Wood U (Carved Hearts #4)

by L. G. Pace III

  When I found him still in bed with me the following morning, I knew it was time to head home. We’d broken the seal, and I wasn’t sure I could control myself if I stayed. Even thought I’d said I was worried about confusing M.J., I was the one who was confused. I wasn’t used to the intimacy, and it scared the hell out of me.

  I’d caught Mac watching Junior and me several times during my brief stay, and his gloomy expression on every one of those occasions gave me a complex. He didn’t seem comfortable with me mixing with his son, and the whole situation had me off balance. It just added to the list of reasons pushing me to take the first opportunity I could to get back to my place. I stripped his bed and loaded the sheets into the washer before I left and left M.J. a note saying we’d read together again sometime soon. I wasn’t surprised when my phone rang shortly after I got home.

  “Hey, Mac.”

  “Hey,” Mac said. “I just got home. I couldn’t help but notice that you aren’t here. What’s going on?” His tone was light, but I could hear the slight catch in his words.

  “It was time. After last night…besides, I need to learn to get back into my routine. I have a ton of laundry to do, and I there is something rancid in the back of my fridge. I may have to shoot it before I clean it out.” I was proud of how normal my excuses sounded. Mac hesitated for a second, and when he replied, his good humor sounded a bit forced.

  “Oh…well, okay, Sugar. Let me know if you need anything. And take it easy on that leg.”

  “I will. Good night, Mac.”

  I wasn’t happy, but I was a lot more relaxed. It was too frustrating to be in the same house with Mac and turn him away night after night. Back on my turf, I was able to take a much-needed deep breath. I told myself it was for my own good and plunged back into my life. As it turns out, going up and down the stairs on crutches wasn’t really all that difficult.

  Mac showed up at my door after he finished work on Friday night. He seemed as glad to see me as always, and we were all over each other before he could even close the door. We spent the night entangled on my couch, playing movies we didn’t really watch and ordering take out we barely touched. It was imperfectly perfect, and I wouldn’t have changed a single detail.

  He hadn’t planned to stay the night. He never did. Since I’d moved into Joe’s old place, we saved all overnight stays for his place. Other than his biting exchange with my dad when I hurt my ankle, Mac and I always tried to be respectful of Francis’s feelings.

  When Mac woke me with kisses the following morning, his amused chuckles had me arching an eyebrow.

  “How the hell are you so chipper without coffee?” I demanded, slightly horrified to find him still at my place.

  “I grabbed the morning paper,” he replied, crushing me against my mattress with his delicious weight. “Let’s just say you aren’t the only one who had an overnight guest.”

  Turns out my father had no qualms about having his girlfriend stay over. Rather than let it annoy me, I took it as carte blanche to do as I pleased.

  Days later, I had my two-week check-up, and the doctor told me I could ditch the crutches in favor of a walking boot. I nearly hugged him. I’d been trying to do a little Pilates, but it just wasn’t enough for me. I needed my runner’s high. The walking boot took me one step closer to running again, and I missed it like crazy.

  Molly’s bachelorette party was that very night, and I’d been afraid I’d miss it. Weaving though the drunks of Sixth Street on crutches had held no appeal. Now that I was more mobile I could join in the fun. After my appointment, I drove straight home and hurried to get ready. Any party involving Molly and her friends was bound to make for good people watching, and I was stir crazy from my recent incapacitation.

  I wasn’t disappointed. Molly’s friend, Dan, had rented a giant party bus complete with a stripper pole that Robin was swinging around when I came on board. I got to meet Mac’s cousins, two very friendly ladies who were obviously there to have a good time. They were leading the group on downing shots before we even got to the first bar.

  Molly’s bar-top dancing nearly incited a riot at Coyote Ugly, the first stop on our night of debauchery. We got away without a scratch but ended up with some random guy tagging along with us on the bus. Robin and Tamryn taunted Molly into doing a body shot with him, which Robin snapped a shot of with her camera phone.

  “Wait till Joe sees this!” Robin crowed, and I immediately tried to take her phone away.

