t. My daughter feels I betrayed her mother, and her, by seeing another woman, and I wasn’t with her or in a position to have the time or anything close to it to explain things to her how they should have been explained. My son is setting himself up to despise his mom until his last breath and I’m struggling with the fact I know I should do somethin’ about that and the understanding, with the harm she’s willingly inflicted on our family, I have no motivation to help her repair things with her boy. I was investigating a murder where every second is crucial in the days closest to the event to find as much as we could to catch the killer, and I’m driving twenty miles out to Becker’s place for him and your mother to play with me. That was all happening and I lost it. With you. I regret it. Because it was the wrong thing to do. But mostly because you didn’t deserve it and I know I hurt you.”

  He was calm.

  He was apologetic.

  He was making sense.

  He was taking his time in what was his busy, crazy, messed-up life to explain this to me.

  He was beautiful, all tall and dark and leaning into my couch.

  But I couldn’t do it.

  Because when he’d said he wanted to complicate things with me, I’d never wanted anything more in my life, except Andy to have a happy one, and of course, the time I sat in the waiting room with Keith while Andy was in surgery, wanting Andy to get out of that surgery room alive.

  I hadn’t even wanted Keith that much and I’d loved him with what I’d thought was every part of me.

  But with Keith there was always the knowledge that he gave, I took, and the guilt I carried with me constantly because of that.

  With Hixon, I got to give. I got to take care of him. I got to be the one he came to when he needed to suck back bourbon, not able to share anything but wanting to try to unwind from serious business after an incomprehensibly ugly day.

  He gave too. He teased me and made me laugh and looked at me in a way that made me feel beautiful, and he not only showed, but verbalized that he appreciated what I gave to him and that it meant something.

  He also didn’t hesitate to take all that away.

  I couldn’t do it again.

  Maybe from the beginning he’d been right.

  Bad timing.

  We should have waited. Waited for his life to calm down. Waited for him and his kids to settle into a new life.

  Just waited.

  We didn’t.

  And now it was broken in a way it couldn’t be fixed.

  I hated it that he knew he broke it and he was there trying to fix it.

  And I hated it that I had to tell him it couldn’t be fixed.

  “I can’t risk it again, Hixon.”

  He kept his place but dropped his head.

  God, I hated that too.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  He tipped his head back and again gave me those blue eyes.

  I didn’t hate those.

  God.

  “What we have is good,” he said softly.

  “It’s not the right time.”

  “Then we’ll give it time.”

  I shook my head.

  And I’d thought he’d gutted me the last time he was in my living room.

  But I was wrong.

  He gutted me right then.

  “Greta, you’re the finest woman I’ve ever met. We work together. We fit together. I know you feel it the same as me. And we’d be fools not to see where that would lead, and I don’t give a shit all that’s swirling around me, or you. If we can make it through what I did to you, I can earn your trust again, and we can get beyond all that’s happening now, I got a strong feeling where it would lead.”

  “I had a good man like you who left me becaus
e of my mother, Hixon. She’s not going anywhere.”

  “I wanna know that story, but I don’t care about your mother.”

  “Trust me, I’ve had thirty-eight years of it, and she’s been quiet for a week. She’s just sharpening her knives. Eventually, you’ll care.”

  “Babe—”

  “It hurt too much, what you did to me,” I whispered.

  He shut up.

  “It had only been days,” I explained quietly. “What happens when I have more and you take it away?”

  “What could happen if that never happens?” he returned.

  “That’s not the life I lead.”

  He pushed up from the couch, kept looking me straight in the eyes, and declared, “I’m stronger than that other guy.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “I can because I know this, if you wanted a twenty-five thousand dollar ring for our anniversary, I’d take a second job to get it for you.”

  I gasped.

  And I stared.

  “And that’s because in two days you gave me more than my wife did in nineteen years, notwithstanding our children and the fact she’s got issues, but she’s a good mother. That’s an uncomfortable realization, sweetheart. And she had her way of doin’ nice things. But she wasn’t you.”

