“Thanks very much for your input, Mother.”
Maybe in a world where I could transplant everything good about Michael into Thad, then she would like him. Until then, who I chose to spend my time with was nothing she needed to monitor so closely. I felt defensive. Thad was nothing like Michael. He didn’t have to be like Michael to be bad for me, but that was it; he wasn’t bad for me.
I had thought the same thing about Michael when I was eighteen, but I wasn’t eighteen anymore. Michael was a mistake I had made because I had let him in too close, too fast. I wasn’t going to do the same thing with Thad.
I wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.
22
Thaddeus
A lot of people had tells when they lied to you. Their body would do something weird like their eye would twitch or they would uncontrollably lick their lips or start sweating. They would somehow express the anxiety they would feel telling the lie.
I hadn’t noticed any in the kids, meaning they were probably great liars or just very truthful. Veronica did something different when she lied. She didn’t do it often, or, like, for the sake of being a bitch though.
Veronica was the kind of girl who would lie to you, terribly, just so bad. She never did it without a reason—a good one. She was so nice; she didn’t just tell lies to get away with them. She told them when she thought the truth would hurt whoever she was telling or when she thought it would be a pain in the ass for them somehow. Fucking selfless, that was what she was. How did bitches like Laurie end up being mothers and people like her who would do a much better job have to have uterine adhesions?
There was something wrong with her, and she lied every time I asked her what it was, and she said nothing. She said it in this way like she didn’t even expect you to believe her. She was just saying it because that was what you said when someone asked you that particular question. She didn’t expect you to believe her, but she wanted you to pretend like you did because she didn’t want to get into it.
She did a good job of hiding it, putting up this great front round the kids, but the minute they were gone, she would just slip. Something was bothering her, and I knew, I knew it was about that doctor’s appointment she had had. I wish she had asked me to go with her; she was so sad afterward.
At one time, I wouldn’t have been able to empathize with wanting children, but the idea had been getting less and less gruesome to me. It was different for her though. She wanted to carry children, have them out of her body and her body was not letting her do that. I almost felt a little bad not using condoms with her because it felt a little douchey. Like I’m going to come in you because I know you can’t even have pregnancy scares; it’s like a post-apocalyptic dystopia down there.
Her womb... her uterus—it could go by either name—was not a post-apocalyptic dystopia. That was mean. It was just... harder for her to get pregnant than other girls. Harder, she had said; it wasn’t impossible. There was still a chance. We still weren’t using condoms, and she hadn’t gone on the pill or anything like that. Technically, there was a chance—however slim—that she could get pregnant.
This didn’t scare me as much as I thought it maybe should have. It didn’t scare me that much at all. Some of it must have been me feeling like there was a one in a million chance that it would happen but then again, getting Veronica pregnant... there were worse things that could happen. There were worse people to impregnate. I wasn’t going to lie, though, being the one who actually sealed the deal, crossed the finish line would be pretty cool.
She’d be a fantastic mom. She wanted it so bad. When we were alone, it would be like letting all the air out of a balloon. She was depressed. She was feeling the way I had been spared feeling this summer. The impulse to do something about it felt, just natural. I had to. I didn’t like when she was off like that.
She hadn’t bothered trying to lie with much conviction that she was excited to go to the beach that weekend. The kids had loved the idea, and she had given this noncommittal sort of nod and shrug. It didn’t offend me as much as it made me mad. Not at her. She couldn’t help what she was feeling. I was mad for whatever God or force in the universe had chosen her to make infertile.
It was with things like this that it was hard to believe that things happened for a reason. What good reason was there for Veronica to be unable to have kids when she wanted them so bad and was that fucking nice. How many people were raising kids they hadn’t planned to have? How many were supposed to be raising kids they hadn’t planned to have, but weren’t?
She had tried so hard and had been denied at every turn. I didn’t know what it was like to have a miscarriage, but she had had two, and now she was like this. I wanted to help her keep her mind off it, but I could only distract her so long.
I had thought of maybe taking her somewhere alone, like Lover’s Point Park. That was where I had learned to swim as a kid. The beach there was nice. Small. There were seagulls, and the squirrels were so bold, they would take food right out of your hand. Maybe she’d like that, think it was cute.
Asilomar beach was a better choice though, for the kids. They could go explore the rock pools and stuff. The water was clear if a little cold, and the sunsets were priceless. Maybe that would cheer her up. I hoped it did. I was running out of options.
When we got there, the kids took off into the ocean. They ran up and down in the shallows. Both were strong swimmers, but we chose a spot where we could keep an eye on them. It was the first time I had seen her in her bikini, and she looked great. It was even sexier than seeing her naked because I knew what she looked like underneath. I sat on the towel beside her.
She was watching the kids with this sad smile.
“What’s the matter?”
“Sometimes, I feel they aren’t having fun unless you are around,” she told me. “They really like you.”
“They’re good kids.”
