“We’re waiting for the birds.”
Amy followed Paisley’s gaze, and saw the red cylindrical bird feeder hanging from a low hanging branch. It didn’t look like other birdhouses she’d seen.
“When did Mike get that?” she asked.
“After the parrot came to class.”
Amy’s brows lifted. The girls had talked incessantly about getting a bird after that visit.
“I saw one earlier.” Paisley was being very still.
“Where did it go?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Mike says you just have to be patient and hope it comes back.”
“Okay,” said Amy. “I missed you, Pais.”
Paisley cuddled deeper into her side.
They sat for several minutes, the purple sky turning black with night. Amy combed back Paisley’s hair with her fingertips, and willed a bird to show up, just so her daughter wouldn’t be disappointed.
Just when she was about to give up, Paisley said, “There!”
It was a blue and red hummingbird, her wings fluttering so fast, you could barely see them beyond her fragile little body. She drank from the bird feeder while Amy and Paisley watched in wonder, and then disappeared as quickly as she’d come.
***
By the time Mike came home, Amy had both the girls in bed. She was waiting in the kitchen when he came through the garage door, still in his workout clothes from his class at the YMCA.
“Jesus, Amy,” he said harshly when he saw her. Crossing the floor, he wrapped her up in a hard hug—so hard she could barely breathe. His heart was pounding; she could feel it through his chest. She hadn’t even considered that he would worry about her, and she felt awful for it.
“I’m sorry I missed your class, I...”
He set her down. “You can’t do that again.”
She straightened. “I left you a note.”
“That didn’t say jack.” His voice was a whisper, but with the force of a shout. She could feel the anger now, filling the kitchen like a swelling balloon. She took a step back as if to get out of its way.
“It said I’d see you back here.”
“When?” he asked rhetorically. “Later isn’t a time. I came home, and you weren’t here. I called and you didn’t answer.”
“My cell’s battery died.”
“It doesn’t get to die.”
Was he really going to tell an inanimate object what it could or couldn’t do? She felt her lips pull into a tight line as she crossed her arms in a shield over her chest.
“Where were you?” he demanded.
If she had a button, he’d just pushed it. The tone of her voice made her unwilling to answer. His temper was contagious. She could feel it tensing her muscles, narrowing her gaze. He didn’t get to corner her like this. She hadn’t done anything wrong.
“None of your business,” she said.
His teeth flashed.
“I drove all the way to your work, on every side road I thought you might take. I called Anna. I called the cops. You can’t just disappear and not tell anyone where you’re going.”
“I can,” she said, straining to keep her voice low so as not to disturb the girls. “I’m a fucking adult, and if I want to take an hour to myself when I know my child is safe, I get to.”
He looked up, hands clasped behind his neck.
“That’s not what I meant...”
“That’s exactly what you meant,” she said, louder, the burn flashing through her. “I’ve had one man telling me what I can and can’t do, I won’t have another.”
Mike’s eyes flashed to hers, shining just for a moment with an anger that had her jerking back.
He inhaled slowly, then leaned closer. This time, she held her ground, though she could feel her insides vibrating.
“Do I look like him, Amy?”
Him.
Danny was lean, with messy, strawberry blond hair and a quick smile. She’d thought him handsome once, but that was before things had turned bad. It was hard to see the beauty in someone when they hated you.
She didn’t have to tell Mike he didn’t.
“Have I ever hurt you?”
The comparison was making her ill.
“You don’t trust me,” she said.
He made a strangled noise in his throat.
“Do you trust me?”
Her jaw snapped shut. If she had, she would have told him about the worries that had needled her since Danny had resurfaced in her life.
“You just told me I need to report everywhere I go,” she said, shaking her head. “Doesn’t that sound a little controlling to you?”
“You were almost killed,” he said between his teeth.
