Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

  When Hix’s back hit the wall at Toast’s side and he assumed the same position, Toast muttered, “Hate to say it, but welcome to my world, brother.”

  Hix just emitted an unintelligible grunt.

  “Let me guess, she’s pissed your woman stayed over,” Toast deduced.

  “While the kids were there,” Hix confirmed.

  “No, bro, she’d be pissed even if they weren’t, just gives her more ammunition that they were.”

  Hix made no reply, just kept his attention on his daughter and her team.

  “And heads up, they lose all rationality, they lose hold on your dick and some other woman is enjoying it. It doesn’t matter to her your woman got attacked. But the looks she’s gettin’, it matters to everyone else,” Toast told him.

  That made Hix slide his eyes to the bleachers and it wasn’t hard to read the censure Hope was getting as she made her way to a seat.

  It also wasn’t hard to read she didn’t miss it either.

  Fortunately, his attention was taken with his younger daughter skipping his way.

  “Hey, Dad,” she greeted, stopping toe to toe with him, bending forward so she hit him with her weight, resting the length of her along the length of him, her hands on his forearms, her head tipped back to grin up at him.

  “Hey, baby,” he murmured, uncrossing his arms to touch a finger to her nose.

  “Can I have popcorn?”

  Oh shit.

  “You ask your mom that?” he asked.

  Her expression told him the answer.

  “Mamie,” was all he said next.

  She scrunched up her face then slid to the side, but twisted as she did, so she ended up with her shoulder tucked into his side.

  He ran a hand around both and held her there.

  “Your brother here yet?” he asked, again scanning the bleachers.

  “He’s goin’ to pick up Wendy then he’ll be here,” she told him.

  “Right,” he muttered.

  “Hey, Uncle Toast,” she belatedly greeted.

  “Hey there, gorgeous girl,” Toast returned.

  “You want some popcorn?” she asked and immediately offered, “I can get it for you.”

  “And eat half the box before it gets here?” Toast asked.

  She gave him a sassy smile. “Sometimes they don’t fill it full.”

  Toast pushed away from the wall to pull out his wallet. “Then I totally want popcorn.”

  “Toast,” Hix warned.

  “What?” Toast asked with sham innocence. “I had dinner all of fifteen minutes ago.” He gave Hix’s girl a bill. “I’m feelin’ peckish.”

  She shot him a huge smile, grabbed the money and took off.

  “More knowledge, brother,” Toast began as he settled back in. “You got the opportunity to fuck with ’em or piss them off in any way, you take it.”

  “Hope doesn’t exist outside being the woman who my daughters go live with every other week, man. But she likes to find every reason she can to remind me she does. I’m not a big fan of giving them to her.”

  “She doesn’t exist?”

  “Nope.”

  “Lookin’ right at her, bro.”

  Hix took his attention from the court where the girls were heading out to look at Toast and then follow where his eyes were directed to see Hope sitting in the stands, watching them.

  She no longer looked pissed.

  She looked sad.

  Christ.

  Hix returned his attention to the players and said nothing.

  “She wants you back, Hix, and bad,” Toast shared.

  Hix said something to that.

  “If that’s true, that’s not gonna go well for her.”

  “This other one, you know . . .”

  His voice died away so Hix looked to him. “I know what?”

  Toast looked uncomfortable when he said, “It’s been a while for you but you should know, you don’t play with that kind.”

  “What kind?” Hix asked, wanting to know where this was going so he knew whether he was about to be pissed as shit or other.

  “The good kind, Hix.”

  So it was other.

  Toast wasn’t done.

  “Me bein’ tight with you, everyone is opening wide about her. And I’ve learned she’s like a second mom to Lou’s daughters, which is good, seein’ as half the time they don’t have a dad. Hear she’s got a brother whose brains were scrambled and she takes care of him. They go and play with the dogs at the shelter on the weekends, for Christ’s sake. Walked into Babycakes a Sunday ago or so, right after her and her brother left, and I swear, Babycakes laid it out for me either I got your head out of your ass about this Greta woman or the rest of the town would.”

  Hix blew out another sigh and said, “They can relax. We’re back together.”

  “You got a solid rep, bro, but this woman is—”

  Hix cut him off. “We’re back together, Toast, and I’m not gonna fuck that shit up. I know what I got. I’ve got it so I know. So they can relax and you can too.”

  Toast gave him a huge, goofy-assed smile. “Well, all right. When you bringin’ her to the Outpost to meet your boys, then?”

  “Soon’s the broken nose that asshole gave her slammin’ her face in her own goddamned kitchen island heals.”

  While Hix spoke, Toast’s smile died.

  “Fucker,” he muttered.

  “He’s going away for a long time,” Hix said, watching as play began and his daughter, a starter as a sophomore on the varsity team, sprang into action.

  “How much effort it take for you not to kick his ass while he was in one of your cells?” Toast asked.

  “So much, it’s a wonder I can walk.”

  Toast chuckled and turned his attention to the game.

  They watched and Hix uncrossed his arms from his chest and clapped, shouting out, “That’s it, Corinne!” when she aced a serve.

