Never Can Tell

by C. M. Stunich

  X X X

  Ty doesn't say anything, but he reaches out and brushes my hair back with his rings, all twelve of them, glittering and sparkling like rubies. They match the piercings in his face. Gotta love a color coordinated badass.

  Neither of us misses how small and tight this bathroom is, how close we are, how hard he was in the kitchen.

  “Ty,”I warn as he comes up behind me and slides his fingers under my shirt, up my belly, cupping my tender breasts with strong hands. “So not fair,” I groan, reaching up and smacking the fan. It coughs to life and is loud as fuck, blocking any sounds from escaping this little room. “You can't touch those.” My cunt is pulsing and my heart is pounding in my skull. Down below, I know I'm soaking wet.

  “Why not?” he whispers against my ear. “It'll make you feel better.”

  X X X

  C.M. Stunich

  Sarian Royal

  Never Can Tell

  Copyright © C.M. Stunich

  All rights reserved. Formatted in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  For information address Sarian Royal Indie Publishing, 1863 Pioneer Pkwy. E Ste. 203, Springfield, OR 97477-3907.

  www.sarianroyal.com

  ISBN-10: 1938623606(eBook)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-938623-60-8(eBook)

  Cover art and design © Amanda Carroll and Sarian Royal

  Optimus Princeps font © Manfred Klein

  Conrad Veidt © Bumbayo Font Fabrik

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, businesses, or locales is coincidental and is not intended by the author.

  to the ones that Never meant to find love, but found it anyway.

  congratulations.

  1

  Ty is going to die.

  I chew my nails as I watch him moving across the roof of the house. Our house. Your house. This belongs to you. I shake my head and look away, partially because I really am terrified that Ty is going to fall off and break his neck and partially because that statement doesn't just apply to the house. It also applies to the baby I've got strapped to my damn chest. Ty drew pictures of bullets in Sharpie over the straps of the carrier to make me feel better about wearing the fucking thing, but I still feel like a tool. Not even fake ammo belts can make me change my mind about that. This belongs to you, too, I repeat, but the words feel even less real than the ones that pertain to this shambling lemon of ours.

  “Ty!” I call, and my heart plunges to the floor of my stomach when he trips on a loose shingle and has to grab onto the chimney to stay upright. “Fuck,” I snarl as I lift my hands to my head. I can't take the nerves right now. I just fucking can't. “Tyson McCabe, get your ass off the goddamn roof!” He looks down at me and grins which makes things all the worse because even as I'm worrying about his safety, I'm checking out his chest. Sweat glistens on the sharply defined muscles there, promising me that despite Ty's new status as daddy, he's still hot as shit. I swallow hard.

  “As soon as I figure out where the leak is coming from, I'm all yours, baby,” he tells me as he scoots forward and drops to his knees, crawling across the roof like an inked up god, bracelets jingling in the still, gray air. The man is infuriating as shit. Water starts to drip into the nursery and within hours, he's trying to commit suicide by scrambling across the wet roof. Can't even fucking wait until the rain stops.

  Droplets smack my skull and make me even more irritated; they make Noah cry. He starts softly at first, but then breaks down into these ear piercing wails that I know come from McCabe's half of the genealogy; I was a quiet baby. I bounce up and down, again feeling sort of stupid doing it, and have to shove a cigarette between my lips like a damn pacifier. I can't smoke it when Noah's around, but even the feeling of my mouth clamped down around makes me calmer, like I can absorb the tobacco through my saliva. Maybe I should start chewing?

  With a regretful sigh, I move onto the porch and push Chuck Norris out of the way with my foot. The stupid cat refuses to come inside unless Ty's in the house. I think this dumb as fuck tabby could use some therapy or counseling or something. Clearly, he has an obsession.

