Wild Heart (Viper's Heart Duet Book 2)

by Beth Ehemann

  As tears stung my eyes, I tried to focus on Matthew and the absolute joy that was on his face as he belted out song after song.

  The singing part ended and the food part began. Parents stood around and made small talk as the kids feasted on cheese and crackers, cookies, fruit, and popcorn. Maura wanted nothing to do with me and I had yet to make eye contact with Viper again. As the party wrapped up, I led the way as Matthew skipped to the coatroom and grabbed his jacked from his cubby. Viper and Maura followed us.

  “Viper, are you coming home with us?” Matthew asked innocently.

  My heart climbed into my throat and clung to the side of it for dear life. No matter how many times I swallowed, I couldn’t get it to go back down. I was terrified he was going to say yes, but even more terrified he was going to say no.

  “Yeah, buddy. I am,” Viper answered. Matthew threw his little hands in the air and spun in a circle, nearly falling over. Viper lifted his eyes to mine and spoke softly. “Is that okay with you?”

  “It’s fine. They miss you,” I answered dryly, refusing to admit that I missed him, too.

  The whole way home I kept checking my rearview mirror, half-expecting that he would change his mind and bolt again. But he didn’t. I pulled my car into the garage and he pulled his into the driveway right behind me.

  He followed us into the house and I had no idea what I was going to say. I wanted to yell. I wanted to cry. I wanted to punch him in the face. I wanted him to hold me. I was a fucking mess, and I had no idea which Michelle was going to take over.

  As soon as we were in the house, Matthew started talking to Viper a mile a minute and didn’t stop for at least an hour. Maura also refused to leave Viper’s arms, even fussing when he put her down for one minute to use the bathroom. As soon as he was out, she clung to him again. I mostly stayed in the kitchen, folding laundry and avoiding Viper’s stare every time he looked over at me. After a little while, I noticed the family room was quiet. Matthew and Maura had both fallen asleep with their heads lying on Viper’s shoulders. He shot me a small smile as I walked over and picked Maura up to carry her to her room. He carefully held Matthew’s head as he slid out from under him.

  “Want me to take her up?” he offered, holding his hands out.

  “Nope, I got her.”

  “You sure?”

  I gave him a quick glare. “Yeah. They’re my kids, remember?” Before he could answer I turned and hustled up to Maura’s room. I expected him to be gone when I went back downstairs, but he was sitting at the kitchen island.

  “Are you leaving or what?” I asked, leaning my back against the kitchen counter.

  “I was kinda hoping I could stay and we could talk?” His eyes were soft and pained. It was hard to be mad at him when he looked like that.

  “Fine. Talk.”

  “Michelle . . . I’ve thought over and over about what I was going to say to you when I saw you, but now that you’re in front of me, I just want to hug you. Can I hug you?”

  “No.”

  He nodded slowly. “I know that my apology doesn’t mean shit to you right now, but I want you to know from the bottom of my heart how sorry I am about everything. The way I acted when you told me about the baby, for not checking in this whole time, for the way I acted before all of this even started. I’m sorry for all of it, Michelle.”

  I pinched my lips together and watched him as he spoke. I waited for him to break eye contact and look away, but he never did. He delivered his apology and was more sincere than I’d probably ever heard him, but that wasn’t enough to make over a month’s worth of anger disappear.

  I took a long, deep breath through my nose, trying to choose my words carefully. “You’ve been gone for weeks, Viper. Weeks. Not a couple hours, not a couple days. Weeks. And now you stroll into Matthew’s school and my house like nothing ever happened?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not like nothing ever happened. I know I fucked up. Trust me, I know that. But I want to make it better.”

  I tilted my head to the side. “Really? How do you plan to make that better? How exactly do you plan to erase all of the memories from my head about what an asshole you were when I told you I was pregnant and the following weeks when you completely ignored me and the kids?” I said through clenched teeth. I wanted to scream at him, but Matthew was sleeping on the couch in the next room. “You weren’t here when I needed you most. You rejected me—and my kids. How are you gonna fix that?”