  “Robin, don’t!” I exclaimed, but she pulled her phone back just before I could snag it. “That’s a shitty thing to do to somebody.”

  She rolled her eyes, and no matter how I pleaded with her, she wouldn’t listen to reason. Furious at her behavior, I decided it was time to go sit on the other side of the bus. I was still a little raw about the whole social media topic, and I didn’t want to say anything to permanently sour things with Robin. I ended up hanging out with Dan and Jay, who weren’t speaking to one another, as I had learned at the baby shower was their usual.

  A couple of bars later, Robin took the seat beside me. She seemed a lot more sober somehow, and she ordered a large coffee.

  “I’m sorry, Kelly. I’m having a rough night.” Her eyes were brimming with tears. “The way I acted before is embarrassing. I just wanted you to know that I deleted the pictures.”

  “I’m sorry, too. I overreacted.” I replied.

  “What are y’all whispering about?” Molly asked.

  I explained to Robin and Molly what had happened with Paula and Instagram, and they both had a few curse words to say about the secretary. Feeling a pretty good buzz, I was starting to finally relax when some rough-looking woman with a botched bottled job approached our table.

  “Have you met Mac’s ex, Patty?” Robin asked, clearly overcome with excitement.

  “No. And I’m pretty sure I don’t want to,” I replied. Mac had said virtually nothing about his ex-wife, but M.J. had mentioned how he wished his mommy had the time to read to him like I did. Between that comment and the stuff she’d said to Jane about her teaching, I wanted nothing to do with Patty.

  “That’s her.” Robin nodded to the peroxided woman. “Check out what you have to live up to.”

  The fake boobs were in character for Mac, but otherwise I had a hard time imagining his being attracted to the woman I saw before me. There was a hint of past beauty, but it had been chipped away by the harsh hands of time and other rough elements. Patty was incredibly loud as she hugged Molly up against her silicon-filled chest. Molly’s eyes bulged, and they shot to me.

  “Robin! Lookin’ good!” Mac’s ex boomed as she turned her bloodshot eyes in our direction.

  “Yeah, whatever,” Robin deadpanned, accepting a Diet Coke from the waitress.

  “Well, you don’t have to be rude,” the disproportional barfly exclaimed. I noticed people were looking at us because of her echoing voice.

  “Patty, have you met Mac’s new girlfriend, Kelly?” Robin asked, clearly eager to start a fight. I wanted to melt into the floor. “Kelly, say hello to what you have to live up to!”

  Junior’s mom’s eyes narrowed on me like a platinum-haired piranha. “How ya doin’, sweetie? Enjoying my sloppy seconds?”

  “Oh no, she didn’t!” Dan gasped.

  Turning away as if she hadn’t just verbally assaulted me, Patty introduced Molly to a bedraggled older man, who she stated was her boyfriend. With an uncomfortable nod, the man pointedly moved away.

  The thought of this wretched woman in bed with Mac had me shaking. My head throbbed as I thought about her neglecting M.J.’s baths and picking fights with Mac and his teachers like she was on some daytime talk show. I was on my feet and moving over toward her before I even realized it. As I approached, Patty made lewd suggestions about Joe, and Molly looked upset.

  “What the fuck did she just say?” Joe’s sister looked like she was about to jump across the table and claw Patty’s eyes out. I stepped between them and put myself directly in Patty�
��s face. Her breath smelled of rancid cigarettes and cheap booze.

  “To answer your question, Mac and I are doing just fine. It may take years, but I’m sure I can undo the damage he experienced by being with you. Obviously your poor self-image makes you lash out at everyone around you while you pursue your self-destructive lifestyle. When you’re around your own friends, if you have any, feel free to be as crass and rude as you like. But when you’re around my friends, you’ll watch what you say.”

  Patty’s bleary, bloodshot eyes slowly came to rest on me.

  “Bitch? Are you trying to talk shit to me? Why I have half a mind to—”

  “I seriously doubt you even have half a mind,” I snapped, barely holding onto the fury building inside me. Jay and Dan both tittered in unison. “Now I suggest you abandon this attempt at a battle of wits since you’re obviously unarmed. Your best option is to skulk out of here and hurry back to your rotting double-wide down by the toxic waste dump.”

