by Cole, Mila
“It’s okay.” She rubbed my head, and her tender touch brought all the comforts I’d been missing. “Come on. Let’s sit down. Looks like we have some talking to do.”
I kept my arm wrapped around her waist and my head on her shoulder as the two of us made our way to a big champagne-colored couch.
“Lighter, where would you like your bags?” Trim asked from behind me.
I wiped my eyes, and Mom pointed to her room. “Mom, this is Trim. Trim this is my mom, Rebecca.” I sniffled as the two of them shook hands. She showed him to her room and then to his before she joined me on the couch with a box of tissues.
“Are you free for the day?” I asked. I just sort of burst in, carrying more baggage than she was expecting. It was going to suck if she said she had to leave. I didn’t want to be left alone. Not in my breakable state.
“I am. My schedule is free until tomorrow around sunrise. Tomorrow is going to be kind of busy up until lunch, but other than that, I’m good.”
My mood had somehow lifted, knowing that the two of us were going to get some uninterrupted time together. Mom told Trim that he was free to head out for a bit, since she had her guard outside the door. You would’ve thought she gave him a bonus with the way his face lit up. I remembered him saying that he was excited about seeing Canada, since he’d never been there before.
Mom and I ordered some takeout, put on some more comfortable clothing, and opened a bottle a wine before I finally went into the gory details of what happened back at home.
I told her everything. From the moment Slick came into my life right down to the gun pointed directly at his head. I cried my eyes out through the whole thing, but it was the most therapeutic talk I’d ever had with her. And I knew therapeutic; I’d been a regular with my high school psychologist. The woman had seen me once a month for four years. Something about your parents leaving you in a strange city all alone and never visiting could take a toll on a person.
“Tell me more about Slick.” She snickered. “I don’t like not knowing his name. It seems odd.”
“It is a little, but I really think you’d like him.” I was straightforward about his age and the fact that he was raising his niece as his own. Mom could be a snooty person at times, but she seemed really taken with what I had to say about Slick. “He’s kind of bossy, but he has a way of making me push myself.” I shrugged. “And it doesn’t hurt that he’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”
There was a look in my mother’s eyes. I knew that look. She was going to embark some of her short and sweet wisdom on me, and I was likely going to be blown away. The woman had a way with words.
“I think you love him, and I think you’re scared. But—” She took my hand. “—sometimes it can be scarier standing still. So, take the leap.”
Oh, the waterworks.
“I think I do love him.”
“Of course you do. I could see it in your eyes when you talked about him,” she said. “I can’t wait to meet this guy.”
“What about Dad? He’s never going to allow it. He’ll kill him, Mom.”
She had a pained look on her face, which was followed by a long sigh. She brushed her platinum-blonde hair over her shoulder. “I’ll be home at the end of the week, and we’ll talk to him. I think between the two of us, we can convince him to see the light. Things have been strained between your father and me for a while, and it’s about time we sat down and had a talk. I can’t make any promises, sweetheart …” She paused.
“I’m eighteen.”
“Yes, you are.” She gave me a sweet motherly smile.
I was still worried. “We can’t let Dad kill Slick. He won’t, will he?” My words frantic as they left my mouth.
She pulled me to her chest and gently rubbed my arm. “Shhh. We will figure it out. But I think you better tell Slick how you feel. You don’t want to go through all the trouble of picking a fight with your dad if he doesn’t feel the same way. And I’m not saying he doesn’t, but you should be sure.”
“You’re right.” I perked up. “I have to tell him.”
Trim walked through the door, and Mom and I were still lounging on the couch.
“Trim!”
“Hey,” he answered.
“I have to tell Slick how I feel.” Clearly the two glasses of wine I’d drank had kicked in. “I’m going to tell him I love him. Can you take me to him?”
Both he and Mom were laughing at my outburst. I was obviously making a fool of myself, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t wait. He had to know while I still had the balls to go through with it. Trim didn’t seem to be surprised that I admitted I loved Slick. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, but either way it was time that Slick knew.
“I can take you,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”
“Tomorrow?” I glanced over at my mother. “You don’t mind, do you?” I asked since I’d be cutting our trip a little short. But I didn’t want Dad to get suspicious. He would think that I was still visiting Mom.
“No. I don’t mind. But you have to call me and tell me all about it.”
“I will.”
Mom and I spent the rest of the night talking. We stayed up until midnight gabbing about all the things we hadn’t talked about in so long. I filled her in about the date auction and all the money we’d raised for the fundraiser.
Our talk was amazing. She’d missed out on so much with her career, and I knew she felt guilty about it. I was a grown woman, and so many things had passed that she was never a part of. It hurt to think about, because deep down I felt like she was absent more than she was there. But I had a feeling that things were going to get better between us. We talked about taking a girls’ trip soon and getting a much-needed vacation where the two of us could catch up even more. It sounded wonderful.
It was going to be hard to leave her the next day, but she’d be home in one week. Then the two of us were going to fix whatever was going on with Dad. At least, that’s what I was hoping for.
Fingers crossed.