  “I don’t know how to fix it, Michelle, but I wish I could. I wish more than anything I could go back and do everything differently. Everything!” His voice sounded desperate, frantic even. “When I found out I couldn’t play hockey, I went to a bad place. That darkness spread like poison through every part of my life. It’s not an excuse, but it is the truth. Hockey has been all I’ve known since I was eight years old. It was like someone ripped my foundation from under me and everything else just fell right along with it.”

  I listened intently but didn’t respond.

  “And now,” he continued, “I’m trying to rebuild. I want to rebuild, but I’m putting my house back up in a different order. You and the kids are all the foundation that I need. If I’ve learned anything being away from you, it’s that. I need you guys way more than I need hockey. Hockey is still an important part of my life, but it’s just a couple of bricks.”

  I cleared my throat and tried to make my voice strong. “I appreciate your apology, but I think it’s best that you leave.”

  His shoulders fell. “Leave?”

  I nodded. “I don’t know what to say to you. Right now I’m angry and I’m upset. I wasn’t planning on seeing you today. And let’s both be honest, once you walk out that door, I have no idea when I’ll see you again.”

  “That’s what I mean,” he said as he stood and walked over to me. “I get it. I get now what an ass I am and how I run away from the things I should be running toward. I don’t want to leave, Michelle. I don’t want to leave ever again. I want to stay here and make things better again. I want to prove to you and the kids and to him”—he put his hand on my belly—“that I can be a good dad again. I promise. I can do it. Please let me.”

  The corners of my eyes stung as I gently pushed his hand away. “Go.”

  “No. I’m not,” he said adamantly as he took my hands in his. “I want to stay and talk to you. I’m not running any more, from this or from anything else. Ever again. Let me fix this.”

  One single tear dripped down my cheek and I shook my head. “Viper, I can’t do this with you right now. I’m supposed to be taking it easy and this is not easy.” My whole body strained as I tried to keep the rest of the tears in.

  “Okay, okay. Please don’t cry. The last thing I want to do is upset you.” He took a deep breath. “I’m gonna go and let you calm down. You let me know when you’re ready and we’ll talk, okay? No fighting. Just talking.” His eyes moved back and forth between mine, hopeful as he waited for my answer. “Okay?” he repeated when I didn’t respond.

  “Fine,” I resigned, pulling my hands back from his.

  “Okay,” he said with a relieved nod. “I’ll be on the porch.”

  “Wait. What?” I frowned as he grabbed his hoodie from the back of the kitchen chair and threw it over his head.

  “I meant what I said. I’m not running and I’m not leaving. You just let me know when you’re ready for me and we’ll talk.” He gave me a tight smile and headed out the front door without another word.

  I stood in the kitchen with my arms wrapped around myself, convinced that I’d been abducted by aliens and dropped into The Twilight Zone. I rubbed my forehead with my fingertips and waited to see if I heard his car start in the driveway, but I never did. Tiptoeing quietly to the front of the house, I peeked out the dining room window. Sure enough, Viper was sitting on the bench on my porch with his arms folded over his chest.

  What a stubborn, stubborn man.

  Fine. If he wanted stubborn, I was going to give hi
m stubborn. I was in a warm, cozy house and he was sitting on a front porch in Minnesota in December wearing nothing but a hoodie. We’d just see who caved faster.

  Over the next hour, I caught up on all the laundry, scrubbed my powder room top to bottom, and found any excuse to walk near the front of the house, just to see if he was still out there. So far, absolutely no movement from him.

  When Matthew and Maura woke up from their naps, they asked where Viper was. I had to think fast, so I told them he was on the front porch having a time-out. They spent the next several hours going back and forth from their playroom to the front window to make funny faces at him.

  It was getting late and I was running out of steam.

