by Falon Gold
“Damn skippy!” I agreed, earning myself another one of his chuckles. “Besides, I’m pretty sure you’d get her ring size wrong.”
“Damn skippy!” he mimicked, and we both laughed.
“Seriously though, Hayden, I just want to know that she’s okay. You may not believe me, but I know I’m the reason Anna’s not coming around anymore. It’s no coincidence that the night I showed up in her life, she ghosted from Kay’s. It had to be something I said or did that rubbed her the wrong way. Regardless, I fucked up somewhere and if Anna’s easily discombobulated just saying her mother’s name, that mean she’s a sensitive person who uses her abrasiveness as armor. You can’t hit what you can’t reach.”
“And she wields that armor well, Roland,” he said dryly, “until someone or something finds a chink in it. If anything, that’s what you’ve done.”
I hoped I’d broken through her barrier. “If that’s the case, it was by sheer dumb luck. I seem to have plenty of that with her who’s more than likely retreated to repair that chink in her armor.”
“Yep,” he deadpanned. That was what I didn’t want to hear.
Fuck! Chest feeling hollow more than ever, I flopped back on the bed to stare up at the vaulted ceiling, wishing I had done and said things differently around Anna to make her let down her guard instead of reinforcing it. But what would’ve been the right things, I had no clue.
Hayden’s exhale resonated through my earpiece. “I know you’re worried about her, but she is okay, just taking some time to work through whatever. Don’t call the National Guard yet, and as your friend, I’m going to tell you somethings that Kay told me about Anna because I think you need to know and Anna probably won’t tell you. Opening up to people isn’t her thing. I’m probably about to cross a line that I can’t go back over with Anna or Kay.”
He paused for a beat, surely rethinking what he was about to say to me. I didn’t blame him since he had to sleep with Kay but I didn’t, and I probably didn’t even have that option anymore with Anna.
“Fuck it!” He finally decided. “Anna’s mom, Shelly Harp, is one of the worst. Anna only knows her father’s name because it’s on her birth certificate. Her childhood was bad enough to affect some part of her that won’t allow her to believe that she should be happy and is worthy of love besides from the Jesters. I think Kay’s family did something so special Anna had to let them inside her heart, and it was before she decided she didn’t need, want, or deserve certain things in life. You picked a real hard case to fall in love with, Roland.”
Did I ever? Oh fuck, when had I fallen in love with her? When had he noticed?
“I never said I loved her, Hayden.”
He would notice that I didn’t say I didn’t love her too. He still doesn’t know about the night on the deck where I made love to the woman who had ruined me for all others. If ever there was a private, sacred moment to keep to myself, my first time with Anna was it, something I could keep all to myself since I didn’t have her. Maybe I never would, and boy was that a hard pill to swallow. I wanted that woman like I wanted my next breath, I just wasn’t the type to force myself on someone who didn’t want me.
“You don’t have to say you love her, Roland, you act like it. Anna is the first thing on your mind in the morning because you call me, asking about her. She’s the last thing you think about before you go to sleep because you call me asking about her. You mention her every time we talk, and you call every day to ask about her. Do you see the pattern yet? Hell, I bet you even dream about her when you close your eyes and isn’t asking me about her.
“I’m not going to confirm or deny that last bit.”
“Roland, I’m going to tell you a secret. I know what you’re going through. How you’re feeling describes my feelings before Kay and I got together as we should’ve been from the moment I met her. Except, I had no one to ask about her before she was mine, and I was worse off than you. I had to watch her be with a douche who didn’t have her best interests at heart. The whole time, I was afraid she’d think I was just throwing salt in Jarod’s game if I told her he was a douche when I only had her best interests and mine at heart. That fear kept me immobile as she went on without me.”
Did I want Anna going on without me? Only if she wanted to, but there was nothing like love and life working out for the best. I had all that once upon before it was taken from me, so I wasn’t stupid enough to think life and love would always work out. That didn’t mean I had given up on either.
