Otterly Scorched

by Tara Sivec

  “Are you okay?” I ask, biting down on the inside of my cheek.

  “I just wanted the cheese, man,” Harley whines, her eyes lighting back up as Nanci reaches over my shoulder to hand her the can of cheese.

  “I’ll just be a minute, and then I’ll take you home to sleep, okay?”

  Harley nods, her head already tipped back and half the can of orange spray cheese filling up her wide-open mouth. I feel safe letting out a little chuckle now that she’s distracted by cheese, when I stand back up and step away again to talk to Nanci.

  It’s nice to know Easy Cheese is not only very effective with distracting dogs, but it’s also very effective with distracting an exceptionally high woman who has been rapping about cheese for the last five minutes.

  “Your dad is trying.”

  The humor falls from my face when Nanci speaks again.

  “Trying to piss me off,” I mutter.

  “Cheese!” Harley shouts from the open car window.

  “He’s trying to understand you better,” she argues, leaning around me to smile and wave at Harley. “That’s right, sweetie, cheese!”

  “I should eat my cheese?”

  “You should eat your cheese!” Nanci encourages Harley.

  I hear the spray of the can, and Nanci focuses on me again.

  “I thought we agreed you were going to quit your bitching and start appreciating what you have, instead of what you lost. That includes your father. I will be the first to admit he doesn’t deserve much when it comes to you, and I’ve told him that on more than one occasion. But everyone deserves at least one second chance to try to do things differently, to do them better,” Nanci explains, stepping closer and pressing her palms to either side of my face.

  It doesn’t have the exact same effect as when the woman behind me squeezing cheese into her mouth did it, but it’s still a comfort all the same.

  “Let’s not forget Harley is giving you a second chance to do things differently with her, and do them better.”

  She raises one eyebrow at me with a little bit of humor and a little bit of scolding.

  “How in the hell do you even know about the first chance?” I ask in shock.

  Nanci scoffs at me, patting one of my cheeks with one of her hands still pressed against it.

  “Did you really think you could keep a secret from me? I’m insulted you think I’m so obtuse. Even if I hadn’t known about the little crush you had on Miss Blake five years ago, you’d have to be blind and a complete idiot not to see that kiss was a looong time coming.”

  Nanci Newhouse is probably one of the only people in the world who can make me blush.

  “That got a little out of hand,” I mumble, staring down at my feet and refusing to look at her when she finally drops her hands from my face.

  “That was just what the doctor ordered,” she argues.

  “It shouldn’t have happened.”

  Each of those four words out of my mouth makes me want to vomit.

  “Nanci!” Harley shouts, making Nanci and I turn back to her again. “I’m sorry I stuck my tongue down Dax’s throat in front of you!”

  Nanci giggles.

  “Although pleasurable, it was very unprofessional of me!” Harley continues yelling, pausing to tip her head back and squirt more cheese in her mouth.

  “Quite all right, dear!” Nanci tells her before looking back at me with a big smile. “Doesn’t sound like Harley thinks it shouldn’t have happened.

  “She’s high as hell and is going to seriously regret this happened when it wears off.” I sigh, moving away from Nanci to walk around the front of the car.

  “Just think about what I said,” she tells me as I pull open Harley’s driver side door. “Everyone deserves a second chance. Enjoy the one you’re getting with this one right now, and try to work on the one with the man back at your otter habitat, who feels like a failure for the first time in his life.”

  Giving her a wave without agreeing to anything, I slide behind the wheel, pulling the door closed and looking over at the woman who has reclined her seat and is now lying back, licking spray cheese off the palm of her hand.

  “Kissing me was pleasurable, was it?” I ask, shifting the car into drive, figuring I might as well enjoy this moment while it lasts.

  “We can do it again, but only if you have more cheese,” Harley informs me, shaking the empty can up by her ear as I pull out of the parking lot and head toward her house.

  While I make the drive, Harley passes out, and I have plenty of quiet time to think about second chances. With my dad, and with the woman talking in her sleep about gouda.

  I think about how sad my dad looked the entire time I yelled at him back in my office, and how he just stood there and took my rage instead of making fun of me and yelling at me right back.

  I think about how much I’ve changed as a man, and the way I think about women and the way I treat them, from the last time Harley knew me.

  I think about how kissing her felt so perfect and so right, like her lips were fucking made to be kissed by me. I think about how her body instantly melted against mine and how she gave me everything I needed and everything I ever wanted in that kiss. I think about the sounds she made when I kissed her and how passionate and trusting and free she was when she kissed me.

  “I will shoot you right in the dick,” Harley mumbles in her sleep, her body curling up into a ball under the seatbelt in the passenger seat.

  Yep. She’s definitely going to murder me when she wakes up and realizes what she’s done under the influence today.

  CHAPTER 14

  Did I Break Him?

  Harley

  My eyes slowly open when I’m roused from sleep by the delicious smell of bacon for the second time since my childhood. I don’t jump out of bed and grab my bat like last time, because I know exactly who is out in my kitchen, making me breakfast after letting me sleep off the most mortifying day of my life.