  I move across the scratched up floors and into the kitchen where a microwave, a portable cooktop, and a mini fridge remain the only appliances. It's kind of tough shit when you need to buy something and don't have any money. Other than your husband's leftover stores of fuck money that is. I look down at baby Noah and try to rationalize putting my tit in his mouth. Don't get me wrong, and please don't think I'm a terrible mother, but I kind of, sort of hate it. I decide on a bottle and try to get it ready before Ty comes in and sees. He really hates it when I use formula. I rationalized with him by asking if he, himself, would like to put his nipple in his son's mouth. When the answer was no, he really wouldn't like to do that, we moved on. But don't think I don't see the looks he gives me when I crack out the bottle.

  Unfortunately, he makes it inside right as I'm slipping the rubber nipple over the plastic.

  “Oh, huh,” he says when he sees this, standing there dripping wet and covered in bright red scrapes and bruises. I slam the top onto the bottle and screw it into place, glaring at him, daring him to say something. He says nothing. “Think I figured out where the fucking leak is,” he tells me. Noah, who had previously quieted down, begins to scream again.

  Ty doesn't hesitate in moving forward and helping me get him out of the carrier. He even slips off his shirt and dries off with a dish towel before reaching out and taking his son in his beautiful, inked up arms, bracelets sliding down his wrist as he feeds him the bottle.

  “You have no fucking clue how sexy you look,” I tell him as I scoot past and light my cigarette, moving towards the front door and stepping outside, so I can look in at Ty and Noah from the porch. I make sure that the smoke drifts away from the screen and out towards the orange and yellow leaves that litter our front yard. He just grins at me and his dimples show.

  “You want to show me how sexy you think I am?”

  I pull my cigarette out with two fingers and give him a raised eyebrow.

  “Maybe after you put your son down,” I say to which his grin smolders into a smirk, burning the hair of my eyebrows and singing my eyelashes. I look away. “You're supposed to get less attractive after you have a kid,” I say, dropping my cig to the deck and smashing it with my heel.

  “Says who?” asks Ty as Noah finishes his bottle and starts to coo. Ty tosses it over his shoulder and actually manages to get it to land in the sink. And at an angle, too. Impressive. I shrug and start in on a second Marlboro. I kid you not, the day Noah popped out was the day I started to smoke again. And I can't seem to stop. I really should quit for good, but I don't know if I'm cut out for it. There were days there in that horrible nine month stretch where I just sat and cried and held onto my cigarettes for dear life. It's not easy to quit, no matter what anybody says.

  “Says everybody,” I tell him, turning my hazel eyes up to his brown ones, catching him in a breathless moment where time stands still and our black souls twine together like the dead branches on the trees in our backyard. Time slows, lets us connect, and then speeds back up again. Noah starts to cry, but Ty lifts him up and props him against one, strong, muscular shoulder, patting his back with his ringed hand and swirling his fingers around in gentle circles. “And they also say that I'm not supposed to be horny yet. Why, Ty, why is it that I'm always fucking horny?”

  Ty laughs at me, and it turns into a snort as he shakes his head and bounces up and down with our baby, not ashamed or embarrassed in the least. Ty is a much better parent than I
am.

  “Because I'm a fox, baby.” I take a drag on my cigarette.

  “You're a whore.”

  “I was.”

  “Screw you.”

  “Nuh, uh uh,” Ty says, spinning in a slow circle, letting me see Noah's pale face and the swath of dark hair on his forehead. “If you enjoy doing it so much, you can't use it as an insult.” I blow smoke out and wish I was blowing it into his face. He's infuriating sometimes, you know?

  “Grow up,” I tell him, but I know he already has, and at as quick a pace as is humanly possible. For the last nine, ten, whatever months, we've both come a long way. We've cleaned up this house, our lives, tried to sort out our futures. We got married. We had a baby. When I think about my new life in wholes and stretches, I feel sick, like it's too much, like there's no way I can be doing all of this at age twenty-two. It's much easier if I think in manageable pieces. For now, we're living on a wing and a prayer. Soon, that's going to have to change. We've been honeymooning for awhile now, and the money isn't going to last. I don't know how much of it there is, and I don't ask, but I can tell by the little crease between Ty's dark brows that it isn't much.