Making someone else happy felt even better than just being happy, and there was no sense in denying what he and I knew to be the truth; I loved Anna, and I’d just be wasting my breath if I said otherwise to Hayden, who’d already walked a whole city in my shoes to be with the woman he loved. The problem was, Anna wasn’t even giving love a chance. If I could just get behind her armor, I’d show her what she was missing.
“I guess you’ve found me out, Hayden. So, should I drop by the salon for a haircut?”
“You should drop by soon.”
Then, that was what I’d do. For now, I needed to cut my damn grass. My backyard had been mutating into a hay farm as the contractors built my deck. “We’ll work out the logistics of me stalking Anna when you get here. I’ll see you in thirty.”
“Things will work out for you, Roland. It’ll just take a little time with her… and for something big and heavy to hit her in the head before she sees that if she’s breathing and a productive member of society, then she’s worthy of love from the best men and women I know on this earth despite her childhood being so bad she can’t get past it.”
The past could be a bitch. Mine had stumbling blocks I’d had to come to terms with too, like my brother stealing my ex-fiancée from under me while I was on active duty. I had mastered coming ‘to terms’ with shit I couldn’t change a lot faster than Anna though. She likely had a full barricade erected to keep pain out therefore love.
Blockades didn’t discriminate about what they blocked, and it sounded like Anna was adding bricks as she went. The kind of bricks that would only come down when she took them down. No one else could do that for her, not even a soldier trained for infiltration.
I could be patient however, was very good at that. “You’re not so bad yourself, Hayden. It’s been an honor to continue to serve this country with you.”
“Even if its politicians are ungrateful shits,” he added.
“Right.” I snickered. “Bye.”
“See you in thirty,” he said before hanging up.
I decided to take a page out of Kay’s book and find Anna myself in two days if she didn’t show her face to at least Kay by in the morning. Then, I’d leave her be until she wanted me in her world. If that never happened, then I would move on… at some point. I was trained to go, but it would be the hardest thing I ever had to do.
Chapter Seven
~Anna~
I looked out at the blossoming countryside rolling by on our way to my new place. Any place was a far cry from the low rent townhouse I’d lived in since seventeen and the neighborhood before that too. The purse on my lap vibrated against my bare knees extending out of the blue jeans shorts with designer holes before my ringtone for Kay filled the interior of the truck. Shit! She must’ve felt me trying not to miss her, and I couldn’t keep ducking her.
Eventually, she’d come to me. More like come for me. She knew all the places I went if not where I lived anymore. Some big mouth had probably already given her my new address before I could, which would hurt her feelings immensely and warrant a call from her where she’d hurt my feelings. Dalton was a decent size city, but not big enough to hide in from her. Not for long anyway, and it was time to make tracks out of my funk. It’s not like it was a productive place to be, so I extracted my phone, swiping the accept icon.
“Hey, sis,” I said sheepishly. “I know that I’ve been—”
“Sis?!” Kay hurled down the line. “Oh no, this calls for the ‘bitch’ word you like so much, and bitccccch…” She’d p
robably spit all over Hayden after her tongue released the ‘ch’ sound of the word she hated so much “…you got some ‘splaining to do. I know you haven’t been dead, dying, or bleeding out on side of the road for the last month and just now fully coming to your senses and answering your phone! What the fuck is so wrong that you couldn’t even pick up the phone for your sis…” Her voice cracked.
When she sniffled, I nearly fell apart. She was so much more than hurt, and now, I was hurt because I’d hurt her with my absence. Bo grimaced then cut his eyes my way. He had definitely heard Kay raising pure divine hell loud enough to raise the dead, which she doesn’t do, and she wasn’t hot. No, she was hawt! And that was so much worse.
Kay was the last person you wanted to go off on you. She was just as laidback as Bo, and the easy-going tended to explode once they were on ten. It was almost impossible to get them back to zero before someone was dead, dying, or bleeding, or had a dislocated shoulder like the one Kay gave Bethany Willard’s trifling ass.
