Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

Then I saw nothing but Hix’s face.

  “What happened, baby?” he asked.

  “I . . . that guy . . . I . . . that creep . . .”

  Greta, pull your shit together!

  “Hix, that creepy guy from the Dew attacked me while I was coming into my kitchen tonight.” I reached out, grabbed his neck on both sides and pushed out, “He’s in my house. I got away but I left him in my house.”

  “Dad, what’s going on?” a girl’s voice asked.

  Hix lifted away and then I saw nothing because I had the cold of an icepack in a dish towel held to my face.

  “Get dressed,” Hix ordered. I felt fingers wrap around my wrist and lift my hand to hold the icepack, all the while Hix kept issuing commands. “Girls, get dressed. Shaw, take her to the hospital. Have them check her out. The girls go with you.”

  “Dad, where are you going?” a younger girl’s voice asked.

  I pulled the icepack away to see Hix disappearing down the hall and his two daughters standing to the side of it, heads turned, watching him go.

  Then I saw his son bent toward me. “Uh . . . Greta,” he was gently lifting my hand then he disappeared behind the biggest icepack in history, “keep that on. Long’s you can. ’Kay?”

  “’Kay,” I mumbled behind the pack.

  “Hurry, Cor, Mamie, fast. Get dressed,” Shaw took up the bossing.

  For my part, I started shaking.

  Like, a lot.

  But I jumped when I heard Hix roar, “Corinne!”

  My hand not holding the icepack was taken up in a firm, warm grip.

  “Greta, sweetheart, you hold it together,” Hix started bossing me.

  “I’m here, Daddy,” I heard.

  “Corinne, come here, sit with her, talk to her while your brother and sister get dressed. She’s going into shock. Make her talk. Keep her with you.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Sorry,” he said, like it wasn’t to his girl. “Greta was slippin’ into shock. That’s an affirmative, Hal. She’s three-two-two Rosewater. Get there. Now.” Then, definitely to his girl and not a guy named Hal, “I’ll meet you at the hospital. I got my phone, honey. You call me you need anything. Okay?”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  “Take care of her.”

  “’Kay.”

  His hand left me, another hand took mine, and then I felt Hix kiss the top of my head.

  “Get this sorted, sweetheart, promise,” he murmured to my hair and then I felt his presence leave.

  There was silence before I heard a hesitant, shy, “Uh . . . hi, I’m Corinne.”

  I burst into hysterical laughter, leaning forward with the overpowering pull of it.

  What pulled me out was feeling her hand squeeze mine again and again, her other hand behind the back of my neck doing the same, and her calling, “Hey. Hey. Hey, Greta. Heyheyhey.”

  I sat up abruptly, her hand at my neck falling away, icepack still held to my face.

  I sucked in breath and said, “I’m here. I’m a little freaked out right now, darlin’.” I held her hand tight and shook it. “But I’m here.”

  “I’ll take over now, Cor. Go finish gettin’ dressed,” Shaw ordered, my hand was exchanged and I had Shaw. “Good job holdin’ that icepack to your face,” he encouraged.

  I wanted to burst into hysterical laughter again but instead I held his hand in a vise-grip in an effort to hold it together.

  “Okay, well, remind me not to arm wrestle you,” he quipped.

  I released my grip some.

  “I just need to . . . uh . . . get over having my face slammed into my kitchen island . . . um, twice . . . and then it’ll be all good,” I shared.

  Stupidly.

  “Fucking fucker,” he hissed.

  Okay, apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

  So noted.

  “Shaw, Dad’s gonna be mad you dropped the F-bomb twice and in front of a lady,” the younger girl’s voice declared in deep horror.

  If I wasn’t in pain, freaked out and skimming the edge of hysteria, it would strike me as not a good thing I was meeting Hixon’s children this way.

  Instead, before that thought could catch hold, Corinne came out, calling, “I’m dressed. I’m good. Let’s get her to the hospital.”

  Shaw’s hand got firm in mine in preparation to pull me up as he suggested, “You might wanna lower the icepack to get down the stairs.”

  I lowered it then and looked into his dad’s eyes in Shaw’s own version of a handsome face, murmuring, “Good call.”