  Besides, I already jumped out of bed at two in the morning and grabbed my bat in a complete panic after having a dream about being eaten by a giant can of cheese. Just like I normally do when I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, I crept through my house to double-check the doors and windows were all locked.

  Unlike every other time, I dropped my bat in the middle of my living room floor and almost screamed when I walked into the dark room and saw a man sleeping on my futon. When I slowly moved closer, got a better look at him with the glow of the moonlight shining through my living room window, and realized it was Dax, I sunk down onto my knees next to the couch and just stared at him.

  While every single thing I did after I ate those stupid brownies came back to me.

  Feeling the need to wash away all the humiliation, I left Dax sleeping and went back to my bedroom, took off the jean shorts and sweater I was still wearing, and scrubbed away my shame and the last of the pot still swirling around in my system. After that, I threw on a clean T-shirt and a pair of cotton shorts, did about an hour-and-a-half of work until I was tired again, crawled back into bed, and hoped I’d wake up to find out this had all been a dream.

  My stomach growls, and flashbacks of me screaming about being high in front of Mr. Trevino and rapping about cheese while Dax had to practically carry me to the car flashes through my mind, reminding me none of it was a dream.

  Might as well get this over with.

  Sliding out of bed, I grab a hoodie tossed over a chair in the corner of my room, sniffing it to make sure it’s clean before pulling it on over my T-shirt. I make my way out of my room and down the hall in my bare feet, my heart fluttering in my chest when I get to the opening to the kitchen and see Dax. He’s standing at the island, scooping crispy bacon from a pan onto a plate, wearing the same light-gray, long-sleeved, fitted cotton shirt and jeans he had on yesterday.

  The same cotton shirt and jeans I had my body pressed against, rubbing all over him like a ho, in front of his father.

  Except now,
he’s got the sleeves of the shirt pushed up to his elbows while he cooks, and I get another view of the colorful tattoos that cover his forearms.

  I have to wipe the drool off my chin before coming up with something brilliant to say to greet this man after the things he witnessed yesterday.

  “Boy, do I have the munchies.”

  Dax looks up at me when I make a lame attempt at a joke, but he doesn’t smile as he sets the pan down and turns away from me to grab something out of the oven. Which gives me a perfect view of his great ass, wrapped in tight jeans, and—

  Good God, woman, we should really start masturbating more. This is unacceptable.

  “There’s meds on the table for the headache I’m assuming you have, and a bottle of water for the dry mouth,” Dax tells me over his shoulder while he pulls a pan out of the oven.

  He doesn’t make a joke about my behavior yesterday, and he doesn’t even make a cheeky comment about that other mortifying thing I did, which I’ve been holding my breath for.

  This man has been begging me for a date nonstop, always making jokes about me giving in to him, and when I finally do give in to him, not a sarcastic comment to be found. What is going on?

  I walk over to the table where he left a bottle of Tylenol and water, and where he’s already made up the table with the blue placemats, a vase of flowers in the middle, plates, silverware, and glasses.

  I manage to swallow down two pills past the boulder-sized lump in my throat, already growing accustomed to having this man take care of me and not hating it at all.

  “I made eggs benedict, a cheesy potato casserole, bacon, and homemade chocolate chip croissants. Coffee and croissants are on the table with four of your flavored creamers, since I didn’t know which one you’d be in the mood for.”

  Dax speaks to me like he’s a waiter at a restaurant, and I blindly reach over to the table and grab one of the croissants, taking a giant bite out of it while I watch him plate up our food.

  Oh, God, these are amazing. This is what joy would taste like if it had a flavor.

  Stop thinking about food! Dax is being weird.

  “Your dad called about a half hour ago. Don’t worry; it wasn’t an emergency.” Dax glances up long enough from pouring hollandaise sauce over the poached eggs to see my worried expression and reassure me before going back to what he was doing and finishing his explanation. I finish off the buttery, flaky, chocolate chip croissant, hoping the sugar will help me figure out what the hell is wrong with him.

  “Another postcard came to your dad’s while we were at… you know… The Backyard. I tried to get him to take a picture with his phone and send it to me, but that was like trying to teach someone the Laws of Physics.” Dax clears his throat and is suddenly really interested in using a towel to get all the sauce that dripped off the edges of our plates, like he’s on a cooking reality show about to be judged.

  Instead of including a smirking comment about what happened at The Backyard, he just stops talking and won’t look at me. And he was all weirded out even saying the words “The Backyard,” like he didn’t want to think about what happened there.

  Oh, God. Did I break him? Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about that other mortifying thing I did there, because he’s also mortified by that other thing I did there.

  Maybe he’s finally realized me and my ridiculous family really are not worth it. Maybe he’s already tired of cleaning up our messes, although he doesn’t seem to be tiring of cooking for me anytime soon, so that’s got to be a good sign. But he could just be cooking for me to butter me up before he tells me he changed his mind. I’m making his life worse instead of better, just like I knew I would, and it’s not like I’ve found his otters to make myself in any way appealing.