  Pissed at her dad, her head needing to be in the game, she still loved her old man and he knew it when her eyes slid to him briefly and a grin flirted with her mouth as she walked to the line with the ball before she regained focus to set up for her next serve.

  “The kids like her?” Toast asked after the team blew it and lost Corinne’s serve.

  Hix knew what he was asking.

  Did they like Greta?

  “Nothin’ not to like.”

  Toast left it a beat before he murmured, “Happy for you, bro. Way to land on your feet.”

  Hix glanced at him before looking back to the play. “You’ll find someone, Toast.”

  “I need to get laid on a semi-regular basis and I need to stay single. Outside that bullshit getting me my kids, shoulda stayed single from the start.”

  “You’ll get over that.”

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

  Hix shook his head and said no more.

  Hope and his shit was ugly. Toast and his shit with his ex was Armageddon.

  As the teams were switching sides, Mamie skipped up with half a box of popcorn she’d consumed the rest of and handed it to Toast.

  She then dug back into her dad’s side so Hix held her there.

  He caught his son arriving and tried to stay loose even after he also caught the expression on his face.

  And the set of his girl’s.

  Hix gave Shaw a sharp look.

  Shaw shook his head at his dad and Hix knew the state of play with the way Shaw actually spotted his girl as she led them to some seats, like she was doing it with a broken foot.

  Things weren’t going good with her dad’s treatments.

  Shit.

  He’d talk to his boy.

  Now it was about Corinne.

  So he turned back to the game.

  After the game, while Shaw was finishing up his date with Wendy, which Hix assumed would take him to the very last minute of his weekday curfew, Hix pulled his Bronco into Greta’s drive but he rounded the front seeing as he saw her on her porch
as he pulled in.

  He made it all the way to her with her watching his progress and bent to wrap his hand around the back of her head and touch his mouth to hers before she spoke.

  “Hey, did she win?”

  “No.”

  “Bummer,” she muttered.

  He grinned, let her go, shifted and rested his frame in the chair beside her.

  “Want a beer?” she asked.

  “I’ll get it in a second.”

  “I have a broken nose, Hixon, not a broken leg.”

  He looked from her street to her and repeated, “I’ll get it in a second.”

  She rolled her eyes but did it with her lips twitching.

  Then she lifted a mug to her lips and took a sip.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Sleepytime,” she answered.

  “Say again,” he ordered.

  She took her eyes from her street and repeated, “Sleepytime. Sleepytime tea. Chamomile. Spearmint. And—”

  He cut her off. “Babe.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t waste your breath. The concept of tea does not exist for a man who owns a Bronco.”

  He enjoyed the show as she busted out laughing.

  When she was done, she noted, “Britannia ruled the waves, darlin’, and those boys drank a lot of tea.”

  “The kind they drank didn’t have spearmint in it.”

  “Good point,” she muttered, her lips curved up as she took another sip.

  He hated doing it but he had to so might as well get it out of the way.

  “Hope was at the game.”

  Her gaze slid to him. “And?”

  “She’s in the know you’ve spent the night at my place while the kids were there.”

  “And she’s not a big fan,” she guessed.

  “Not sure I care but just in case she gets up to something, you should know.”

  She nodded and added, “And we’ll slow that down.”

  No, they wouldn’t.

  “I like you in my bed.”

  He also liked how her face got soft when he told her that.

  “I like it there too, baby,” she told him. “But your apartment isn’t real big and it’s kinda in their faces more than it would be in that space. Plus, this is very new to them.”

  “It’s also very much happening so they might as well get used to it.”

  “Another good point,” she muttered again.

  “And Greta, we’re movin’ to a place on Lavender Lane on Saturday.”

  She stared at him. “Lavender Lane?”

  He grinned at her.

  And he did it because he liked the place they found but now he liked it even more because it was two blocks to the north of her place, on the same block.

  “Wow, we’re practically gonna be neighbors,” she remarked and did it looking like she was trying hard not to laugh.

  “Yup,” he agreed the same way.

  “You buy?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Nope. Everything on the market sucks and I can’t keep the kids in that apartment any longer, and not just because I hate the freakin’ place so much myself. Folks who own the house we picked are retired and movin’ to Florida. But they’re worried they’re gonna hate Florida. So they’re renting their place for a year to try it out. If they hate it, they’ll come back and revisit where they wanna spend their golden years. If they like it, they’ll sell to me and deduct the year’s rent from the final sale.”

  She gave him a smile. “Great deal.”

  If they didn’t come back, it was.

  If they did, he had to find another place.

  But they’d assured him they’d give him plenty of notice and his real estate agent was going to keep an eye out in the meantime.

  It might mean moving twice in a year, which would suck.

  It might mean settling in, but even if it didn’t, it gave them more time to find what was right instead of them moving into another place that was going to be wrong.

  “Three bedrooms, two full baths, one in the master, on the top floor,” he shared. “Living room, dining room, half bath, big kitchen on the ground level. Refinished basement where Shaw will be with his own bathroom and a massive family room.”