  But his face was tight as it took in mine.

  I didn’t take that as a good sign.

  Hixon’s kids helped me out, Corinne locked the apartment, and they put me in the passenger seat of the silver car, the girls in the back, Shaw in the driver’s seat, doing the manly-man-arm-behind-the-passenger-seat thing when he reversed out of the spot.

  He had a girlfriend.

  She probably thought that move was amazing since it kind of was.

  Shaw drove swiftly but carefully to the hospital.

  And it wouldn’t be until the nurse’s eyes grew huge when they walked me through the doors of the emergency room at McCook County Hospital that I would realize I was bleeding profusely from the nose, it was all down my chest, the front of my dress, with drips and smears on the awesome, lightweight, champagne-gold swing coat I always wore over my cocktail dresses when it was nippy in the spring and fall.

  “Well, anyone catch any good movies last summer?” I asked in a nasally voice (because my nostrils were packed with gauze), sitting on the end of an exam bed in the emergency room with a nose I could actually feel swelling since it was goddamned broken.

  Hix’s kids were standing around me as we waited for Hix, who had called Shaw and told him we were not to move until he came to get us.

  Shaw grinned at me.

  Mamie noted while staring at the big bandage of gauze and tape that covered my nose, “It’s good they don’t have big nose casts. That wouldn’t be too fun.”

  “I hope when I grow up I still look pretty even after someone broke my nose,” Corinne muttered like she wished she didn’t have to but the laws that made me pretty enough for that to withstand having a broken nose forced her to do so.

  Still, it was sweet.

  I thought this until Shaw growled out, “No one is ever gonna break your nose, Cor.”

  She cut a glare to her brother. “I’m just sayin’, in the unlikely event I get one, I hope I get through it lookin’ pretty.”

  “In the unlikely event you get one, you’ll have other things on your mind like hopin’ your dad and brother don’t get jail time for handing the man who did it his ass.”

  Oh boy.

  Mamie looked to me.

  Corinne looked to me.

  “I’m quite certain your father will not hand the man who did this to me his ass seein’ as he’s the sheriff and all,” I assured.

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” Shaw muttered.

  “Shaw!” Corinne cried. “Dad can’t go to jail!”

  “Daddy’s going to jail?” Mamie asked, confused.

  I opened my mouth to reassure her but her father’s deep voice came, doing it for me, and my eyes shot up to see him round the curtain to my bay.

  “I’m not goin’ to jail, baby. It’s all cool.”

  She ran to him, throwing her arms around his middle, and his long body jolted slightly as he slid his arm around her shoulders.

  But his eyes were locked to me.

  “Did you get ’im?” Shaw asked.

  “Hal and Larry are processing him,” Hix answered his son, his focus still on me.

  But at his words my shoulders slumped in relief, my head dropped and I looked to my knees.

  “Good,” Shaw muttered.

  “Just a second, baby,” I heard Hix say gently and then I felt an equally gentle fist under my chin tipping my head back and I saw Hix disengaged from his girl bent in front of me. “What w
e got?”

  And yep, that was also gentle.

  And sweet.

  “Broken nose. No concussion,” Shaw answered for me authoritatively.

  I was okay with that.

  But it was not good he carried on.

  “Other than slammin’ her face in her kitchen island twice, he didn’t hurt her.”

  I watched from close, and I’ll admit I did it with a fascination that was mildly grim and not as mildly titillated, as Hixon’s eyes ignited with wrath.

  “She can speak for herself, Shaw,” Corinne pointed out.

  Before his son could answer, Hixon took his fist from my chin, straightened and ordered, “Time to go home.”

  Oh no.

  Nonono.

  I wasn’t going home.

  A man attacked me in my kitchen.

  Until I burned some sage, drank a ton of gin and had about four hundred hours of therapy, I was never going back there.

  “Can I use your phone to call Lou?” I asked Hixon.

  He looked down at me.

  But it was Corinne who asked, “Why would you call Miss Lou at this hour?”

  My eyes slid to her.

  “Um . . .” I mumbled, partly because I was confused she had to ask that question and partly because I was getting a little panicky because I always just hit Lou’s contact in my phone and I didn’t have her number memorized.

