Just not on a Sunday.
His lips quirked at that thought.
“I don’t even know if you’ve been here.”
At her tone, as well as her words, Axl’s attention cut back to her.
And the waiter was at the table.
“Drink for you, sir?” he asked.
“Same as my mom,” Axl ordered.
“Anything to start?” the guy pressed on.
“We’ll have the large bowl of mussels to share,” his mother said.
“Right away,” the waiter murmured and took off.
Axl’s attention went right back to his mom.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Right now, Lisa is coordinating the movers who are moving me to my new condo. It’s close to the Federal Reserve building. Lovely. About twenty-five-hundred square feet. They have a fitness center, a rooftop pool and hot tub and a dog run. I’m thinking of getting a dog.”
Jesus Christ.
His mother wasn’t going to move out.
Right then, she was moving out.
“You’re thinking of getting a dog,” he repeated.
“Yes. I had a designer furnish the space. Did some small renos. The guest bath was dire. But they’re done so it’s all set. I’m just taking some pieces that I cherish and my personal belongings. Everything else I’m leaving behind. I haven’t had a dog since I was in high school. Your father doesn’t like fur on furniture.”
Axl sat back in his chair and held her gaze.
She was jumping all over the place so he thought it best to let her get it out.
“I’m thinking Pekingese. Or a bichon frise. Both are so cute. A small dog. You can use the fitness center if you like. Though, you probably have a membership to a gym. But I don’t know that either.”
“There’s a gym in my office building,” he told her.
“Ah,” she said, reaching to her water.
She took a sip.
Put the glass down.
Gave him her gaze.
And gutted him.
“I didn’t know you had a gym at your work. I didn’t know if you’d been to this restaurant. You are my heart. You are my soul. I was so humiliated at the woman I allowed myself to become, I avoided any meaningful conversation with you, which would be meaningful time with you, because it might lead you to realize how meaningless your mother had become.”
Good fucking Christ.
Immediately, Axl bent forward so deep, the table was cutting into his abs, and reached his hand to her across it.
“Mom, you are not meaningless.”
She didn’t take his hand.
“You aren’t either, Axl. You are so very extraordinary. I was so incredibly proud when you enlisted. I worried for you, so many sleepless nights when you were deployed. But I was proud of you. And so proud you went your own way, and even after you got out, were the man you wanted to be, not the man he wanted to make you be.”
“Ma, take my hand.”
She still didn’t take his hand.
“I didn’t stand between him and you. I didn’t stop him from all the atrocious things he said to you.”
“Mom—”
“I was so very lost, you see. I spent decades reeling, wondering where that girl I used to be had gotten to.”
“Please, Ma, take my hand,” he begged.
She drew a breath into her nose then reached out and put her hand in his.
He closed his fingers around tight.
“He was a steamroller,” he said.
“I am your mother, Axl, and it is my job to look out for you. There’s no excuse.”
“Do you think he would have let you stop him?” he asked.
“I think I should have tried. In the beginning, I would say things. Though I’d wait until we were alone at night in our room. When I could get my words in, he told me not to coddle you. He said it was no way to make a man, his mother coddling him. I tried to explain it wasn’t coddling, it was nurturing. He paid me no mind. Though, I’d eventually become accustomed to that. It was often in our marriage he paid me no mind. But he was so rarely with me. He was always working. Until the wee hours. There was always so much work to do. You know, I cannot even tell you how many times I wished he had a mistress. That would make sense. That would make him at least seem human.”
She shook her head forcefully, closing her eyes tight.
She opened them and carried on.
“I shouldn’t be saying these things to you.”
“Yes, you should. You can lay on me whatever you want.”
She looked to her lap.
“Mom,” he called.
She lifted her head.
“I hated watching what he did to you, but you were my touchstone in that house. I knew you loved me. I know you love me. We never talked about it, but it was there. I had you, and you had me. And that was how we got through. And since I left, I had sleepless nights, worried, because I was out. But you were still in.”
“Oh, Axl, darling,” she whispered.
“You taught me how to cook. You didn’t send your assistant to come pick me up from school or practices, you were always there. And those were our times, just us, driving home, being normal. And every meet, when I’d finish my event, win or lose, I looked for you in the stands. Not him. Because I knew, win but also lose, I’d see pride coming from you, and I only got that from him if I won.”
“Sweetheart,” she said softly.
“And now you’re out. And you’re not drinking San Pellegrino. I can’t drink. I gotta get back to work. But you’re drinking champagne. And tonight, you’re going out to dinner with Hattie and me and Hattie’s dad. Then you’re going to the club with us and watching her dance.”
“Axl, really—”
He squeezed her hand tight. “That’s what’s happening, Mom. Unless you have something special planned.”
