by LJ Evans
The kitten mewled at me. A sad mew full of pain. I wanted to throw up, but I did what Derek said, and then hurried back into the Camaro. I handed my phone to him.
“Ask Siri for the closest vet,” I told him.
He did. It was still about twenty minutes out, at a little hole-in-the-wall town, but it would have to do.
I cuddled the kitten who was mewing the whole time while Derek drove like a madman. Like I imagined Blake might drive when Cam went into labor. Like I imagined Jake had driven that prom night when Seth had hit Cam, and he’d come to rescue her.
I was out of the car and through the door of the vet clinic before Derek had even stopped the engine.
“We need help,” I told the receptionist.
She saw my bundle and the blood and took off to the back. A young female vet and a vet tech came running. “What happened?”
“We heard her mewing as we were driving. Looks like she lost part of a tail,” Derek said, coming in behind me.
“Okay, we got this,” the vet said, taking the t-shirt-wrapped bundle and rushing into the back.
The receptionist approached. “Why don’t you go wash up. Bathroom’s over there. When you come back, we’ll fill out the paperwork.”
I walked in a daze to the door marked bathroom. Derek followed me into the one-person room. I let him. I washed up, and he helped with the blood that lined my neck and face like I’d been slit open by a vampire.
“I’ll go get you a new shirt from the car,” he said gently. I just nodded.
He came back with my “Mischief Managed” t-shirt. I pulled my bloody one off, tossing it into the trash. The blood had soaked through. I pulled more paper towels out, and Derek gently helped scrub off the blood from my still tender breasts. Then he helped me tug the clean shirt over my head as if I was two and couldn’t do it myself.
I was usually tougher than this. I didn’t usually lose it in front of other people. I didn’t show that kind of emotion. Good Girl Mia was not the drama queen. I was good at hiding everything I personally felt. But for some reason, that helpless little tyke, all bloody and crying, tore at me. It had me shaking and tearing up in a way that felt foreign to me.
Out in the waiting area, the receptionist handed us both waters and a clipboard of paperwork. We quickly realized that it was all geared as if the cat was our own. “Excuse me,” Derek said. “The cat. Well…it’s not ours.”
“What?” The lady looked up, surprised.
“We were camping last night at Alabaster Caverns. We don’t know who the kitten belongs to,” he explained.
“Oh! Poor thing. Probably a stray. I’m surprised it didn’t get eaten by the bats.”
My stomach turned, remembering the screeching that had filled the stars last night. I could feel the color fade from my face. I swayed; Derek caught me and held me up against his side as if that’s where I’d always belonged.
“In that case, we’ll take it in as abandoned,” the lady said.
“What will happen to it?” I breathed out.
“We have some funds and an arrangement with the animal shelter. It’ll be looked after, and hopefully someone will take it in.”
I stared at her, her words swirling in my brain. Abandoned. Hopefully someone would take it in. And so uncharacteristically Mia, I started sobbing. Derek pulled me into his chest, and I cried there as if I was truly that toddler he was treating me like.
“Maybe we could keep it? Would we be able to take it with us after it gets fixed up?” he asked the lady over my head.
“I don’t know what the recovery will be like. If you’d like to wait and talk with the vet, I’ll let her know.”
I could feel Derek nod. “We’ll be outside for a few minutes,” he told her.
He tugged my hand and pulled me outside, then leaned up against the wall of the clinic and held me tight up against him while I tried to get a hold of myself.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed as I calmed.
“There you go again,” he said, looking down at me with a tender smile. I just stared at him through eyes that I knew must be puffy and red. “Apologizing for things out of your control.”
“Sobbing like a two-year-old is not out of my control,” I told him, voice shaking.
“Well, to be fair, that was a pretty traumatic experience. Hell, I thought I was going to bust into waterworks.”
“But you didn’t,” I said with a lot of self-condemnation.
“Why are you beating yourself up over a few tears?” He seemed genuinely puzzled.
“I’m usually much better at holding myself together, that’s all.” I tried to pull away.
He looked around and saw a diner across the street. “Stay. I’m going to go tell them where we’ll be and leave my cell number.”
He went into the clinic and was back at my side before I could think seriously about darting away. Plus, where would I go?
We took in the “Seat yourself” sign and found a booth in the corner where he squeezed in next to me. The waitress came over, and Derek ordered coffee and toast for us. I didn’t want anything, but I just let him do his thing while I continued to count backwards by threes from 1,552 in my head and focused on anything but my tears, the cat, and abandonment.
He grabbed my hand and twisted his long fingers amongst my own. His “to err” tattoo snaked around my wrist, making me think of all the errors in my own life.
“Little Bird?”
“Hmm?”
“I think you’ve had to be strong a lot in your life,” he said quietly with no laughter in sight.
I wanted to thunk my head against the table because I was so awfully good at taking this gorgeous, laughing BB and making his serious side peek through. I didn’t want him to be me. I didn’t want him serious and thoughtful. I wanted him laughing, and teasing, and full of joy.
I tried to shake myself out of my funk as the waitress set down the two coffees and a plate of toast with honey and jam.