  “Sounds like my place,” she noted.

  “Your basement refinished?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “You need to give me a tour,” he told her.

  She tipped her head to the side. “You want that now?”

  He shook his head, pushing up from his chair. “I want a beer now.”

  “Hix, I can get it.”

  He stopped and looked down at her.

  “You got a problem with me in your house, baby?” he asked softly, with genuine interest.

  “Of course not, but I like . . .” her teeth came out to score her lip before she finished, “looking after you.”

  And fuck, but he liked that.

  “How about I get my beer tonight, and after tonight, we’ll go from there.”

  She shot him a grin. “Works for me.”

  He gave himself a moment to fully take in her grin before he asked, “You need more of that?” and he tipped his head to her mug.

  She shook her own.

  “Right. Be back,” he murmured, went in, got himself a beer and came out, doing it giving himself his first chance to really take in her space.

  It wasn’t only the kitchen that was nice. The rest of it was too. All redone. Big, old-fashioned, kickass table in the dining room with one side having a bench instead of chairs. Huge couch in the living room with lots of woodwork on it, scrolled arms and massive pillows for the back in a print of some fancy, subtle cream and beige swirls.

  The couch was ornate but it still looked comfortable.

  A lot of her stuff was his style. He liked it. Even if it wasn’t, it worked and he liked that too. It was pretty phenomenal.

  It was also confusing.

  He knew women paid a lot of money to have their hair done. He knew how much it cost for Hope and the girls for theirs. They were in rural Nebraska, it might cost more in big cities, but even as it was, it wasn’t anywhere near what Hix paid for him and Shaw to go to the barber.

  But it wouldn’t set Greta to rolling in it.

  He went back out and saw her waving at something, so he looked that way as he moved to her and tipped up his chin at a woman who was walking her dog in front of Greta’s house.

  The woman threw him an enormous beam through the dark as he sat his ass back down with his beer.

  He stretched out his legs out and crossed his ankles.

  He did this as he tried to remember how to do the getting-to-know-you portion of being with a woman you’re interested in.

  It seemed strange, all that had gone down between them, like she’d been a part of his life a lot longer than she had.

  But she hadn’t and he barely knew anything about her.

  He started it with, “How’s your nose?”

  “Better today, thanks, Hixon,” she answered.

  “Your brother?” he asked.

  “Good, thanks, baby,” she said softly, this how she talked whenever she spoke about her brother, when she wasn’t laying shit out for him after he’d been a dick, that was.

  Hix sucked back some beer and then asked, “You figure out what you’re gonna tell him?”

  “I think I’m gonna say I had a fall.”

  Hix was surprised she was going to lie so he looked from the dark night to her. “Yeah?”

  She let out a big breath she aimed at the night and said, “Yeah. He . . .” she turned to him, “he can be unpredictable. Most of the time, he would be able to process what happened, understand it, understand the guy was caught and he was going to be punished and he’d be upset for me, but he’d see that I’m okay and he’d deal. Other times . . .”

  She didn’t finish.

  “Other times what, sweetheart?” he prompted gently.

  “Other times anything c
an happen. He could get so upset and frustrated at not being able to do anything, he could get violent. He could regress to the point he’s like a little kid and stick in that zone for a while, which is harder to cope with for the staff because dealing with a young man with a brain injury is one thing. Dealing with a young boy who has tantrums or can turn sullen or uncommunicative is another.” She shrugged. “So I think I have to lie. For him. There’s nothing he can do anyway, it’s over. To keep him safe, I’ll give him an alternate version of events that doesn’t harm anything. No one would tell him. He won’t find out.”

  After she gave him all of that, he whispered, “I don’t know how you do it.”

  She genuinely looked confused when she asked, “Do what?”

  He lifted his beer in a circle to indicate everything. “All of it. Work. Look after him. Handle what happened. Keep on keepin’ on.”

  “I have no choice.”

  He transferred the bottle to his other hand so he could reach out and take hers.

  “If one of the kids—” he began.

  “Don’t,” she said quickly. “Don’t think about it. It happened to us. But it doesn’t happen a lot so don’t think about it. Not with one of your kids. Not with anybody.”

  “What I’m tryin’ to do is get in your headspace so I can be in a place of understanding with you,” he explained.

  When he quit talking, she looked at him like she’d never seen him before.

  So he gave her fingers a squeeze. “Greta?”

  “I’m, like, really, really glad I unblocked you, Hixon,” she declared.

  And after she gave him that, Hix leaned into her and pulled her hand to his mouth to touch it to his lips so he wouldn’t do something else, like pick her up and carry her into her house and touch his lips to other things.

  He relaxed in his chair, put their hands back between them and remarked, “I still don’t know how you do it. This is a nice house, sweetheart. And I’m in the position to know how nice it is, bein’ in the market for my own. You work. You look after your brother. You dress great. You made this a great space. It’s like you can make miracles.”

  He could have gone on but he didn’t because she’d returned her gaze to the street and lifted her mug of tea up to her mouth, both in what he read as an attempt to hide her face.