  I saw fire in her for just an instant, but it was fleeting. Seconds later, she began bawling like a child. Luckily, her boyfriend came over and collected her, shooting us a look of apology as dragged her away.

  Molly stood there staring at me while the two gay men cackled like the witches in Macbeth.

  “Wonder-bitch powers activate!” Jay crowed.

  “Form of...an ugly truth,” Dan said jovially.

  “Ugly is right,” Jay replied. The two of them grinned at each other as Stacy enveloped me in a huge hug.

  “That was amazing,” Stacy gushed. “That woman made my life hell for a few weeks. She’s pure evil.”

  Glancing at Molly, I felt a swell of regret. This was her party, and here I was causing a huge scene.

  “Molly, I’m sorry…” She interrupted me, pulling me into a hug.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for, Kelly,” Molly slurred, her pretty blue eyes misty. “She’s a horrible human being, and the sooner Mac takes M.J. away from her sorry ass, the better.”

  “Preach!” Dan agreed, leading us out of the bar and onto the party bus once more. I wanted to question Molly’s extreme statement, but we were in such a scramble to get seated, I didn’t have the chance.

  We filed into the next bar, which was far more intimate and quiet. We’d just settled in when another horrible blonde approached our table. Unlike Patty, this woman oozed money and grooming, but she had the same vicious look in her eyes, only hers were trained exclusively on Molly.

  “Who the hell is that?” I asked Robin, and for the first time since I’d known her, she looked off-kilter.

  “Bethany,” she whispered, as if she were seeing a ghost.

  I watched in horror as this Bethany person lit into Molly, saying she’d trapped Joe by getting pregnant with the twins. The crushed expression on Molly’s face infuriated me, and I opened my mouth to repeat my previous performance when Joe’s sister, Tamryn, jumped in and verbally annihilated the woman.

  Bethany stumbled away, and Molly’s friend Jay chased after her, looking like he was going to push her into traffic.

  Molly fled the table in the direction of the restrooms, and Tamryn went after her.

  “Who’s Bethany?” I demanded, slamming my pint down on the table a little too hard.

  “She was Joe’s first wife’s maid of honor,” Robin replied with a frown, getting up from the table and following Molly’s old high school friend Lisa outside of the bar.

  “Joe was married before?” I blinked around at my remaining table-mates.

  “Yep,” Dan sighed heavily. “Molly and Joe both were.”

  “Really?” I was stunned. My stomach sank when I realized that Mac had chosen not to mention any of this to me.

  “Joe’s a widower,” Dan explained, a pained expression crossing his suntanned features. He lifted his wineglass to his lips as if to wash away the wretched information he’d just relayed. “Molly’s ex-husband is a complete lunatic. He’s in prison for stalking and terrorizing her.”

  “Oh…my God.” I pushed my drink away, feeling nauseated. I tucked my hair behind my ears and rubbed my temples on impulse. This information seemed like the kind of thing that would come up in conversation, so I had to assume Mac had chosen not to tell me. I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Worse, when I really thought about it, I didn’t know much of anything about him, other than that he loved The Cowboys and could inexplicably dance like he belonged on Magic Mike. We hadn’t even talked about his marriage or its demise, and I wondered if that was by design. I now knew more about Molly’s failed marriage than I did about Mac’s, and I was sleeping with him.

  The more I turned things over in my head, the more I decided I wasn’t satisfied with just being a playdate anymore. I loved what Mac and I had, but it just wasn’t enough for me. Sometime in the past few weeks something had shifted with the two of us…or maybe just with me.

  MY PLAN TO ask Kelly to move in with me failed when she got hurt. My back-up plan (letting her come to the conclusion she needed to be with us on her own) dissolved while I was helping two of my interns make an entertainment center out of an old chest of drawers. By the time I got home, she’d scooped up all her gear and was gone. I mean all of her gear; the girl didn’t leave so much as a hair tie or a tube of Chapstick behind. She’d even washed the sheets. It was as if she’d used an X-Acto knife to excise all evidence that she’d ever even been in my place.