“It’s a gift,” I said lightly.
“Don’t do that,” he growled.
I looked up, surprised. His eyes were dark storm clouds again, but not full of passion. This time, just anger was there.
“Wh-what?”
“Try to brush it aside and be light and happy. Is that what you do for your family? Are you the one that makes everyone else feel better? Is that how you survived Jake?”
I didn’t want to hear him talk about Jake. Or my family. Not when I was barely getting my shield back up. “Don’t go there,” I said with my own growl.
“Yes, damn it, I am going there. Doesn’t anyone ever ask you how you feel about it all?”
“Of course they do. I got sent to a shrink when he died. And this isn’t about Jake!”
“Okay. They sent you to a shrink, but when you came home, did anyone ever say to you, are you okay?”
“Yes!”
“Did they ask you how you felt about giving him a kidney and then having him die with your kidney inside him?”
My whole body felt like it was being ripped in half. How could he ask me that? How could he dare? This was nothing like him asking me about Hayden. No one had a right to ask me about Jake. It was my own little burden. The burden I deserved to carry. My kidney killed him.
“Stop it,” I said with anger, but also fear. Fear that he’d prod at a scab that I didn’t know if I could handle being scratched at today. Not today, when I’d already lost it over a helpless kitten.
“No, I won’t. I want to know, Little Bird. How did that make you feel?”
“You don’t have a right to ask me that.” I could no longer meet his gray eyes when they stormed at me more, so I looked down to the table, my hands wrapped around the coffee cup.
“I don’t? Not even after you’ve been giving me, piece by piece, a bit of your heart that you’ve had hidden for so long?”
My eyes jumped to his face again. How did he know? How? I hadn’t even really known
it myself.
“Mia. Little Bird, please. Just tell me. What has it been like going through this so alone?”
“I haven’t been alone. I’ve had Mama, and Daddy, and Cam and her parents. And Wynn. For Pete’s sake, there’s a whole godforsaken town of people that lost Jake and have been there for me.”
“No, Little Bird, they haven’t been. They’ve all grieved and waited for you to pick up the pieces.”
“That’s a bunch of malarkey!”
“You aren’t? Picking up the pieces? You’re not trying to be the one to run the dealership because your dad wanted Jake to? You’re not the one trying to take care of Cam in her pregnancy because Jake would be busting something if he knew? You’re not the one making sure your mama smiles every day even when she only has one child living?”
“Stop it!” I put my hands to my ears and closed my eyes like I was five and Jake was teasing me with worms they’d caught and were going to string up on hooks again.
Derek gently pulled my hands into his and then tipped my chin so that he could scour my face with his eyes. I could feel the heat of them even as I kept mine screwed tightly shut.
“God, you’re so damn beautifully heartbreaking,” he said gently.
Tears. More god-awful tears. They squeezed out from underneath my lashes and down my cheeks because I wasn’t used to anyone examining me this closely. No one wanted to examine me this closely. They wanted me to be okay because they had enough on their plates dealing with their own sorrow and anger and hurt. Or if they were Hayden, they just had their own dreams in their eyeline.
Derek pulled me up against him again, and I found myself sobbing into his shoulder once more. Crying like I hadn’t cried since Jake died. Like no one had seen me cry because I’d done it alone in my room, knowing I didn’t have a right to cry in front of any of them.
“Little Bird, I asked you once if you knew it wasn’t your fault that Jake died, and I guess I know my answer now. You don’t, do you?”
I curled my fingers into his shirt. I so wanted him to stop, and yet, at the same time, I didn’t. I wanted to feel healed. I didn’t want to just have a scab covering my wound. I wanted the wound to be gone. Maybe have it leave a scar, but a scar that would have the skin knitted together again into one piece instead of the torn, ragged edges that were still there.
Eventually, I pulled away again and reached for a napkin to wipe my face. “I’m sorry,” I said again. It was a bad habit. He was right. But I was sorry.
“If you ever say you’re sorry to me again, I’m going to have to find a lake to toss you in,” he said, and this time, he grabbed my chin and shoved his lips against mine. They were hard and unyielding, demanding that I listen to him and what he was trying to tell me with his body and his words.
I responded. With hurt and anger and sadness, but at the same time, with a deep longing. Longing to have someone up close to me who had nothing but me and my well-being in his mind. Someone who didn’t care about Jake’s or Mama’s or Daddy’s well-being. Someone who was willing to put me first. I’d never had that. Never. I’d always been second, or third, or last.
His cell phone rang, and he removed his lips from mine but didn’t let me go. He still held me tight up against his chest as he answered it.
It was the vet. They’d finished and wanted to talk with us.
Derek left some cash on the table, and we walked across the street, fingers tangled in a way that allowed me to run my fingers over his guitar callouses. I wasn’t sure what to do with this gorgeous BB. I wasn’t sure at all, but I thought I might want to keep him. And I knew that was a dangerous thing to want, because reality would invade our lives soon enough. In less than sixteen days. And as I’d found out the hard way, reality wasn’t forgiving at all.