Bethany made the mistake of inviting herself to Kay’s home to pick a fight about Hayden, and this was after Bethany had gotten with Jarod before he and Kay broke up. I liked my joints intact, so thank God Kay was in another part of the city—I hoped she was anyway—while she was picking a fight with me. I’d get my ass whooped, could never lay a hand on Kay or any of the Jesters.
They were my rock when I didn’t have one, and they still had me as a rock, which they didn’t need to lean on anywhere near as much as I did. I just had to remind Kay that she still had me for a rock since she hadn’t technically had me as anything for a month.
“Kay, just wait a minute. I’ll explain, and I know you’ll understand. I’m praying you will anyway, but I need a little more time to tell you why I’ve been MIA. I’m with someone right now, handling a little business, and… Wait a minute. You’ve went up one side of me and down the other a thousand times about me using ‘bitch’ as a term of endearment, and that’s supposed to be my—”
“It’s my word now, bitch! Now, why the hell have you been igging me? I know you’ve been to work every day because Hayden’s sister got her hair done last week by you. You did his mother’s hair the week before that. The week before that, you did my mother’s eyebrows, and Jack told me you’ve been by the bank to get keys to walk through the new homes under construction on the west side of town. I know Roland touched a sore spot at his party by bringing up your poor excuse for a mother unintentionally, but you usually bounce back from having to say her name quickly so she doesn’t show up like the devil in the next twenty-four hours, which have come and gone thir-ty times! You have never shut me out like this, so tell me what is going on with you now!”
This was so not the time for explaining why I haven’t bounced back. Hell, I didn’t even know why I hadn’t bounced back yet, and the reason for the funk had nothing to do with my mother. This was all Roland’s doing… somehow, and Bo was ear hustling on my conversation.
“Kay, can I call you back? I promise I will. I’m just in the middle of—”
“In the middle of what that you can’t talk to your damn sister, Anna!” She was spazzing out something awful.
Feeling thoroughly chastised and about two inches tall, I swiped at my forehead. Bo hit a pothole a few minutes away from my new home. I grabbed for the ‘oh shit’ handle mounted above my door as we both bounced toward the unforgiving roof of the truck. If Kay didn’t kill me, the ride would.
“I’m in the middle of moving and trying not to get brained to death by this truck. I swear, Kay, we’ll talk later as long as you want when I’m done, and I suspected you already knew I’d gotten a house in the new subdivision since you know everyone in the mortgage department of the bank that financed me. I knew not hearing from me that I’d bought a house would get me cursed out by you, so yeah, I’ve been dodging your call about that and one other tiny, little thing.” If Roland was tiny in any way, I was a flying monkey.
She puffed enough air through the phone to cause a tornado on my side of it, as if I needed more hazards to my health. “Anna, if you knew I wouldn’t be okay with hearing about one of the biggest events of your life from some damn one else, why the hell did you let someone else tell me?” Her tone had lowered, but the anger in it had increased in strength, and that was so bad because Kay knew karate. I didn’t.
I got out, “Sweetheart” before she shut me down again.
“I should be there helping you with the move, planning your housewarming party, and congratulating you for becoming a homeowner while I dodged helping you move your things into your house. And you still haven’t explain why you’ve been shunning my ass like we’re Amish and I just asked you to buy me a computer to get on social media.”
I’d certainly been acting like the Amish, shunning the modern world as much as I could. “I know I haven’t explained, and I’ll make it up—”
“You can’t make this up to me because this is a memory for you that we can’t recreate down the line, heifer!”
Oh man, she was pissed. Where the hell was Hayden? It was Saturday, and he was off, so he could be calming her down or amping her up in a way that only he could accomplish, which would get her off my ass and onto his for a little bit in a way they both would enjoy. Hell, I thought he’d be keeping her too busy in the bed anyway to worry about me trying to regroup after Roland, and it wasn’t happening.