“I was thinking of trying one of those restaurant delivery services. Your father thinks they’re millennial. That’s his new word for anything that annoys him. Which I’ve realized are things he doesn’t quite understand. Progress, which is something he despises. He wants it to be 1992. When greed was still good and Basic Instinct was a hit film and it was okay to villainize femininity. Where he was very approving of Jazzercise, because women should spend a good deal of their time engaging in whatever they could to make themselves attractive to a man. But disapproving of Anita Hill, because what was her issue? Men need to be free to be men and women should just put up with it.”
He grinned at her and encouraged, “That’s it, Ma. Get it all out. Though, if DoorDash is your big plan for tonight, you’re going out with us so we can celebrate. You can DoorDash tomorrow.”
Her jaw ticked to the side, she squeezed his hand, and he took her cue, let her go and sat back.
And this was because the waiter was there with his San Pellegrino.
“We also want a bottle of Dom,” he told the guy.
The waiter blinked.
Then he smiled. “Of course, right away.”
And he was off again.
“I can’t drink a bottle by myself, Axl,” his mother protested.
“Is Dad paying your cards?”
“I have my own cards now.”
“You still have the joint ones?”
“Yes.”
“Then he’s paying for lunch today and who cares if you leave a half a bottle of Dom?”
That was when she grinned.
She got serious again fast.
“I don’t want you to worry, darling. I took some classes. Then I opened a web design business about a year and a half ago. I do it from home.”
Holy fuck.
“Seriously?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Does Dad know that?”
She shook her head. “It was easy to do it under his radar. He hasn’t asked how my day was or how I spent it for at least ten years.”
Fuck, his father was a dick.
“I now have a goodl
y number of clients,” she shared. “Enough I’m nearly full time. I have money coming in, my own accounts, my own cards. Of course, I bought that condo using your father’s and my accounts to get financing, but I’ll be able to afford it as I do not intend to serve thirty-six years of duty at your father’s side and let him cheat me out of my due. He can have the house. I hate that house. It’s boring. He can have the cars. I don’t want to drive a Jaguar. I want a Mazda. One of their smaller-size SUVs. I test-drove one. They’re zippy. I just want the money. And I’ve engaged an attorney. Colorado is a marital property state. Your father can make it ugly, and he can make it drag on, but he can’t circumvent that. And we already have a strategy. Demand everything at first, but since I don’t want anything but half of our liquid assets, the investment portfolio and his retirement, he’ll feel like he’s won when that was all I wanted in the first place. And we both know, it’s very important for your father to feel he’s won, even if he hasn’t.”
Seemed she now had her ducks in a row.
“Sounds like a good strategy,” he noted.
“I hope so,” she murmured, reaching again for her water.
After she took a sip and set it back, he called, “Ma.”
She looked at him.
“I’m proud of you. I’m happy for you. And if he fucks with you, he’ll never see me again.”
She didn’t look happy about that.
“Axl.”
“I’m being very serious.”
“It has pained me for years, how he treated you. More, how I didn’t intervene. And I offer no defense for either. But, darling, he does love you and that would destroy him.”
“Then he better not fuck with you.”
“You really shouldn’t say the F-word, sweetheart,” she murmured. “It’s vulgar.”
He grinned. “I’ll refrain when I’m around you.”
She looked horrified. “I hope you don’t use it around Hattie.”
“Hattie’s a millennial, Mom. We’ve embraced the F-word. We don’t think of it as a curse word at all.”
She burst out laughing.
Christ, she looked pretty laughing.
He tried to think of the last time he saw his mom laugh.
He couldn’t remember.
Jesus.
He also hadn’t been a very good son.
“I didn’t look out for you either,” he admitted.
“That’s not your job.”
“Yes, it is.”
She shook her head, not in a negative, in a “What am I gonna do with my boy?”
“We need to do this more often,” he told her.
“I’d like that,” she replied, a light beginning to shine in her eyes that wasn’t pretty.
It was gorgeous.
“Then we will.”
Hard part done.
Good things ahead.
Now it was time to enfold his mother into his life.
“Now, I gotta give you the heads-up about Don, Hattie’s dad. It looks like things are on a good path, and he knows not to be a dick to her around me …”
Her eyes got big and her face paled.
But Axl kept going.
“But you never know. So before you meet him and spend time with him, if there’s a weird vibe, it’d be good for you to know why it’s there.”
The mussels came before the Dom.
And mother and son had lunch.
In the end, he had half a glass of champagne.
Because seriously.
It was a celebration.
* * *
Axl was on his way back to the office from lunch when he made his decision.
Hattie said that Don could be a charmer.
And his mom seemed like she had it going on.
But today was a big day and a big change.
And she needed everyone she could get in her corner.
Bottom line …
They were all going to be a family.
So he called Don.
Hattie’s dad answered quickly.
“Hey, son. All good?”
It was weird, though not in an entirely bad way, that it kinda felt good when Don called him “son.”
“All good, Don. Listen, just so you know, my mom left my father today. She’s coming out with us tonight.”