  “You’re just gonna freak her out,” Corinne informed me.

  “Well—” I started.

  “Cor,” Hixon growled.

  “Well, she is,” Corinne told her dad then returned her attention to me. “You can call her tomorrow.”

  “I kinda don’t wanna go home tonight, darlin’,” I explained softly.

  She looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Well, of course not. You’re stayin’ with us.” As my mouth fell open, her attention shifted to her brother and she asked, “Can I drive home?”

  “No,” both Shaw and Hix answered at the same time.

  “Dad,” she turned to her father, “I need to learn night driving.”

  “Not at four in the morning,” he replied. “And you got a learner’s permit, honey, but Shaw is still a minor and you need an official adult in the car with you.”

  She threw up her hands in an unexpected teenage-girl fit (the only kind there probably was, I didn’t know, I hadn’t had any teenage years even when I was in my teenage years). “I’m never gonna learn night driving!”

  “Cor, we’ve hit October. Soon it’s gonna be night more than day every day,” Shaw pointed out.

  She was screwing up for a retort but Hix had experience with this which he demonstrated immediately.

  He did this by ordering by way of request, “Can you two discuss this in the car so we can all get home?”

  Mamie moved to her father and grabbed his hand.

  I watched as his fingers automatically curled around and held tight.

  And if blue roses and him leaping down stairs didn’t mean I was totally unblocking him (and I was), seeing that did.

  “Can I ride with you, Dad?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he answered.

  “Is Greta riding with us?” she asked.

  Hix looked at me.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  “Cool,” she said, turning to me and grinning. “And guess what?” she said to me.

  “What, sweetie?” I asked.

  “It’s not real nice you got your nose broke tonight but now you got a killer Halloween costume,” she declared, her gaze dipping down to the front of my dress before it came back to my face.

  I stared at Hix’s little girl who had blue eyes and dark hair and his frame and didn’t look a thing like Hope but looked like he’d created her himself from sheer will, flying in the face of the laws of nature.

  She was gorgeous.

  Once I’d taken her in, I burst out laughing.

  But this time, it wasn’t due to hysteria.

  Junk Sunday

  Greta

  MY EYES OPENED the next morning and at first I was disoriented.

  Then the grogginess I felt, the pain in my face, aches down my neck and back, and the warmth cocooning me reminded me where I was.

  I was in Hixon’s bed in Hixon’s apartment.

  I could feel he was no longer with me.

  However he had been.

  This astounding event occurred after we’d arrived back at his place from the hospital.

  And it was astounding because his children had maneuvered it.

  It went like this.

  We walked in and Hix started issuing orders, these being, “Right, girls, back to bed. Greta’s on the pullout. Shaw, I’m bunkin’ on the floor in your room. Get your sleeping bag.”

  To which Corinne declared, “Greta can’t sleep on the pullout. It isn’t even cool you’re sleepin’ on the pullout. But she has to rest and it’ll be uncomfortable for her to be in our living room. I know I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep in someone’s living room if I was thinkin’ any second someone would have to get up and go to the bathroom, bein’ noisy, or goin’ to the kitchen to get a drink of water. Especially if I barely knew those people.”

  “Right, so Greta’s in Shaw’s bed and—” Hix started to amend only to be interrupted by Corinne again.

  This time more forcefully.

  “Euw, Dad!” she squealed. “Shaw’s room smells like boy. No one should have to sleep in there without an oxygen mask, even Shaw. She needs to sleep in your bed. Mamie and me’ll sleep on the pullout.”

  “Fine,” Hix bit out and turned to Shaw. “You know where the sleeping bag is?”

  It was Mamie who put her two cents in that time, calling out, “Uh, Daaaaaaaad.” Then stating like he was a dim bulb, “We’re not like . . . three. I mean, isn’t she your girlfriend?”

  Everyone stared at her in astonishment, even Hix and me.

  “What?” she asked looking around. “All the kids at school said you’re seein’ the pretty lady that works with Miss Lou at the salon.” Her eyes stopped on me. “And you’re Greta, the pretty lady who works with Miss Lou.” Again she glanced around. “Am I missing something?”

