by Piper Rayne
She shrugs.
“So, I was the only one left out in the cold?” Charlie questions, chomping down on her cereal.
“I assumed. Ava never confirmed,” Cat clarifies and I want to slink down.
“Well, he was just over here and they were bumping uglies or whatever.”
“Who’s watching the bakery?” Cat asks.
“I closed it for an hour. I need to find some help though.”
“You closed it so you could fuck Dane? Why not just use the storage room?” Charlie asks.
I shrug.
“We’ve done it there. We’ve done it in his office, on my prep table, his house. Hell, we even went on a hike and banged. Thank God, I didn’t get poison ivy. In the last three weeks, I’ve screwed Dane everywhere imaginative and unique. I’m having a hard time keeping up with this foreign version of myself as a sex kitten.”
Charlie rounds the counter and sits at the table.
“Are you guys dating?” Cat asks, finally able to talk normally now.
“No.” I pick at the skin around my fingernails. “We’re just friends with benefits.”
Charlie lets loose a mocking laugh. “Yeah, okay.”
“What?” I ask, confused by her reaction.
“Ava, how old are you? You know one of you will be hurt in the end and my money is on you,” Charlie says.
I study the table, knowing she might be right. “It was going great until I felt like I always had to keep being exciting,” I say.
“Why do you think that?” Cat leans forward.
I rub my hand on my face. “Because I told Dane I wouldn’t do the friends-with-benefits if he was screwing around with other women.”
“So, you guys agreed to a monogamous friends-with-benefits situation?” Charlie stifles a laugh that looks like it’s begging to escape.
“Yeah,” I shrug.
“You’re both morons.” The chair Charlie is sitting in slides along the floor as she gets up.
“Why do you say that?” I ask, a little hurt by her reaction.
Even Cat is biting the inside of her cheek. Was it really that stupid of a notion?
“Ava, think about it. You guys are dating. You only see each other,” Charlie says.
“No, we only fuck each other,” I clarify.
“Same difference if you ask me. Just because he doesn’t pick you up, take you to a nice restaurant or buy you flowers, you think it’s any different?” Charlie tosses her bowl in the sink and leans against the counter, staring me down. “I’m guessing you probably don’t strip off your clothes, fuck, and then leave, right?” She quirks her eyebrow.
“Well.” I try to fight it, but the truth is, we usually share a meal and oh God, some conversation about our day. The memory of laying in a fort as he told me how his whiskey distributor screwed him over and how he has some new guy coming up next week replays in my mind. Or when I told him how I burnt three batches of cupcakes and had to air out the shop for an hour.
“Sometimes yes, we focus on the friends part, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
Charlie pulls her unruly curly hair into a ponytail, her eyes digging into me like she’s some detective waiting for me to crack under the pressure of her scrutiny.
My gaze shifts to Cat. Surely, she understands.
“I’m not looking for a relationship,” I argue my position some more, my eyes meeting Charlie’s head-on like a game of chicken.
“Isn’t that when you fall into one?” Charlie’s cocky smirk let’s me know why she gets along with Dane so well. They’re two peas in a pod.
I stand up, knocking over Cat’s bottle and it spills all over the table.
“I don’t need to justify my actions. We’re having fun, with no strings, and yes it’s monogamous but that means nothing.” I stomp out of the room and then pause. “Sorry for spilling the water.” Then I spin on my heel, grab my keys, and leave out the front door.
Charlie. Ha. Like I need to take advice from a girl who’s pining away for a man who’ll never allow himself to be available again. She has no idea what she’s talking about. Our arrangement is working out wonderfully and I see no reason to let what she said get into my head.
This argument is working. I don’t care about anything but Dane’s dick.
And maybe his hands.
His mouth, too.
I don’t care about anything but Dane’s body.
There.
I turn the corner to get back to the bakery, but I step back to hide behind the brick wall of the building on the corner as my heart drops to the pit of my stomach. Scratch that. It splatters to the concrete ground, cracking open and dying a slow death on the corner of Main and Maple while I watch Dane open the door of his Mustang for a brunette in a pair of Daisy Duke shorts and a tank top.
The smile on his face is as bright as the sun shining in the sky.
That asshole played me. He played me well.
15
Dane
“Thanks for coming.” I pull my car away from the curb.
“I can’t believe you still drive around in this car.” Sara touches the hood and glances back to the backseat. “He rides in the back?”
I look at the empty cup from Double D’s and his paper hat from the other night. “Yeah.”
“Thanks for the pictures.” She crosses her legs and while she’s fidgeting, I try to give her the once over, not really sure what she’s up to these days.
“Well, I figure a mother would want to know.” There’s a little more bite in my voice than I intended.
“Who’d figure a screw up like me could make such an attractive kid?”
She asks the question, but I know she’s not looking for answers. Sara’s never been a real mom, and she seemed to have sensed that after a short time. A year to be exact. Toby woke up on his first birthday without a mom to care for him.
We drive down the road and I could ask what’s been going on in her life. Where she’s been, who she’s been with, does she have any money, how she got here. But the truth is, I had to leave Sara to her own demise years ago. I couldn’t save her and that was just the hard truth.