  “I think you're a champion,” Ty tells me when he's done burping Noah. “Like a fucking tiger or something, fierce and wild.” I look at him, and I try not to smile. He's teasing me, sure, but he's also complimenting me, and I can't let him know how much I like it. Ty thinks because I had Noah so easily that I'm like, some kind of Sex Fertility Goddess. I think I just have wide hips, so whatever. “It's not your fault you can't keep your hands off of me.” I give him another look and turn around to stab out my cigarette in the ashtray we keep on the porch and never use. There are probably a dozen butts around my feet and two in this stupid tray. I promise myself I'll make more of an effort.

  When I turn back around, all I can see is Ty's retreating back as he moves up the stairs, bird tats fluttering across his slick skin. An ember of heat starts to burn in my belly, and I can't stop myself from chasing after him. The stupid tabby cat darts in behind me.

  “Found the leak, huh?” I ask as Ty pauses in the doorway to our son's bedroom and watches drops of icy rain splatter against the floor. He glances over his shoulder at me, mouth in a crooked smile, eyes half-lidded.

  “Found and fixed are too entirely different things, Mrs. McCabe.”

  “It's Ross,” I tell him with a sly smile, and he just laughs. That's because we work, me and him. We work and we're fucking perfect together. Ty is the only person in the world who gets me and my dark heart and the only person I'll ever let see how deep that blackness goes, how it eventually morphs into a cluster of bright as fuck stars. “Want to put him in our bed?” I ask as Ty turns around and comes to stand next to me, filling the doorway with his warmth, his love, his heat.

  My head drops to his shoulder and my breath escapes slowly, like it's being drawn from inside of me by Ty's presence. He could do that, you know, suck the life out of me, leave me for dead. He could, but he never would.

  “Yeah,” he whispers, voice quiet, pitched low not just for the sleeping infant clutched in his arms, but also for me, too. Ty leans over and presses a kiss to my hair, all the while keeping his son's head supported with a handful of butterflies. I didn't think it was possible to love him anymore than I did before, but I think I do. Seeing him with Noah is like seeing an entirely different side of McCabe, and I fell for that, too. The bastard. “Come with us?” I nod and turn around, threading my fingers around Ty's bicep, sliding my nails over the wings of a blue butterfly. The sound of the rain outside and the jingle of Ty's bracelets are the only noises to be heard as we move as a unit down the hallway and into the shitty as shit room we've carved out for ourselves.

  The bed, along with the rest of the furniture, belongs to me, all shipped up here courtesy of Beth. It's probably the nicest room in the house.

  “Tomorrow,” Ty tells me as he lays Noah down in the center of the bed and climbs in after him. “I'm getting a job.” Ty says this everyday, but he never has much luck. Could be because I'm selfish and hardly ever let him go. I don't tell him this, but I'm afraid to be left alone with Noah. I don't have any motherly instincts, and I don't know what to do with him. I love him. Oh God, fuck yeah, I do, but I just don't understand him. I blame all of this on Angelica and that stupid son of a bitch, Luis. I had no parents, so I don't know how to be a parent. I keep telling myself that I'll get through it, that I'll learn how, but it isn't easy.

  I ignore all of this and respond with a simple, “I love you,” as I climb in opposite Ty and find his ringed hand, tangling our fingers together while our breath mingles in the space above Noah's head. We kiss once, soft, no teeth, no tongue, and then we fall asleep. Life is hard, and it's not perfect, but we're together now and that's all that matters.

  Why is there always something that has to come along and screw it up?

  2

  Despite his best intentions, Ty does not get up the next morning to go find a job. Instead, he lays pant-less and fucking sexy as hell on our bed next to Noah. My fault for not getting up with the baby last night. I watch him from my post next to the dresser and cross my arms over my chest. Everyday it seems there's a list of things that need to be done that never actually get done. Today, I decide that I'm going to take care of some of those before either of the boys wakes up. Might as well give it a shot anyway.

  When we came here in December, I didn't expect to stay. Hell, when I left my dorm room way back when, I sure as shit didn't expect to get pregnant either. I thought I was going home to make peace with my family and break this cycle of pain that I've been living day in and day out since I was freaking five years old. That after I was done, I'd go back to school and Ty would come with. I thought we'd graduate magna cum laude and have a merry fucking time.