“You don’t think I remember that?” she countered. “Every single day I remember that. I thought I might never see my daughter again.” She closed her eyes, reliving that night with perfect clarity. How the man she was dating had whispered in her ear that her little girl would be hurt if Amy didn’t do exactly what he said.
“Jonathan Marshall went away,” said Amy. “That’s over.”
“It’s never over,” Mike argued. “One asshole’s in jail but there are a thousand more just like him. You might as well have a target on your back.”
Her stomach tightened, as if he’d just punched her in the gut.
“What the hell does that mean?”
He stared at her incredulously, as if the answer was so obvious you could see it.
“It means people look at you, all the time, wherever you go. You’re interesting, and good. And you’ll be preyed on because of it.”
“I can defend myself.” She shouldn’t have had to tell him that. He’d taught her how to do it.
“And if you run out of gas in some shady place? Or lose control of your car? Or get hit by a fucking drunk driver?”
He threw up his hands and turned away.
She froze.
“Mike.” She could barely speak his name over the lump in her throat. In a matter of seconds the temperature of the room had changed. It was cool now, and laced with pain.
“Do whatever you want. I can’t stop you.” He snatched his keys off the counter. “I’m late to for a midterm. Are you going to be here?”
She wanted to tell him not to go. That they needed to talk. That she wasn’t his ex-wife, and regardless, there were some terrible, ugly things in this world you couldn’t prevent.
But she didn’t say any of it, because she’d just accused him of being Danny.
“I’ll be here,” she said.
He left without looking back.
***
She stood there, alone in the kitchen for some time before she could move. The night’s events flipped through her mind, the anger and hurt still keeping her senses sharp.
She’d fought with Mike—really fought with him—and calming him down hadn’t once entered her mind. Him raising his hands against her was the last thing she could have imagined. She’d stood her ground and fired back and even if she felt raw, there was a small pride in that victory.
There was relief as well, in the fact that he’d left his child, his heart, here with her, even while they were unsteady.
Her gaze turned to the fridge, finding that the thought of food made her stomach churn. The picture in the top left corner drew her attention. Chloe and her mother. Denise, Mike had called her. Killed by a drunk driver. Amy was suddenly filled with so much sadness she sagged against the counter. Working through what Danny had done to her was one thing, but the senseless loss of someone you loved was another thing entirely. She ached for Mike, and hated that in the time she’d been gone, Mike had worried the same fate had come to her.
She wasn’t sure, given his position, she would have acted any differently than he had.
But that didn’t mean he could try to control her.
Scrubbing her hands over her face, she went to where her phone was plugged into the wall and sent a quick text to Anna telling her she was at Mike’s and all right. Misc
ommunication, she said. Anna responded Good in less than thirty seconds. You scared the hell out of him.
That didn’t make her feel any better.
The pictures of his smiling face stared at her from the fridge. One of his shirts hung over the back of a kitchen chair. Upstairs, she would lie in his bed, surrounded by his things, and smell him on the pillow. This house breathed him; his laughter, his anger, the gentle feel of his hands on her body. She missed him, even now.
Her phone buzzed, and despite her earlier fury, she scrambled toward her purse to dig it out. She wasn’t sure what she would say, but just to know he was there would have settled her.
But it wasn’t him. It was her mother.
She couldn’t handle her mother right then, even if she was starting to feel guilty for skipping out on her calls.
Pressing the call through to voicemail, she fished the number out of her wallet for the fraud protection division. They still hadn’t called her back and she felt like a dog going after a bone.
Pacing around the kitchen, she worked her way through approximately four hundred automated prompts before she finally got a real live person. He didn’t have a clue what was going on, and she was forwarded to a woman, who asked to hear the entire story from the beginning before telling her exactly what she didn’t want to hear.
“We can’t replace your money.”
“You have to,” said Amy. “This is fraud. There’s either been some kind of bank error, or someone stole that money.”
“Ma’am.” The woman’s lack of empathy made Amy want to shake the phone as if it was her neck. “We have it on record that you made those withdrawals.”