Twenty-Seven
Slick
Chloe and I were in the middle of building the biggest and best LEGO castle known to man, when someone knocked on our door. I had yet to tell her that we were going to have to move again, because I wasn’t ready for the letdown. Just when things were going so well, I was going to up and take it all away. Some great uncle I was.
“Keep going. We have to figure out a way to make a roof for that tower,” I told her as I stood up from the floor to go answer the door.
We weren’t expecting company, so I looked through the peephole to make sure that there wasn’t some armed man on the other side. Not that I could defend us much with no shirt on and a pair of baggy sweatpants.
Tony’s face was just inches away from the hole in the door. It was all I could see.
“Damn, you’ve got a big head!” I shouted as I swung the door open.
Tony smiled, showing all his teeth. The big goofball.
“I thought you were out of the country until tomorrow?”
“Well… We decided to come back early.”
“We?” I questioned. He was acting funny, unlike himself. I’d known the man many years, and I could just tell something was up.
He stepped aside, and there she was. Lighter stood there wearing the Phillies baseball cap I’d gotten her. Her bottom lip was sucked in as she stood there nervously swaying back and forth. Neither of us said anything, but I was still in shock. What could I say? She looked so small and beautiful. She was wearing a pair of baggy jeans and a plain white T-shirt that was tied in a knot on her side. It almost hurt me to look at her, because she so easily took my breath away.
“Well, this is awkward,” Tony announced as he pushed me aside and walked into my apartment. “Chloe!” he called out. “Where’s my girl?”
“So. Um. What are you doing here?” I asked. Lighter was still standing in the hallway.
Her sweet voice made my heart beat faster. “I was hoping we could t
alk. Can I come in?” she asked. Her eyes flicked to my bare chest as I moved to the side and let her into my apartment.
Tony was standing in the living room with Chloe in his arms. She was hugging the life out of him. Her castle was long forgotten.
“Lighter!” Chloe called out when she noticed that Lighter was standing in our living room. She wriggled free from Tony’s arms and raced over to hug her.
“Hey, kiddo,” Lighter said as she kneeled down to hug her back. “I’ve missed you. Have you been water-sliding without me?”
“Only once. Thank you for my bracelet.” She held out her arm, showing off the bracelet that she never took off.
“You’re welcome. I’m glad you like it.”
“Hey, Chloe,” Tony said. “How about a slumber party at my house? Clock is there, and I’m pretty sure he’s been wanting to watch that mermaid movie. What do you say?”
Chloe’s eyes grew wide, and the cutest grin stretched across her face. There was no way a kid would say no to that. I looked at Tony, and he glanced at Lighter. They obviously schemed this whole thing up. I wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box, but I knew that Tony was giving me alone time with Lighter. It was obvious that there was something on her mind. Wait… He’d said slumber party. If we were comparing me to bright crayon colors, I was definitely a dull gray.
“You better make sure it’s okay with the big guy.” Tony hitched his tattooed thumb in my direction.
“Can I go, Dad? Please. I really want to.”
Holy shit!
She called me Dad. Not Uncle J, or Big Head, but Dad. I didn’t know what to say. It was the first time it’d ever happened, and I wasn’t sure she even realized what she just said. Tony was smiling, and I realized everyone was standing there waiting for my response.
“Sure thing, little bear.” My heart was hammering in my chest. If I could’ve froze time at any given moment, it would’ve been right then when she said the word “dad.”
I was bent down on one knee looking right at her, thinking about how happy she made me. I may have been a big tough guy and her knight in shining armor, but in that moment, I thought that this little bitty girl might just make me cry, and I didn’t care who was watching.
She hugged my neck. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I was still shocked and crouched down in the floor with my hand covering my mouth. Chloe ran off to her room to pack her bag.
She hugged me once more before she left. Tony said that Knox would bring her home sometime the next day, but that he would be back to get Lighter first thing in the morning. When they closed the door behind them, I rested my head against it.
“She called me Dad.”
“For the first time?” Lighter asked.
“Yes.” I looked over my shoulder at her.
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow.” I repeated her words. “I don’t even know if she realized what she said, but she said it. I can’t even describe this feeling.”
“You look happy,” she responded.
Yeah. Happy.
I took a few steps back into the living room where she stood. She looked uncomfortable. Her eyes scanned over the room. It wasn’t much. We had a couple of windows, some decent furniture, and an old stone fireplace. It was nice to us.
I’d been too busy riding the happy train, I’d forgotten that the two of us were alone. For the rest of the night, it was just us.
No interference.
No paparazzi.
Just us.
I cleared my throat. “Do you want something to drink?”
“Sure.” She followed me into the kitchen. “I’ll just take some water.”
I reached in the fridge and pulled out a couple of bottles and handed her one. The air between us was stuffy. It seemed that the two of us had completely forgotten how to communicate. We weren’t ever really good at it. The last bit of communicating we did was through text, and that didn’t go so well.
Opening the patio door, I let her walk ahead and followed her outside. The view was crappy compared to what she was used to, but I knew how much she loved the fresh air. Anytime the two of us were outside, she always seemed to breathe a little easier.