“They are... you can say you like them too. It’s fine,” she said. I smiled and bumped her shoulder with mine.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You like me too,” I said, looking out at the water.
She didn’t say it. She sat there quietly. I looked over at her. Her eyes were down.
“You are... you know, nice,” she said.
“Nobody has ever accused me of being nice.”
“You don’t seem like you should be. You aren’t sometimes, but you’re nice. I like that.”
She went quiet again. She was looking at me. Just looking.
“What’s wrong?”
“I was just thinking... about you and the kids.”
“What about us?”
“I know that that is what you want,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean a family. I’ve seen the way you are with them. You want some of your own.”
I wanted to deny it. Not because it wasn’t true but because I didn’t want to talk about that with her. I didn’t think it was a blatant truth, but it wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t something I could deny because that would be lying. She tried to discreetly wipe the tears that were coming down her face, but I saw it. What the fuck. She was supposed to feel better today, not cry.
“Why are you upset?”
“Michael... one of the last things he said to me was whether you knew I would never be able to give you kids.”
I was tired of hearing that man’s name, but Veronica had just, whether it was on purpose or not, sort of expressed that she was sad about it. She was sad that she couldn’t have kids, for me. Michael had said the same thing to me too; he had accused her of killing his kids and called her defective, which was so gross. Was the only reason why he wanted her to have babies for him?
I felt like we were skipping a lot of steps. We had talked about kids, specifically the ones that she took care of now and the ones she was going to try for in the future. We had never talked about the children that we would have together, or even wanted t
o have together. I wasn’t going to deny that the thought of kids wasn’t that off-putting to me anymore. If the ones I ended up with were anything like Nikki and Chris, then maybe having kids wasn’t such a bad thing.
The thought of Veronica being a mom wasn’t off-putting either. I tried layering the two over each other, and the thought was... it was sort of nice. Being the guy who finally gave Veronica her baby was a pretty good thought. I didn’t hate it. I’d finally do the thing that Michael had been unable to do. She wanted it so much. I wanted to be the one that made that wish come true for her.
“Do you think I’d do what he did to you if you got pregnant and lost it?” I asked her.
“No,” she sighed. “You’re a better man than he is.”
“You’re a better woman than he had any business having.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t happier about this,” she said, wiping her face again. “It’s great. The beach is beautiful.” She sniffed and tried to straighten her posture out and look like she wasn’t miserable. I put an arm around her and pulled her into me. I could feel her face become wet again and the tears run over my skin.
She didn’t deserve to ever be that sad or mad about anything. It was like with my mom, all those years ago. She was so beautiful and caring, and her husband was a piece of shit. Veronica had never gone into it, but Michael had done something to her. He didn’t have to necessarily hit her to abuse her.
I wanted to comfort her and let her know that I was there for her. I couldn’t pull my dick out and let her know that way; I just had to sit there and stroke her hair while she cried. I felt like shit. I felt like she was right there, miserable, and I was there too, but there was nothing I could do.
Making her come would get her mind off of it at least, but it wasn’t the time or place. I didn’t know what to do. Should I have kept talking to her or did she just want me to be quiet? There was no crying in combat. You just carried the mental scars with you until you got back home and maybe you’d get some psych help from the VA. Maybe you had someone who loved you and would I guess, do this. Let you cry.
I loved her. She had me.
Did I love her? If the fact that she was crying into my chest about something another man had done to her made me want to track him down and bring her his head on a silver platter, then yeah. I did love her. I pulled her in a little tighter and kissed her head.
“Whatever he did to you… whatever he told you, it’s not true,” I said to her.
“I’ll try and remember that,” she said quietly.
“He did… whatever he did to you but you’re still here. He didn’t win.”
She didn’t say anything after that.
That night she asked me to spend the night with her, not fucking, just sleeping. Well, neither of us really managed to get much for most of the night because she was tossing and turning so much. She started on her side, turned onto her back, got out of bed and came back before doing it some more.
“Come on,” I said groggily.
“What? Where?”
“Downstairs. Maybe we can bore you to sleep,” I said. There had to be like, a rerun of Judge Judy or something on the television that could tire her eyes out enough to go to bed.
“No… I’m sorry, go back to sleep,” she said. Sitting up and leaning back against the headboard. Her hand made its way into my hair, combing through it. “I was thinking about what you said.”
“Which part? The part where I said I loved you?”
Her hand stopped, and she looked down at me.
“You didn’t say that.”
“I’m saying it now. I don’t know what that guy did to you, but I know it is what is making you feel like this. I don’t want you to be scared of me the way you were of him.”
“I wasn’t scared of him.”
“You were, and you still are. Maybe not of him as a person but the things he said that you believe are true. They aren’t. He’s a sack of shit, and he didn’t know what he was talking about.”
“What if he’s right about the baby?” she asked. “We haven’t used condoms once, and it still hasn’t happened, not even by accident.”