“It wasn’t me,” said Amy. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“Maybe you don’t remember?” asked the woman.
Amy stopped pacing and planted one hand on her hip. “Are you suggesting that I was under hypnosis? Because I can assure you, I don’t drink and bank.”
“That’s not...”
“My ex-husband, Daniel, we have the same last name. You’re sure he hasn’t been making withdrawals?”
“Would he have access to your debit card?”
Was this woman the world’s biggest idiot?
“No,” Amy said slowly. “Hence the ex in ex-husband.” She took a breath. “How can more than $5,000 disappear and you do nothing?”
A pause.
“Ms. Elgin, I see that while the withdrawals were made at a supermarket, some of the transfers from your savings account were made at an ATM. I can see if we can get the video feed pulled from those machines.”
She wanted to scream, why didn’t you say so?
“Okay,” she said. “Can you call me as soon as you’ve done that.”
“It will take a few days for the request to go through.”
“Of course.” And after a curt goodbye, Amy hung up, fighting the urge to scream. She couldn’t afford to lose money. She was the sole provider for a little girl, working a job that wasn’t exactly going to fund a BMW.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she said aloud, sinking into a kitchen chair. It was one thing if she couldn’t afford summer camp. It was another entirely if she couldn’t put food on the table.
It wasn’t that bad, she reminded herself. The bank had frozen all her old cards. And she still had a cushion.
Just about $3,000. Which Danny had provided.
She hated needing that money.
For the hundredth time in the last two weeks, she considered withdrawing everything she had left in the morning and stuffing it into her mattress. She made lists off all the things she could cut down on spending. She considered that maybe she was crazy, and she had withdrawn money without even knowing it. She bit her thumbnails down to the nubs, until one started to bleed.
It had been a long time since she’d felt like this. Scared, and unclear, and out of control. It felt like the latter half of her marriage to Danny.
He couldn’t have done this. He wasn’t even that technologically inclined unless it came to guitar amps. Not all bad things that happened were because of her ex.
Tomorrow she would right this. She’d change her account numbers again. She’d call the fraud division and talk to someone else. She would get through this, just like everything else.
She went upstairs and checked on the girls, standing outside their room for long minutes while she listened to them breathe. And then she checked all the doors, and all the windows on the bottom floor. There was a car down the street parked in front of one of the neighbors’ houses. She stared at it for a long while, the dark, unclear shape of it in the night adding to her unease. When she opened the door she could hear the motor humming, but the car wasn’t moving. It reminded her of the car she’d seen outside Walgreens the afternoon before she went out with Mike.
It was just paranoia. Her mommy intuition was cranked up a little too high. Cat Lady just had a friend over for a cat date, that was all. Nothing out of the ordinary.
But just in case it was something more, she went to get her phone, telling herself she’d snap a quick picture of the license plate, or even call the police, but when she came back, the car was gone.
“Good,” she said aloud. But its absence didn’t comfort her.
She finally sat on the couch—the one nearest to the locked front door—and took out her craft supplies. Finishing Anna’s crown and sash forced her thoughts on tomorrow night’s bachelorette party. Anna hadn’t wanted anything big, so Amy was taking her dancing. Well, she and Marcos. Picturing Anna’s policeman friend getting down in one of the clubs in Ybor City was like trying to picture one of the girls’ cartoon princesses in a horror movie. The two just didn’t mesh.
Which meant it was going to be fun to watch. Like, social experiment fun.
Before long, her eyelids had grown heavy.
In her dreams, Danny came into her apartment. He brought flowers—cheap daisies, like he always did when he’d said or done something bad—and smiled like a snake. Touching her face with ice-cold fingers, he told her he missed her, and he was sorry, and they belonged together.
He leaned in for a kiss, and over his shoulder she saw Paisley, watching her with round eyes, clutching Mr. Jenkins the teddy bear against her chest.