  “Hey, guys, we’re gonna go up and do your baths early tonight, okay? Then we’ll do dinner after.”

  Used to their baths being the last thing of the night, they both started to complain.

  “If you guys go upstairs without a fight, I’ll let you take your bath together just this one time.” I dangled an elusive carrot in front of them to get them to listen to me.

  They both turned and hustled up the stairs without another word.

  I ran the warm bath and poured an extra capful of bubbles into the tub. They each grabbed a couple of toys from their room and sprinted to the bathroom. I let them splash and play, basically washing themselves, for a long while as I sat on the floor next to the tub, trying to avoid their splashes. After I dried them off and put them in toasty jammies, we all headed downstairs to find one dinner.

  Matthew ran ahead of me and looked out the window. “He’s gone!” he cried out.

  “He is?” My heart sank, but I wasn’t surprised. I knew he wouldn’t last. I walked over and stood above him, peeking out the window, too. Sure enough, no Viper. He’d seemed so sincere when he was talking to me that I really thought he meant what he said, but old habits die hard. “Maybe he’ll be back later,” I said unconvincingly to Matthew. “Come on. Let’s go in the kitchen.”

  His shoulders slumped, but he turned around and followed me anyway. Maura climbed up to the kitchen table and started coloring furiously as I scanned my pantry for something to make them for dinner. I let out a heavy sigh. “Guys, we need to go to the grocery store tomorrow.” My stomach growled as I thought back to the Thanksgiving feast in a box and wondered how long it would take them to get that together if I called now.

  As I walked back into the kitchen, the doorbell rang.

  Matthew’s face shot up to mine with wide eyes. “Maybe Viper’s back!” He sprinted toward the front door and I followed. On the other side was a man in a royal blue polo shirt with a wide smile, holding two pizza boxes.

  “Hi?” I said as I pulled the door open.

  “Hi there. I have your pizzas.” He held the boxes out toward me.

  “Uh . . .” I looked down at them and back up at him. “I didn’t order any pizzas.”

  He pulled them back and looked at the receipt stapled to the top of the box. “You didn’t?”

  I heard a car door slam. “Wait! Those are for me.” Viper popped out from around the corner of the garage.

  “Oh, sorry about that.” The pizza guy turned back and walked down the sidewalk a little bit. They exchanged the pizzas and money and he headed toward his car.

  “You’re still here?” I said to Viper as Matthew wrapped his arms around my thigh.

  Viper looked up at me and nodded. “I told you I wasn’t leaving until you talked to me. It was cold, so I got in my car.” He grinned and nodded toward the garage. “Hope you don’t have to go anywhere. I’m parked behind you.”

  I fought back a tiny smile that threatened my lips.

  “Oh, and wait.” He lifted the lid to the top pizza box and walked over. “This one is for you guys.”

  “It is?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t gonna get dinner for me but not for you. It’s your favorite . . . extra pepperoni.”

  I took the box from him and we stood there and stared at each other for a few seconds. It was freezing outside, but the air between us was warm and intense. It was clear we both had so much to say but neither of us knew where to begin.

  “Okay, well, I’ll be in my car.” He smiled and disappeared around the side of the garage . . . and I didn’t stop him.

  As the kids ate their pizza and blueberries, Matthew chattered happily about the snow that continued to fall outside and Maura nodded, probably only half listening to him. I, on the other hand, couldn’t get my mind off the stubborn man currently eating pizza alone in his car in my driveway. My brain was exhausted from swinging back and forth like a pendulum. One side was angry and felt like he deserved to sleep in a cold car by himself, but the other side wanted to go out and bring him into my warm house, at least to the couch.

  After we finished eating and cleaned up, we headed upstairs. I tucked the kids in and peeked out my bedroom window, just barely able to see the back of his car sticking out behind the garage. Clouds of white smoke billowed from the back of it and I knew that he must have been really cold and started his car. I climbed into my warm bed, feeling a little guilty that I was letting him sleep in the car, but also hopeful that he’d finally reached out.