“Happy Daze looks good. You’ve made a success out of it after all these years.”
“Thank you. Yeah, had to fight tooth and nail for every change, but it was worth it.”
“Do you ever wonder what it’d be like if I’d stayed? What your life would be like?” she asks the same question I thought of a lot early on in Toby’s life. But only because of the insecurity that plagued me when I worried I couldn’t be the father he deserved. Now, years later, I can’t imagine my life any other way. Without Toby, it’s nothing.
I shrug. “Doesn’t everyone wonder about decisions in their life?”
“I look at other moms and I think to myself, why can’t I be like them? What’s wrong with me that I just can’t stay in Climax Cove and take care of my kid? Or maybe I could’ve been one of those moms who drift around with their kid. I could have taken Toby with me.”
“To sleazy motels and drug houses? Have him help you panhandle for food?” The bitterness in my tone can’t be disguised as anything different.
The one unselfish thing Sara ever did was leave Toby behind. Let him have a normal childhood back in the same town she grew up in. Yeah, she was always the small-town girl who couldn’t break out fast enough. I’m not sure when she transformed into that person. High school, junior high, or whether she was born like that, but I always remember her wanting out.
“When you put it that way...” she doesn’t finish because we both know Sara can’t care for herself let alone a child. “I’m afraid he’ll hate me.”
“I’ll make sure he doesn’t hate you, but I can’t say he won’t come looking when he gets older.”
“You never came looking.” There’s a hint of sadness in her voice, but we both know the truth.
“You didn’t want to be found.”
She nods.
“You’ll make sure he knows I love him?” Her voice cr
acks and I look down at her chipped nail polish and broken nails. A million cheap silver rings on her fingers and bracelets on her arm. What happened to the girl next door who won Miss Climax Cove?
“Of course.”
I reach over and cover her hand with mine. “I promise, but Sara, you’re making a good decision.”
She nods and I slide one hand from under mine, swiping a tear from her eye.
I’m unsure whether to trust the tears. They’ve come in the form of manipulation so many times before.
I pull into my driveway, park, and run inside.
Grabbing the papers from my underwear drawer in my dresser so they’ve stayed hidden from Toby, I lock up and jog back out to my car.
I hand them to her and then pull out of the driveway and head back to downtown.
“It seems silly that this is all it takes to not have your kid be yours anymore.” She flips through the pages with Post-It notes that indicate where to sign and date.
I ignore her comment because I’m not sure what she wants me to say.
By the time we’re parked outside Happy Daze, it’s growing close to when Toby gets out of school and the last thing I need is for them to see one another.
“Hold up, Sara.” I hold my finger up and jog across the street to see if Ava would mind grabbing Toby after school.
The minute I open the door to Mad Batter, something is different. The energy is different, not the usual light and welcoming mood.
A pounding in the back tells me where to find her.
She’s kneading and hammering a rolling pin on a ball of blue something.
“Hey.”
She looks up, surprised to see me.
“Why do you think you can just come back here?” Her eyes are laser pointed at me and I feel like I should be covering my nuts before she takes a shot at them.
I take my life in my hands and erase the distance between us, coming up behind her. “You usually like it when I’m back here. Usually it’s me pounding something on the table.” I drop my tone an octave lower.
She swivels around, the rolling pin high in her hands. “Do you think I’m stupid? That you can just go off and I wouldn’t find out? And let’s not even talk about the part where your dick moved from me to her in a half hour time frame. You know what…” she raises the rolling pin higher and starts wiggling it, so I grab her wrist, pulling it back down until the rolling pin falls to the table.
“Enlighten me on what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Daisy Duke girl ring a bell?” She slides by me, mostly because I can’t believe she saw Sara.
“It’s nothing, okay?”
She opens the fridge, grabbing another pile of the same shit she was working on except this time it’s pink, then picks up a rolling pin again.
“It’s nothing,” she mimics me. “You’re so full of shit, Dane Murray. And I’m the naive girl who believed your lies. Well,” there goes the rolling pin back up in the air, “not this time around. This time it’s over. O.V.E.R. Over.”
She takes out all her aggression on whatever that stuff is on the table.
“Listen, give me an hour and I’ll explain everything. I promise. But I can tell you for certain, I’m not screwing Sara.”
“Sara. Oh, the whore has a name? Dane and Sara Murray what a ring that has to it.”
I can’t stop my laugh from escaping when she uses our names like that.
Her eyes narrow and if this were a cartoon like Toby watches, there’d be steam pouring out of her ears. “Get out, if you know what’s good for you!” She stalks toward me, dropping the rolling pin on the table.
I grab both her hands and smash my lips to hers. She tries to fight me, her small little bunched up hands hitting my chest, but when I slide my tongue into her mouth, she loses the fight, kissing me back. That doesn’t last long and she takes her two hands and pushes me off her.
“Don’t distract me.”
“Listen.” I cage her between my arms, giving her no space to leave, praying she doesn’t knee me in the groin. “I’ll be back in one hour with an explanation. A very good explanation and you’ll look back at this moment and laugh. But I need a favor.”