  “I got up in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep,” I tell him, leaving out the part of all the tears I cried in the shower when I remembered Dax watched me lick cheese off my palm. “I grabbed the postcards from my car and feel like an idiot I didn’t realize when I first looked at them that they weren’t both addressed to Claws and Effect, and one was sent to you at The Backyard. I sent a list of your employees to my private investigator, and he’s going to see if anyone has any family members in Texas or Virginia Beach then widen his search if he doesn’t find anything to anyone local who’s traveled to either of those places recently. I finished talking to the delivery drivers and vets who were at The Backyard the week Chris and Lincoln went missing, and they all have solid alibies.”

  I’m rambling and slowly walking around the island and closer to Dax, wanting him to know that just because my life is a shit-show, it doesn’t mean I’m not doing everything possible to find his babies in between all the craziness. This is what my life is always like, and I always get the job done.

  He doesn’t interrupt me, but he does finally stop trying to find things to do on the counter to avoid looking at me, so I just keep word-vomiting as he stares at me.

  “Volunteers are still going door-to-door, and we’ve gotten a few good tips from the dedicated phone line we set up that I have people following up on. And I have another call scheduled for later today with my guy who keeps an eye on black market animal sales, and by this afternoon, I should have—”

  “Hey,” Dax interrupts softly, setting down the towel he had picked back up to wipe off the edges of our plates again, turning to face me when I get a foot away from him. “You don’t have to explain everything; I trust you. I know you’re working your ass off to find Chris and Lincoln.”

  Say something about my ass. Say something about my ass!

  “You ready to eat before this gets cold?” Dax looks away from me and down at the food on the island, and one smart, tiny little brain cell that is still alive and gasping for air, starts wheezing at me that maybe Dax is acting all weird, because I haven’t brought up that other thing yet either. I’m acting like it didn’t even happen.

  Just like I did five years ago.

  He wasn’t happy I blew him off back then, pretending like our night at McCallahan’s never happened, and we barely even knew each other. Now, we know each other. And now, I’ve kissed him, which is a pretty big fucking deal. And I’m talking about having the munchies and rambling about his otters, and although the otters are very important, they might need to take a backseat for just one second to deal with this monumental thing that happened, that I am actually not mortified about in the least.

  That kiss was the only bright and shining moment out of all the decisions I made yesterday. But he doesn’t know that. He probably thinks I forgot, what with my cheese brain and the shouting about my missing legs.

  Pretending like I still have the power of the pot brownie floating through me and giving me courage, I decide to behave like an adult, instead of worrying about what ifs, never actually talking about things that are important, and dragging this out much longer than necessary. I think five years is long enough to drag something out.

  I take that final step between us, reach up, and grab Dax’s face in my hands, turning it toward me and pulling his mouth down to mine. I repeat yesterday’s performance, minus the stumbling and earth tilting, and a lot gentler.

  His lips feel just as soft and perfect as they did yesterday, and just like then, I completely forget where I am and lose myself in kissing him. I whimper into his mouth when his big, solid arms wrap around me, pulling my body flush against his. When he does that sucking and nibbling thing on my top lip, my hands leave his face to grab onto fistfuls of his hair, while Dax pulls me up rougher against his body until my toes leave the ground.

  So much for gentle.

  Both of us deepen the kiss, and when I hook one of my ankles around the back of his leg and start moving it up, he suddenly pulls his mouth away from mine to look down at me, making me let out a whimper at the loss.

  His arms are still wrapped tightly around me. I’m smushed so firmly against him I can feel his heart pounding in his chest against mine, and my hands are still clutching onto handful
s of his hair on the back of his head. Our lips are centimeters apart, and I just want to pull him back to me and continue what we were doing.

  “Are you still high?” Dax asks, a sudden worried expression replacing the heat in his eyes while he looks down at me.

  I ease up on the hold I have on his hair, clasping my hands together behind his head instead, while I enjoy every second of being in this man’s arms.

  “As God is my witness, I will never be high again.” I shudder, the first hint of a smile finally showing up on Dax’s face since I walked in the kitchen. “Seriously, man. You let me eat an entire can of spray cheese.”

  “Harley?” Dax asks, running his palms up and down my spine until I shiver against him. “I’m saying this is the nicest possible way, but will you just shut up and go on a fucking date with me already?”

  “God, you could ask a little nicer,” I complain, which gets me a swat on the ass from the man whose hands are now resting on my hips.

  The last man who smacked my ass ended up with a fractured wrist. He was also a loser who was trying to sell a tiger illegally and missing half his teeth. He wasn’t a hot-as-hell man who makes my toes curl when we kiss, but still, I’m really making great strides already in this whole dating thing.

  “Fine. But just so you know, I agreed to date you yesterday morning before I kissed you. You’re just lucky you don’t suck at it, and I didn’t change my mind.”

  I can visibly see his shoulders relax and my favorite sparkle come back to his eyes, and I realize that one tiny leftover brain cell was absolutely right. He thought I’d forget about the kiss or pretend like it never happened, and he was nervous when I woke up and came out here.

  Since I’ve suddenly become in touch with my feelings, I lean forward and press my lips to his again, just to soothe a little of the hurt and worry I probably caused him.

  “What if you would have sucked at it?” Dax jokes when I pull away from his mouth, and I move out of his arms.

  Balling up my fist, I punch him in the arm before grabbing my plate of food.