  Shaw made a noise that sounded like he was swallowing laughter but Corinne stated commandingly and a little snootily, “Uh, no, Mame. You aren’t missing anything.”

  Even with this information confirmed, Mamie wasn’t done speaking.

  However she was only beginning to work herself up, doing this planting both her hands on her slim, not-so-little-girl-anymore-but-still-a-little-girl hips and screwing up her face.

  “Boyfriends and girlfriends sleep together, Dad, like moms and dads sleep together. We’re not babies. We know that. Like, you think that we think, when we’re not around, you guys don’t sleep together? Sheesh.”

  She didn’t expect an answer to what she clearly thought was a stupid question that didn’t deserve one.

  She threw out an exasperated hand in my direction and kept right on going.

  “And she got her nose broke by some bad guy. It’s kinda like me. If I got my nose broke by some bad guy, I’d want you to be close. She doesn’t want you on the floor in Shaw’s room. That’s closer than wherever her kitchen is. But it isn’t close enough. I mean, she ran right to you, Dad. Didn’t wipe her nose or anything. Just came right to you.”

  “She’s right, Dad,” Shaw put in smoothly, then demonstrated he was either a young man with a one-track mind (that wasn’t the usual track), or he was a son who knew his father very well and therefore how to manipulate him, for he used this opportunity to remind his dad, “She got her face slammed in a kitchen island twice and then got so shaky we had to hold her hand. You should be with her.”

  Hix opened his mouth.

  I was a little embarrassed about the truth of the fact that I did indeed get so shaky they’d had to hold my hand, but I opened my mouth too.

  But Corinne got hers in first.

  “Great. That’s settled. Come on, Mame.” She
reached a hand out to her little sister. “Let’s go change the sheets real quick so Dad and Greta can get in there and we can all go to sleep.”

  Mamie moved to Corinne and they walked down the hall hand in hand.

  “I’ll get you some water, Greta,” Shaw declared. “So you can take that pain pill they gave you at the hospital.”

  I watched him go to the kitchen.

  Hix watched him go too.

  Then Hix and I looked to each other.

  “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. I’ll talk with them after we get you settled. Make sure they’re good with this,” he assured me quietly.

  “I . . . all right,” I agreed.

  He came to me, wrapped his hand around the back of my head, bent in and kissed the top of mine before he pulled back.

  “Go on back with the girls. Ask Corinne to get you one of my tees. Settle in. Yeah?” he said.

  I nodded.

  Shaw returned with a glass of water and dug the small envelope with two pain pills in it out of his back jeans pocket that they’d given me at the hospital (that, incidentally, he’d slipped out of my fingers the second they’d done that, clearly feeling in my state I couldn’t be trusted with the important task of looking after a tiny envelope).

  I took the water and envelope with a smile at Hix’s son, sent that smile Hix’s way, marveled for a moment as I looked between the two of them that they could look so alike and so different at the same time, then I went back to Hix’s bedroom.

  It was like the living room, crammed with furniture too big for a room of that size, and I saw the girls were finishing up with the flat sheet. I took the pill, set the glass aside, slipped off my jacket and draped it over a bunch of other clothes on a club chair in the corner and helped them finish up.

  Corinne got me a tee and they left after saying goodnight, closing the door behind them.

  I changed, got in Hix’s bed, liked it precisely as much as I thought I would (which was to say immensely, he had very comfy mattresses), turned out the lights and settled in, eyes open, staring into the dark, not thinking about some creepy creep who attacked me.

  Thinking about how Hix held my hand against my thigh the whole way back from the hospital.

  At first, Mamie had chattered a lot.

  When it became clear she’d talked herself to sleep, Hix had squeezed my hand and said in a soft voice, “Got there, your neighbor was there with his pistol, so was Hal. Your neighbor said he heard you scream and it woke him up. When he heard the squeal of your tires, he was lookin’ out his window, saw you peel out down the road and caught a good look at your face. He’d already called nine one one, but when he saw that, he grabbed his gun and headed out. Hal had already gotten a call. By the time I got there, Hal was there. Said he arrived, your neighbor was in the driveway, training his pistol on the guy. Neighbor reported he caught the guy stumbling out of your kitchen door and detained him. Hal took over then.”