  Instead, we're living in a rambling old shack with four rooms still filled to the gills with kitsch. Water leaks into our son's bedroom like Niagara fucking Falls, and we don't even own a freezer. Plus, we have a stupid tabby cat that pisses on everything.

  “Goddamn it, Chuck,” I growl as I push the cat away from a pile of clothes with my foot. “Jesus Christ, can't you do that outside?” The cat yawns and pretends it didn't just urinate in the cup of my favorite bra before wondering off. I look down at the laundry, up at the ceiling and then sigh.

  Before heading down the stairs, I sneak back into the bedroom and steal a Djarum Black from our dwindled package, shoving it between my lips and pausing in the living room to grab my laptop, shipped here courtesy of Lacey Setter. I take it outside and light up, pausing to glance down at the world's laziest dog. Bitch-Angelica raises her head to look at me and snorts, dropping her muzzle back to the grass and pretending like I don't even exist. She doesn't even bother to wag her tail.

  “Spoiled snot,” I murmur around my cig, raising the lighter up and taking a massive drag, dropping my head back so that my hair hangs down and kisses my shoulder blades. I dyed it black again, had to. I couldn't stand waiting for the copper to grow back in, and frankly, the black sort of just suits me. Today, I have an orange streak in the front. Could be blue next week, could be purple. I haven't been able to decide on a color lately. Like the changing leaves, my mood has been up and down and all over the fucking place. I wonder if there's something wrong with me, postpartum depression or whatever.

  I exhale and scoot over to one of the plastic chairs that Ty's mother bequeathed to him along with the house. I sit in it with a huff and flip open the top to my computer. I have got to figure out how to get back in school, and take Ty with me. He keeps saying he's going to get a job, but I don't know how good of an idea that actually is. Ty might be a bad boy on the outside, but on the inside, he's a hard working man with a fierce heart. If he had to slave away at a dead end job to support Noah and me, he'd do it. I can't let that happen. Ty needs to be a therapist. He wants to help people, and I want to help him. His dream is a relatively new one, but it's a dream nonetheless. I can't let him give up
the hope for something better.

  I grab my cigarette in my left hand and use my right to navigate the Internet, checking my email and discovering messages from pretty much everybody I know. I scan them quickly, make sure there's no new drama that I should be aware of, and move on. I'll answer them later, if I have time. Right now, my goal is taking that next step, figuring out what Ty and I are going to do now. We have the house, the kid, the cat, the dog, now we just need the money to keep it all afloat.

  I'm not out there long when I hear soft footsteps padding across the floor in the kitchen.

  “Thought you could sneak a kretek without me knowing, you sneaky bitch?”

  I glance over at Ty as he comes down the steps in nothing but a pair of baggy sweats. My eyes catch on his abs, the smooth slide of muscles beneath skin. I have to squeeze them shut to find my next words.

  “I thought I could smoke it before you got up,” I tell him as he comes over and leans down, a black cigarette dangling from his full lips. They're curved up in a deliciously infuriating smirk that makes me want to slap him and fuck him both. I light his cigarette instead, and say, “You didn't leave the baby on the bed did you?” Ty looks surprised, but not as surprised as me. Guess I have a few motherly instincts buried in there after all?

  “Nah, baby, would I do something like that?” Ty smiles and winks, holding up a monitor in his ringed hand that I didn't notice before. “He's in his crib now.” Ty leans down and pulls his smoke away, so he can give me a kiss. It's meant to be chaste, I think, but the hot, smoldering press of Ty's mouth against my cheek makes us both groan longingly. My hands come up automatically and trace the smooth flesh on his belly.

  “It wasn't wet?” I ask him, my voice breathy and light. Ty grins and grabs the laptop, shutting the lid and tossing it onto the chair next to me. He climbs up between my legs and kneels there, leaning over me, cigarette hanging down by my ear when he puts it back in his mouth.