***
“Amy.” Someone said her name. She focused on the voice. Low and steady. Warm and safe.
She woke with a start, hairline damp, breath scraping her throat.
She was in the bedroom, lying beneath the covers on Mike’s bed. She didn’t know what time it was, or how she’d gotten here, and as the dream slipped away, she couldn’t even remember why she had a sinking feeling in her stomach.
The mattress creaked as he sat beside her, and combed her hair back from her face with his fingertips. She could barely see him, but his presence seemed to take over the entire room, until the air she breathed was rich with spices and her heart was filled with peace.
She crawled into his lap, bare legs hanging over his thighs, and pulled him closer. His arms came around her, strong and protective.
“I’m not used to someone besides Paisley caring whether I come or go,” she said.
“I’m not used to caring if someone else comes and goes,” he answered.
It wasn’t an apology on either side, but it felt like one.
She kissed him. Just a whisper of truth in a night of confusion. Then she pushed off his lap, and walked to the door, closing it softly behind her. She clicked the lock, knowing the girls would knock or holler if they found it shut.
For a moment, there was nothing but the hum of the air conditioner. Then it clicked off, leaving only the sound of Amy’s heartbeat pounding in her ears.
“I went to your class but I couldn’t go in,” she confessed. “I couldn’t stand the thought of you looking at me like a victim, even if it was just pretend. I had to leave.”
His head tilted. “You are many things, but not a victim.”
She could barely see him; the moonlit shadows coming from
the space between the curtains lit his silhouette, and gave a soft glow to his white undershirt. He was as perfect in the night as he was in color. A beautiful, bold shape of muscle and smooth skin. A safe haven that drew her closer with his rounded shoulders and unfurled palms. She didn’t need to see his gaze to know it was on her. She could feel it, heavy as a real touch, threading through her hair, gliding over her breasts, slipping between her thighs.
Because the light was behind him, she was exposed, more visible to him than he was to her. Slowly, she slid her little jersey shorts down her legs, and then pulled her T-shirt off over her head.
She let him look, unafraid of how exposed, and raw, and vulnerable she felt. In those moments, he saw all of her. Her body, her soul. He knew some of her ugliest secrets and wasn’t afraid of the baggage she carried. Most of the men she’d dated since her divorce hadn’t even known she’d had a kid, and those who found out, bowed out quickly. But here he was a man who had lived his own late nights and early mornings, managed temper tantrums and food being slung across the walls, survived the grief of losing a spouse. He knew she was a mom, but treated her like a woman, and it didn’t matter if her hair was partially held in place by peanut butter and/or syrup, she felt radiant.
She wanted to say something, anything, to him, but her throat was too tight. She covered her chest, then uncovered it, forcing her hands down at her sides. She could see his shoulders moving now, rising with each breath. His palms were no longer open; he gripped his knees. The flex of his arms whipped desire through her.
“Amy,” he murmured.
Swallowing her insecurities, she moved toward him, aware of her feet rolling on the soft carpet, and the cool air on her bare breasts, and the way her nipples tightened, and ached, just as that place between her thighs ached. Her tender skin was already wet, a sensation that still surprised her. With Mike, she was always wanting.
She crossed in front of him, and stepped between his knees. Her heart throbbed as his hands slipped lightly around her calves. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and then pulled his shirt over his head. He didn’t fight her; he shuddered, and brought his mouth close enough to her breast that she could feel his breath on her skin.
Her fingers trailed over his back, over the rough marks and the large round compass between his shoulder blades. His muscles jumped beneath her touch, as if it hurt him. She drew back at once, fearful that she’d done something wrong, or worse, that her touch wasn’t as safe or comforting to him as his was to her. The thought was abhorrent, and she refused to accept it. Gritting her teeth, she made her hands feather soft as she felt the scars from the tattoos.
More: A Body Work Novel (The Body Work Trilogy Book 4) Page 19