“You will have your baby,” I told her. She had said it herself. There was still a chance. I sat up and kissed her. I held her and pulled her back down onto the bed. I tugged at the shorts she slept in, pulling down her panties with them.
I jerked my cock, making it harder before sliding smoothly into her. She gasped and buried her face in my neck. I fought hard to try and take it slow. I wanted to fuck her fast and dirty, but I wanted her to know how I felt. I felt her fingers lace through mine, and her lips softly kiss my neck and throat.
She was so beautiful. She was perfect, and she needed someone who was going to let her know every day.
Me. I would show her.
23
Veronica
I had told Laurie what Bart was planning to do with the kids; his plan to take full custody of them.
It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I hadn’t meant to, but it had just come out. I was mad at her for doing what she had done to the kids, leaving them in the first place and then making them upset when she came to the house. How had she even gotten there in the first place? How did she know where the house was?
I had been nervous that she would show up to the house again uninvited, but I had warned her not to, and she had listened. She knew when she was not welcome, which was a good thing. I couldn’t imagine how the kids would react to seeing her again after the disaster visit they had already had together.
She had looked suitably ashamed when I had told her that Bart was in the process of petitioning for full custody of them. She hadn’t cried or anything, but she had looked a little stunned. Ashamed. It was still just so foreign to me that someone could do that to a kid, to their own kids.
She hadn’t said anything in defense of herself when I had told her which just made me nervous about what she might have been discussing with her lawyer—if she had one. I hadn’t told her that I was the kid’s legal guardian though. It would sound like a threat if I had, and I didn’t want to threaten her. Okay, I did, but I knew it was the wrong thing to do so I didn’t.
I had to talk to her.
Providing she was still out of whatever mysterious hole she had disappeared into, we would have a sit-down meeting and discuss things like adults. I decided to do it on a weekday so there was no chance that she would corner the kids in any way and make them upset again. She had lost that privilege, for the time being. She couldn’t be around them until she was going to act right, and she wasn’t going to talk crazy to them like she had last time.
Thad had told me what the kids had told them when they were together in the living room. They had been using the markers she had bought them to color in his tattoos, which was so cute. I wanted to take a picture when I saw them. Apparently, the kids wanted to stay here. In a perfect world, Laurie wouldn’t have made them question whether they were supposed to feel safe with her or not.
In a more perfect world, Bart would be able to spend more time with them and be a supportive parent when the parent they knew was being erratic and scaring them. In the most perfect world, Laurie and Bart would be married, she would be a stay-at-home mom, and he would have a regular nine-to-five where paralysis, PTSD and amputation were not everyday risks.
In that perfect world, Michael and I would still be married, and we would have two beautiful, healthy, thriving children. I would still be living in San Jose and Thad and I would have never met. That was the thing about the perfect world; it didn’t exist. I wish things had gone differently with Michael but wishing that would have meant I would still be with him. I wished Laurie hadn’t been a negligent mother, but if she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be taking care of my niece and nephew; Nicolette and Christopher who I loved like they were mine. I wouldn’t be in Monterey. I wouldn’t be with Thad.
I didn’t want to speak for him, but I knew what I was feeling wasn’t one-sided. I didn’t have to speak for
him because he had done it himself. He had told me that he loved me and then he had made slow, hot, passionate love to me in my bed. He had said it again and again, whispering it in my ear, and kissing me deeply. He came inside of me, and that was when I said it back. I liked to think that maybe, because of what he had said and the way it made me feel, that maybe that was the night he and I had conceived a baby together. It was nice to dream. We had been talking about kids and somehow had circled round to having kids with each other, and he hadn’t shut me down or made a joke to discourage me or anything.
Was it a good time to have kids? Was he a good person to have kids with? Was it safe yet for me to start thinking about doing that? Who knew? All I knew was I wanted a baby and Thaddeus had basically told me that he was going to give me one.
I couldn’t think about that now. I had to focus on talking to Laurie. Thad had offered to come, but I felt like she might have been a little scared to be honest with him there. I just asked him to pick the kids up if we ended up going past three o’clock. I had invited her for lunch. Seafood on Fisherman’s Wharf. Just something to assure the concerned mother that her kids weren’t living in a dump. She got to the restaurant on time, which was the least that she could have done, honestly, I wasn’t going to praise her for that.
Maybe I had just been too mad to notice it before, but Laurie looked like she had been going through it. She looked thinner, which made her look older in the face, more sunken and less vital. Her hair was not styled, so it just sat on her shoulders, limp. She was dark around the eyes too. I was concerned, not because I cared so much how many hours of sleep she got a night, but because of what possible reason she could have given me for her appearance. I would have bet anything that she wasn’t just torn up and fatigued from missing her children.
We made small talk before her drink came. Water, flat.
“Where are the kids?” she asked cautiously.
Thaddeus (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 2) Page 17