  “You can’t know that either.”

  “I can. I do.”

  Oh my God.

  “Hixon.”

  He lifted one hand and dropped it.

  “You need time. I’ll give it to you. I need time too. Corinne is still pissed and Shaw’s not in a good place. But Greta, I leave, it’s not my right to ask this of you, but I’m gonna do it anyway. Think about it. Unblock my fuckin’ number. And after I give us time, take my call.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you but I have to say at this juncture I don’t think that’s smart, and I say that for the both of us.”

  “You seen the Avengers movie?”

  And again my head twitched.

  “Sorry?”

  “The Avengers movie. You seen it?”

  “Which one?” I asked stupidly because I’d seen them all. Andy liked them.

  “Whatever one.”

  “Yes . . . uh, all of them.”

  He nodded. “I was a selfish fuck. I get you. I get that guilt you carried in your marriage. I don’t know the story. I just know in my way, I did that to you. I took from you and I didn’t give back. I did that because you came into my life in a time I needed to take. And that’ll happen again. But that’s not all there is to me. I just need you to think about whether you’ll give me the shot to prove it to you.”

  That was incredibly sweet.

  Still.

  “Why did you ask about the Avenger movies?”

  He smiled at me.

  And I wished he hadn’t done it.

  “Because my daughter says boys are stupid. They talk about themselves all the time, don’t ask girls questions, don’t let them talk, don’t listen. And I’ve unfortunately proved grown men who should know better do that too.”

  Goddammit.

  Now he was making sense, being sweet and now kinda cute.

  “I wanna know all about you, Greta,” he said in a voice that sounded like velvet and felt that way too. “So I’ll give you time to think about it. And after you have that time, I hope you give me that privilege, ’cause before the season ends, I wanna go watch my son play ball and have you there, walking out of Raider Field with me next to you. Not Lou.”

  After delivering that, he turned and strolled to the door.

  He opened it.

  Stopped.

  Looked at me.

  And smiled.

  “Lock this, baby.”

  Then he disappeared.

  Dive Under

  Greta

  “YOU ARE NOT getting back together with that man.”

  It was the next morning and I was standing in the back room of the House of Beauty getting ready for my first client, with Lou, who was also getting ready for hers and apparently feeling like she could tell me what to do.

  Needless to say, after she’d shared she’d heard about the grocery store incident, I’d shared what came after.

  “No, I’m not, Lou,” I replied. “But you have to admit, he’s had it rough. And that was before some random, crazy drifter shot a twenty-eight-year-old father of two after he did nothing but stop to help out said random, crazy drifter, and it being Hix who’s the guy who has to find some random, crazy man that’s crazy enough to shoot to death a man with a kind enough heart, he’d stop to help him out.”

  Lou looked away and muttered, “I gotta admit, that’s way worse than any day Julie Baker sat in my chair and stared at herself in the mirror after I’d done her hair like she’d allowed a small child with learning disabilities to do it and wondered at her own sanity.” She looked back to me. “Before, of course, she moved to your chair and did that shit to you.”

  One could say I wasn’t too torn up Julie Baker was no longer my client.

  “I’m kinda glad we had it out,” I declared.

  This was a lie.

  I was not.

  Before, I was hurt, mad and sad.

  Now I was confused, scared and wondering at my own sanity if I didn’t think on it like Hix asked me to do.

  “And at least this is a better way to leave things than they were before,” I went on.

  And at least that was true.

  “But when Keith told me we were over and I asked why, he said he couldn’t live with Mom in his life anymore and he wasn’t going to ask me to choose between him and her because he knew I’d choose her. And he was so done with it, he didn’t let me have the opportunity to prove him wrong,” I reminded her.

  And that was also, sadly, true.

  I kept going.