The vet said the kitten should recover completely with no long-term repercussions. Some cats couldn’t pee correctly after losing a tail, but because this one still had about a quarter of her tail left, she thought the kitten would be just fine. They wanted to keep her at least overnight. She was probably only about three weeks old. Probably should still be nursing on the mama. They wanted to make sure she’d eat from a bottle.
“Were you thinking of keeping her?” the vet asked.
We looked at each other. We hadn’t discussed the kitten again since we’d left. “Yes,” Derek said without removing his eyes from my tearstained face. “I think we would very much like to keep her.”
I was back to the puddle of honey butter. Because I was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about just the kitten.
“Okay, then. Why don’t you come by in the morning, and we’ll see if she’s ready to check out?”
“I have to be in Denver tomorrow for a gig,” he told the vet.
“That’s a long haul.” She smiled because Derek had that effect on people. He was smooth and charming. Sexy and disarming.
“How early can we pick her up?” he asked.
“Normally we don’t open till eight, but I’ll meet you here at seven?” she offered.
“Thank you. That would be great,” he responded with full-on charm in his smile. “Is there a place we can stay tonight?”
“We have a couple little places. Probably not what you’re used to, but they're clean. I’d recommend the Wooly Bison, just down the street.”
“Thanks. And please call and let us know if anything changes,” Derek said.
We left with my heart still feeling raw and bloodied, but somehow ,also hopeful.
He opened the Camaro passenger door for me and then got in the driver’s seat. Sure enough, just down the street was a quaint sign for the Wooly Bison. I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay at a place called the wooly anything, but I guess that old saying, beggars can’t be choosers, was true.
Derek checked us in as he always did, holding both our bags and not letting me help, and we went to a tiny room with a wrought iron bed, and old, but clean, wallpaper and carpeting. It wasn’t a place I’d recommend as a vacation hot spot, but I also didn’t feel like I’d go to sleep and wake up with bug bites scattered across my body.
Derek called Mitch and let him know what was up. I called Mama and Cam to give them an update and see how Cam was feeling. I chuckled for the first time in hours because Cam on bed rest was not a happy Cam. She said Blake’s grandmama had brought her a whole kit of cross-stitch items to help keep her busy. Cross-stitch! Because, really, who would ever think that Cam would do something as domesticated as cross-stitch?!
When I got off the phone, Derek was watching me. I had sunk down in the wingback chair that was by the window, the sheer curtains diffusing the bright Oklahoma sunshine into a dreamlike world.
He was sitting on the bed that was covered in a beautiful quilt that someone obviously handmade, because you don’t get that kind of quality in a manufactured environment. I focused on the quilt because it was too hard to focus on him. It made it hurt to even breathe.
“Miss Mia,” he said quietly.
“Hmm?”
“I need you to come here.”
His voice was so deep and sexy that it made my whole body tingle, even across the room. For the first time since the hotel room in Oklahoma City, my body froze. Because… well, because I knew what he wanted. We were alone. We had the rest of the day and night until we had to go anywhere. We had nothing scheduled. No plans.
Except, I thought that Derek definitely had plans.
I swallowed, unable to get up from the chair, frozen as I was.
“Miss Mia,” he said, but there was a demand to his tone that made me want to respond. Like a good girl would, to any demand. A command was meant to be obeyed, right? But I also knew what was going to happen once I obeyed this command, and I was still slightly afraid of his reaction if we did this thing right now.
He crooked his finger at me. Another command. I swallowed and forced my frozen body to my feet and moved, with a huge effort, from the chair to the bed. I stood in front of him.
He looked up at me, which wasn’t a very big distance because he was tall, even though he was sitting, and I was short, even though I was standing.
“You’re so beautiful it hurts,” he told me sexily.
Which, really, was my line in my head for him. “Right back at ya,” I said.
“But I don’t think anyone has ever told you that,” he said, and my heart hurt again, but for another reason. It was an ache for something I felt like I’d missed.
“So, Little Bird, I’m going to keep saying it to you until you know it’s true and not just a line I’m using to get you into this bed with me.”
“You’re a moron,” I said, trying to make light of it, but he knew me better by now. He knew that, really, I didn’t know what else to say to him.
He tugged at the hem of my shirt and pulled it up where I reached for it and pulled it over my own head so that I was standing in front of him in my bra and jean shorts. I fought the urge to cover myself, and instead, placed my hands on his shoulders as he pulled me closer in between his legs.
He leaned forward and kissed my stomach and inched up to kiss the space between my breasts as he reached around me and undid the clasp of my bra. When it was gone, he took my right breast into his mouth and sucked. And I moaned. My first moan of the day.
As he progressed his way across my body, the moans came one after another. Each time he touched a new part of me with his lips, and his tongue, and his very able fingers, my body and my voice responded equally.
I was his butter to mold into whatever shape he wanted, like those butter sculptures you see at state fairs. His to create into whatever he so desired.
When my clothes were gone—all of them—he picked me up and laid me down on the bed while he disrobed. I wondered if he wanted me to return the favor of kissing every part of him like he’d kissed every part of me. I was really ridiculously new to all of this. He didn’t know that yet.