“Well, shit, Axl, I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. My dad’s a dick.”
“Right,” he muttered.
“She seems like she’s doing good, I just wanna make sure that keeps going. They were together for thirty-six years. We gotta look after her.”
When he replied, there was a lowering of Don’s voice. It was significant.
It said he was taking this seriously.
It also said it meant something to him that he’d been asked.
“We’ll see to her, Axl,” he promised.
“Great, Don. Thanks.”
“Are you picking up your mother?”
“Her name’s Rachel and yeah.”
“How about I meet you at the restaurant so you and Hattie don’t have to be driving all around Denver picking up your parents.”
“That’d work, thanks.”
“Not a problem. See you then.”
And yeah.
There it was.
They were going to be a family.
“Yeah, Don,” he replied. “Later.”
* * *
As usual, she was the first headliner to come out.
Before she did, they brought the lights down.
And during the opening of the song there was nothing, just a muted shine coming from the black surface of the stage.
So it nearly blinded you when the spotlight came on Hattie, flying through the air on the first drum crash of U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name.”
He felt Don shoot straight in his seat, heard his mother’s quickly drawn breath.
But Axl didn’t take his eyes off her.
She was in a black leotard that had swathes of material crossed over her breasts, a mock turtleneck, exposed shoulders but gathered material tight down her upper arms to her wrists. The back was exposed except for a narrow band along the middle. Some parts of the bodysuit were sheer, and there was a filmy skirt that went to her knees and floated around her.
Her pointe shoes were red.
The beat of the song was fast, Axl had no idea how she kept up, arms out, heels down and crossed, up on pointe, down, up, down, and again, again, again.
But before Bono shared he wants to run, she swept her leg around and up nearly to her nose before it came down.
She turned and took only two steps before she was soaring again.
Back arched at an impossible angle, arms up and graceful, front leg straight, back leg in a curve cutting through the air like it had weight, holding her up.
And she could fly forever.
Christ.
It slowed down a bit then, and she used the entire stage, interpreting the song with every inch of her body, the room dark, the only light following her.
Turns and leaps and all sorts of shit he had no idea what it was called.
And it didn’t matter.
There was only one word for it, really.
Beauty.
She started looking at him at “poison rain.”
And like it was when she danced for him before, he got her message immediately.
This was their song.
He was her shelter.
His throat closed.
At the end of the song, after another leap, she did pirouette after pirouette after pirouette as the light faded.
And then there was black.
The packed room was utterly silent.
And then it exploded.
The light came on again for Hattie to take her bow.
And she was looking at him.
Axl smiled at his woman.
And she smiled back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Deviled Eggs
AXL
They came
in the back door and Cleo was right there to share how she felt about whatever she was feeling.
Cleo didn’t get the chance.
Hattie launched in.
“Get this, Sleekmeister General. My mother is dating a dude named Shiloh. He carves logs for a living and reeks of pot.”
Cleo assumed her disapproving face, though, it had to be said, that was her normal resting expression. It had just been temporarily replaced by her “What the Fuck Are You Two Doing Interrupting My Naptime” face.
“I know,” Hattie agreed.
“Honey,” Axl said, his voice shaking.
She whirled on him.
“You think this is funny?” she demanded.
“A little,” he lied.
It wasn’t a little funny.
It was hilarious.
Her head cocked dangerously and Axl tried to focus on that rather than her gorgeous curls moving with it.
“It’s funny my mother ambushes our meet-the-boyfriend brunch by making me meet her boyfriend? One she hasn’t mentioned word one about? One she’s been seeing now for three months, again, without mentioning word one. One who carves logs for a living and reeks of pot?”
“I’m seeing you don’t see why she did that, considering she was nervous as fuck, Shiloh was nervous as fuck, and you aren’t taking this too well.”
“He carves logs for a living!” she shrieked.
And Cleo took off.
Apparently, she wasn’t a fan of ranting women.
Axl hooked Hattie by the waist and pulled her to him before he wrapped his other arm around her.
Because, even if he also wasn’t a fan of ranting women, he was a fan of Hattie.
“Babe, chill out,” he urged.
“I cannot believe this,” she said.
“Yeah, I got that message all the way home from Mercury Café.”
“This is unbelievable,” she mostly repeated.
This time he didn’t respond.
“I mean, if this goes somewhere, and they’re clearly into each other, so it’s going somewhere, what kind of provider is he going to be?” she asked preposterously. “I think he was actually high at brunch. I’m not sure it’s a good mix, carving wood, which would, I assume, require sharp instruments, and being stoned.”
“Wait. Did we get thrown back to 1952 and we gotta worry what kind of provider your mom’s boyfriend is gonna be when she’s got a successful cake decorating business that she’s kept successful for nearly twenty years?” he asked.
Dream Spinner (Dream Team Book 3) Page 34