  I got a little panicky when I saw the lengths that she’d gone to, and I called her to check that nothing was wrong. While I waited for her to answer, I prepared myself once more to get the dreaded “talk”. When she picked up, she sounded like her normal, angelic self, and it was like the weight of the world had fallen off of my shoulders. Still, no amount of sweet-talking on my part would convince her to change her mind and come back over. She didn’t want M.J. getting the wrong idea, though any idea M.J. got would be the right idea as far as I was concerned. I wasn’t sure how to say this to Kelly, or even if I should. She clearly wasn’t where I was with things, but the fact that she worried so much about my boy just made her that much more attractive to me.

  We were good, but I wanted to take things up a notch to great. I considered having a “talk” of my own with her, but I needed time to think. It was during my “thinking time” that Kelly ran into Patricia at Molly’s bachelorette party, and I realized just how complicated that “talk” of ours was going to be.

  Robin texted me right after the incident and gave me a blow-by blow of what was said. I was dialing Kelly’s number when Robin came back with a second text saying that Kelly came off like a Mamma Bear, and handled Patty “like a boss.” Joe, Mason, and I were already en route to intercept the party bus, since Joe was rampaging all over Dirty Sixth thanks to fucking Facebook. When we caught up with them and climbed on the bus, Kelly grabbed hold of me the second she saw me and refused to let go. Life was good. At least it was with Kelly.

  I was furious when I found out how Patricia had acted. Then there was the fact that she had dumped M.J. off with my mom when she was supposed to have him. Again. M.J. was always happy to spend time with grandma, but that wasn’t the point. I wasn’t letting the way Patty talked to Kelly blow over. As far as I was concerned, Kelly wasn’t going anywhere, and Patty needed to get used to that idea.

  Kelly had a few surprises up her sleeve the next night she stayed over. We were cuddling on my couch munching on popcorn, when she dropped a bomb of a question.

  “Mac?” Her voice was soft and unusually quiet.

  “Yeah, Sugar?” I glanced at her and then back to the TV.

  She paused. “Why did you and Patty split up?”

  “Religious reasons,” I replied, continuing to flip through the channels on the television. “I was raised Methodist, and she’s the devil.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her lip twitch, but she grabbed me by the jaw and turned my face in her direction. “I’m serious.”

  “So am I,” I replied with a rakish smile. “Didn’t you noti
ce the horns and cloven feet when you met her?”

  Kelly sighed, and pursed her lips. She was on her feet before I knew what hit me. “I think I’m gonna go…”

  “No!” My eyes flew wide, and I tossed the popcorn and remote aside and pulled her onto my lap. “I’m just playin’. Don’t go.”

  “I need you to talk to me, Mac.” She batted those long eyelashes at me, and I was done for. I took a deep breath and shifted her onto the couch next to me. Turning to face her, I bit the inside of my lip.

  “I caught her cheating,” I admitted, and a clear image of that moment flashed before my eyes. I shook my head, as if to hit a reset button in my brain. “But we were in trouble long before that. Shit, we were in trouble before we eloped. I’d have walked away long before I did, but she was pregnant with M.J., and there was no way I was leaving him.”

  I gave her the broad strokes. Patty’s infidelity. Suddenly being faced with raising a boy on my own. Patty’s attempts to get back together. The complete impossibility of it. Robin helping with the baby and how Patty and I had eventually worked out a divorce agreement. Soon, I realized I had told Kelly more about the hot mess that had been Patty and I than I had ever told anyone. I even told her about how I caught Patty drinking when she was pregnant with M.J. and how she’d threatened to get rid of him more than once. How every day when I left for work, I worried I’d get home and find out that she’d aborted him.

  I managed to zip my trap before revealing the more embarrassing incidents of the recent past. Those left me too angry, and I was worried Kelly would run for the hills if she really got a good look at the baggage I came with.

  Kelly was incredibly patient throughout the conversation. She stroked my back, held my hand, encouraged me to feel safe…and to say it all. What could have easily been the most awkward experience of my life actually felt cathartic. She didn’t say much in response, but she somehow made me feel okay with talking about it all.