  I’d known the moment I met Viper years ago that he was a complex, stubborn man. Mike had told me stories about him that made my head spin. When Viper and I had finally gotten together, I knew he would never be typical with me either. His whole life was on his own terms and he never did things the way they should be done, but this last several weeks had shown me just how complicated he really was. Nothing about him was cut and dry, black and white.

  He was one big gray area. But . . . that gray area is what I loved most about him. It’s what kept me on my toes and feeling alive. I just needed to sort out how much gray was too much.

  My past was . . . colorful . . . and I’d definitely spent a night or two in my car, but never for such an important reason. My refusal to leave was dramatic, but so was my need to be with Michelle and the kids. I meant every single word that I’d said and I needed her to see that. I was done running. I was done turning my head when shit got too serious. Things had spiraled too fucking out of control over the last several weeks and I’d let my pride get in the way of my heart. I could never get back the time I’d missed with her and the kids, but I would never, ever be away from them like that again . . . if she’d let me back in.

  I ran my car on and off all night, both to charge my phone and warm the inside up a bit. Thankfully I had a couple extra hoodies and a blanket in the backseat so it wasn’t too bad, but the next night was supposed to get really, really cold. But I meant what I’d said to her. I was in it for the long haul.

  As I sat in my car, replaying my conversation with Michelle from the day before over and over and over in my head, one thing she’d said kept coming back to me.

  “How are you going to fix that?”

  They were just seven little words from her mouth that she probably didn’t think twice about after she’d said them, yet I couldn’t stop thinking about them. That was it. I needed to show her, not tell her. I needed to do something drastic, something totally un-Viper like to prove to her that I was serious about being here and never leaving her and our kids again. I made two quick phone calls, and just like that, my plan was set in motion. In a few shorts hours, I would be able to show her just how serious I was.

  In the meantime, I needed something to keep my mind busy. Sitting in the same position for hours on end was not only hurting my knee, it was driving me insane. I got out of the car and bent over, picking up a pile of snow in my hand. I formed it into a ball and tossed it in the air a few times.

  Hmm. Good packing snow today.

  I put it on the ground and rolled it across Michelle’s front yard, making a huge snowball . . . or the perfect base for a snowman.

  I quickly pulled my phone out and sent Michelle a text.

  Can the kids come outside for a while?

  She didn’t respond, b
ut a couple minutes later, Matthew came running out the front door dressed in black snow pants, his navy blue winter coat, winter hat, and gloves. He ran over and threw his arms around me as Michelle closed the door.

  “Where’s Maura?” I asked as I picked him up.

  “Maura didn’t want to come out. She’s watching My Little Pony or something.” He shrugged.

  “She passed up snowman building for ponies?”

  Matthew pulled one corner of his mouth up and nodded. “She’s crazy.”

  I laughed out loud. “She is, but let’s build the biggest snowman anyway.”

  “Yes!”

  I set him down and we got to work. “Let’s make this bottom a little bigger, okay? Can you help me push it?”

  He nodded and leaned his hands against the huge snowball I’d already started, grunting and groaning out loud as we pushed it together to make it as big as we could. Then we started on the middle section, rolling and rolling it together until Matthew said it was the perfect size. I lifted it on top of the bottom part and we stepped back to look at it.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I think it’s perfect!” he cheered.

  “Ready for the head?”

  He turned and looked up at me. “I want to do that one by myself.”

  I motioned toward the ground. “Have at it, big guy.”

  Standing there with my arms crossed over my chest, I watched Matthew make a tiny snowball, no bigger than a golf ball, and hold it in his hand. I almost jumped in and told him to start with a bigger one, but then I remembered how my asshole father had never let me do things on my own. I always had to do them his way. So I shut my mouth and let Matthew build the head just the way he wanted. Getting snow to attach to the little snowball was hard, and he threw it down in frustration.