She crosses her arms over her chest and raises a brow. “Go figure.”
I smile, hoping to turn this around. “Can you grab Toby for me and bring him here?”
“You better not be asking me to watch your son while you go screw someone else or so help me God, Dane—”
“The only person I’m screwing right now is you.” I kiss her forehead and feel her body soften against me.
“Are you making a fool of me?” she asks in a small voice.
“Never. I promise.” I hold up my one hand with my pinky sticking out. “I pinky promise.”
This earns me a smile.
“Okay, fine. One hour and I want an explanation the minute you walk through that door.”
“You got it.” I bend down and kiss her lips, wishing I could stay and fuck all that aggression out of her.
Nothing’s better than angry sex.
“I’ll be back,” I say.
I run out of the shop and find Sara on the phone. She’s crying to someone with the papers crumbled in her hands. Damn, I knew I was taking a chance leaving her alone without making sure this was headed in the right direction.
“Sara?”
“I gotta go.” She hangs up the phone and shoots those brown puppy dog eyes she’s used so expertly to get her way over the years in my direction.
“I’m not sure, Dane.” She rummages through the papers, flipping one after the other. “It says I no longer have any rights.”
Okay, stay calm and collected. Do not go off on her.
“Sara.” I put my arm around her shoulders, looking up to the sky and praying Ava isn’t watching out her window. Leading us toward Mike Polar’s law office. “This is what’s best for him. I’m assuming you’ve battled with this decision since I tracked you down?”
She nods.
I figured since it took her over a year to get back to me and agree to sign the adoption papers.
I open the door to the lawyer’s office and then close it, detouring us to the side of the building.
“I’m not going to force you, Sara. This is your decision and if you’re not ready then okay.”
“What if I told you I want to take him with me?”
I thread my fingers through my hair. “Then I’d have to say I’ll see you in court. I won’t let Toby live that life, Sara and I think you know I have a better case than you.”
She blows out a breath, staring at the papers in her hand.
“Will you continue to send me pictures?”
“Yes.”
She nods a few times. “That was my boyfriend. He’s waiting for me at the bus station in Wet Rock.”
I raise my eyebrows, stuffing my hands in my pockets. I don’t want to sway her either way. This has to be her decision.
“Okay, this is best for him. I know that.” A tear runs down her cheek.
She opens the door herself and sits down in a chair while I walk up to Linda, the receptionist.
“Mike will be right with you,” she says.
I sit down next to Sara and wrap my arm around her shoulders to pull her into me.
“I’m a horrible person,” she mumbles into my chest.
I had suspicions that her double guessing was guilt and not necessarily want.
“You’re not horrible.” The words are hard to say because I never understood why Toby wasn’t enough for Sara to stop what she thinks is a fun lifestyle.
Mike’s office door opens and he eyes the scene in front of him, questioning me with his raised brows.
I nod, standing up but keeping Sara near me.
We file into the office and sit down across from Mike.
Mike hands a pen to me and to Sara. “Linda, I need you to witness.”
She comes in the office. Linda used to be my Catholic religion education teacher. Sara’
s too actually. I wonder what she thinks about this situation.
She notarizes the papers and shuffles out of the office without a word, shutting the door behind her.
“So, I’ll file these with the courts, but as the papers say, Dane is now the acting legal guardian.” Mike looks at Sara.
“He’s always been the responsible one,” Sara mumbles.
Mike laughs but catches himself. “In this case, he is.” He winks at me before standing up.
“That’s it?” I ask.
“That’s it. I’ll be in touch with you as soon as everything comes back,” he says to me then switches his attention back to Sara. “Good luck, Sara.”
She wipes a few more tears and I eye the clock in his office. Fifteen minutes before Toby gets out of school.
“Let’s go,” I say.
I shuffle her out of the office and down the street while she tucks her head down, probably trying to not be recognized. Hell, I didn’t tell anyone she was going to be in town. That was a stipulation I had to promise to before she agreed to come.
We get into my Mustang and I’m driving out of town to Wet Rock well before Toby would ever walk down Main Street.
“Thanks, Dane,” she says when I park in a spot outside the bus station.
“The least I can do is give you a ride.”
I spot a guy on a bench. He’s got baggy jeans and a tight t-shirt on. His hair stuck up in every direction. Looks like her usual type of loser.
“It’s not that. Thanks for taking care of Toby.” She reaches over pulling me in tight. “You sacrificed for me.”
“I don’t see it as a sacrifice, Sara. I’m sorry that you always did.”
She pulls back, tears welling in her coffee-colored eyes.
“Why?” she asks, her voice shallow I almost missed the question. “Why did you take him in?”
I shrug. “It’s simple. I love him.”
“As your own?”
“I’ve never not thought of him as anything but my own.”
She glances to the window, the loser now standing up, noticing it’s us.
“Tell Mom and Dad I love them and I’m sorry I couldn’t face them.”
I nod.
“Take care of yourself, little brother.” She opens the door with one foot out the door. “Take care of each other.” She exits and shuts the door behind her.