It was weird seeing her there. I still couldn’t believe it. If her father knew that she was in my apartment, I’d be a dead man.
“So.” I sipped my water. “You visited your mom?” That sounded ridiculous coming out of my mouth. Small talk wasn’t my thing.
She took a deep breath, like it was hard for her to speak or something. She was the one who wanted to talk to me, not the other way around. “Yes. I did.”
Okay. The small talk wasn’t working. In fact, it was really starting to aggravate me.
“What did you come here for?” I cut right to the chase. Skirting around the elephant in the room wasn’t my tactic. She obviously had something to say. She was jumpy and constantly clearing her throat, and I was growing restless just watching her.
Her body tensed up, and she narrowed her eyes at me. I waited, not so patiently, as the seconds ticked by. If this were a bomb, we would have been dead by now. The silence was pissing me off. I could hear every bird, car, and person within a half-mile radius.
“You wanted to talk. So talk,” I growled.
“I need alcohol.”
“What?”
“Alcohol!” she shouted. Her hands were all over the place, like she was becoming more frantic. I’d never seen her so on edge. Sure, she was the fidgeting type sometimes, a little all over the place. But this was different.
The plastic chair tipped as I stood up and walked back inside. All I had was beer. She didn’t say what she wanted, but it was the only option I could give her.
When I grabbed the bottle from the fridge and turned around, she was standing just a few feet away. I reached out, holding the beer within reach.
She only had it in her hand a second. She hadn’t even taken a drink when she said, “I think I’m in love with you.”
“You didn’t even take a drink. Did you just need to hold it in order to speak?” I guess acting frantic was contagious. I was pacing my kitchen, trying to process what she’d said. For the love of God, I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
“I’m serious, Slick.”
“No,” I said.
“No? What do you mean no?” I could see the rise and fall of her chest as her breathing picked up.
“I don’t know. It’s just… We can’t… I mean, how…?”
“Could you speak English? Or hell, give me a complete sentence,” she countered. We’d grown far past agitation and were about to start a full-blown argument. It’s what we did best.
“There’s no fucking way. You need to go, before someone realizes you’re here.”
She placed a hand on her hip, and there was fury in her eyes.
Why did she have to look so sexy standing there in that baseball cap?
“Lighter,” I sighed.
“Slick.” She frowned, then shook her head. “No. It’s time I knew your real name. It’s pretty sad that I don’t, and I don’t plan on standing here, continuing to yell, and not know your damn name.”
I rolled my eyes but had to stifle a laugh. She was adorable. “Jensen. My name is Jensen Micah Stevenson. Happy now, Princess?”
“Very.”
I reached over and took the beer out of her hand. If she wasn’t going to drink it, then I was. The room had gone quiet. Freakishly quiet. She would look from the floor to me and then back to the floor.
“Your dad.” I eyed her. “He’s ready and willing to kill me any second. There is nothing that either of us can do to change that. I don’t have a job anymore. Plus, there’s Chloe. I have to think about her in all of this. For the first time in my life, I’m doing the right thing despite my feelings. If you were any other girl, I would’ve…”
“You would’ve what?”
I smirked. “You know what. I don’t do relationships, and I’m definitely not jumping
into something that’s likely going to kill me. I’m sorry. I’m just not.”
Lighter’s shoulders slumped. “I know.” She closed her eyes for a second and then opened them slowly. Her eyelashes fluttered like the wings of a butterfly. Those damn eyes were my weakness. “I went to talk to my mom, and I told her everything. I told her about what happened with Dad, and you. She had no idea. She was just as freaked about the whole situation as I was. I think she had an idea about the things he’s been doing behind closed doors, but when I told her about threatening to kill you, she went ballistic. I’d never seen her so upset before. Turns out there was a lot I didn’t know about her, and the relationship she had with my father. There were some things that I was sure she left out, for my sake, but nonetheless it was still heartbreaking to hear.” Her eyes moved to find mine. “She was the one who made me realize how I felt about you. She’s coming home at the end of the week to talk to my dad. I told her I didn’t want to be there anymore. Home, I mean. I don’t care if I ever see his face again.”
That was hard for me to hear. After all, he was still her father. I remembered the look on her face the other night. I knew she was afraid of him, and she had every right to be. “So, what do you think is going to happen? I mean when your mom gets back.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I think she’s unhappy with their marriage, and I think she has been for a lot longer than she led me to believe. Either way, she knows where I stand. I promised that I’d go home tomorrow and that I’d be there when she got home Friday and we’d try to work things out. Despite dad’s incredulous decisions, I think she knew that I was safe with him. That he wouldn’t hurt me. Not to mention, Trim promised someone would be with me around the clock. He knows how scared I am about going back there. I don’t know what my mom will accomplish, but I’m eighteen, so I’m free to go. The only reason I was even living in that penthouse was because my father agreed to pay for my college. But I don’t care about that or his hidden agendas and whatever else he has going on. My mom will pay for school if I need it.”