  “He loved Andy and would lay down his life for him. I believe that to my soul. He loved me the same way. But he hated her with a passion that was equal to those two things combined. We would argue, but we’d only fight about her. Any time she asked me for money, he’d get angry. But when I gave it to her, which was too often, I knew that then, I know it better now, he’d lose it. Totally. He got tunnel vision about it. That was all he could see eventually when he looked at me. My weakness about her. The fact he used his hard-earned money to look after Andy, and I used mine to look after her. It just got worse and worse until it consumed everything, including us. And she’s already played with Hix in ways he clearly didn’t enjoy.”

  “We’re in no doubt about that,” she cut in to say irritably.

  We certainly weren’t, me especially.

  “So I don’t need that threat hanging over me, falling in love with a new man.”

  She stared at me hard and asked, “Falling in love?”

  I lifted a shoulder. “He’s great.”

  “Babe—”

  I interrupted her before she could get started. “He didn’t end it in a good way. But that was the only thing bad about it.” I fought my lips curving up as I said, “He called me gum drop.”

  “How ridiculously sexist,” she decreed.

  “I called him snuggle bug.”

  Her eyes bugged out. “You called Hixon Drake snuggle bug?”

  “It was a joke. Both of them were.”

  She pulled herself together after receiving that news and did it ending up looking hesitant.

  The next thing she said explained the look.

  “I always wondered why you kept helping that woman out.”

  I looked to the boxes of hair dye and replied, “She’s my mom.”

  “Greta—”

  I looked back at her. “You don’t get it. You have a great mom. You don’t understand. But even how she was with me growing up, if she’d died when I was twenty, I’d still feel it on her birthday. The anniversary of her death. It’s just how it is. It’s just the connection. It’s there and there’s no getting rid of it. Even cutting her out of my life that connection is still there. It makes no sense. It j
ust is. And maybe I was a slow learner with that, Lou. But also maybe if I had stopped helping her out, she would have gotten herself in trouble, sick, in prison, out on the streets, dead. Who knows? And then it would have been guilt that I wasn’t the kind of person who had the fortitude to look after my mother even if she is how she is. I couldn’t win either way. Keith didn’t get that and I understand why he couldn’t. But the bottom line is . . . she’s my mom.”

  “Are you gonna let her back in?” she asked.

  I licked my lips, rubbed them together and lifted a hand to pull out the box of dye I’d be needing.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “And it was what she did to Hix that pushed it too far?”

  I looked to her and gave her a smile that even felt sad on my mouth.

  “She didn’t do that to Hix. She did it to me. She just used Hix. So yeah. Definitely. That she would go out of her way to find new ways to harm me and do that without compunction hurting some innocent person just out doing his job, with her knowing that job was a really not-fun one at the time. It had always been her manipulating me, using me, lashing out at me. She didn’t hurt Andy because she wanted to hurt me. She did it because she’s stupid and weak. It was an avoidable accident but I think I still let her stay in my life because it was that. An accident. This wasn’t. She planned what she did to Hix to get at me. She went out of her way, got others involved, and that kind of malice is too extreme to ignore.”

  “You know, Hixon is right,” she told me. “Everyone’s heard of Kavanagh Becker. He’s kind of our Voldemort. He’s the one you don’t speak his name. People try to forget he exists, talk about him in whispers. He’s not a good guy.”

  Yep.

  That sounded like my mother’s type.

  “Marvelous,” I muttered.

  “No matter what happens with you two, babe, Hixon Drake is a good sheriff. Bunch of people saw him up late, in his office, while that whole thing with Nat started going down. Even before they found Nat’s body, word spread he was all over finding him. Everyone talked about how single-minded he was about doing what he could for Faith and her kids. The man even put on a uniform he never wears and made his crew stand at his side at Nat’s funeral to make it known to Faith he has her back. He’d lose his mind if Kavanagh Becker hurt you.” Her lips twitched. “And I reckon, what he said to you, he’d really lose his mind if that guy hurt you. You’ll be okay and maybe your mom will slink away after a time of not being able to get anything out of you.”