Now, I just needed a little more time to stack boxes in the correct rooms that I’ll be decorating myself. Kay was cursing enough as it was about being left out of my life for a month, so I wasn’t stupid enough to ask her for something after making her angry with me. The monster that hid well inside of her had sunk its claws in my ass. Before she retracted them, she’d have to be soothed. They hurt something awful too, and it looked like I’d be explaining my absence whether or not I wanted to keep most people out of my personal life.
“I haven’t been shunning you, sis, more like sparing you from feeling awkward if… he and I both came around you and Hayden at the same time.” I may have had to explain myself in front of Bo, but I didn’t have to put names out there.
She was smart enough to figure out who ‘he’ was. “What do you mean awkward, Anna? Why would things be awkward? And who the hell is he? Ohhhh!” See.
“Kay, do not jump to conclusions.”
“Too late!” she squealed like a pig being squeezed too hard. “You like Ryland!”
Sweet Jesus! How the hell did she figure that out so fast? Did I have any mystery about me?
“It’s not like that, Kay.” But, yes, it was like that. And there was so much more to it, and why the hell was I stupidly lying to her on top of having hurt her? Compounding her issues with me wasn’t not a good thing. She’d sink her claws right back in my ass.
“Anna—” she started.
I groaned out, “Okay! Okay, it’s like that.”
She squealed again. Suddenly, I had a viable name for my month-long condition; liking Roland. I had never liked a man before, had never wanted to. No wonder I felt bad as hell; life had booted me into new territory and I was lost. I didn’t like being lost and hadn’t been lost since I discovered my mother was a lost cause and there was no one to take care of me but me.
Taking care of me was a job all by itself. I didn’t have room in my life for liking people too. I dealt with those I didn’t like because I would never love them thus they were safe. Roland was so not safe.
I palmed my head with my free hand. “Kay, tell me that liking him will go away if I ignore it long enough and keep my distance from him.”
She said nothing.
I panicked. “Right?”
Nothing.
I panicked some more. “Well, say something! Liking him has been hanging around like a bad odor for thirty days and knocking my ass for a loop. I can’t be around him who’s friends with Hayden, who loves you therefore I can’t be around you, and I don’t like not being around you, Kay! I missed you as much as I did him.”
Oh, I did not just say I missed him. But, I had. It was too late to take it back.
She cooed, “Ohhhh, Anna,” as if I was a newborn, and well, I guess I could be considered brand new to liking people. “I’m so sorry, Anna, but you know for yourself what I went through with liking Hayden. It stuck around for four years and didn’t let up. Somewhere during that time, liking him mutated to loving him, and I didn’t even know it.”
Love? Hell to the no! Loving the Jesters was fine. Loving a man was not!
“Not what I wanted to hear, Kay.” I flopped back against the seat. “‘Mutated’ sounds like I’m dealing with a disease. What the fuck have you gotten me into with your party planning? I knew I shouldn’t have went to that party.”
She giggled like a hyena. “I hope I’ve gotten you the happiness that you’ll have for the rest of your life. The happiness that you haven’t been able to find yet and wasn’t looking for. That’s because you hadn’t met a man like Roland, who you couldn’t push away before he got too close.” I still couldn’t push him way. She inhaled sharply. “You know what?”
I shook my head, didn’t like where this conversation was going. “No, I don’t know what. I don’t want to know what. I don’t want to go wherever what is. Leave me out of anything that has to do with what. Please! I’ve learned my lesson learned about encountering things I can’t explain. Don’t encounter them.”
She snickered. “Too late for that, and ‘what’ is that I know why you didn’t cuss Roland out when he asked you who hurt you, not knowing that he was opening up old wounds with thin scabs over them. That alone should’ve got him scalped by your perpetually-angry ass. But, liking people makes most of us deter from hurting those we, well, like. I don’t know why I’m just now remembering that. Yes, I do know why. My best friend and sister since the second grade had cut me out of her life, so your weirdness around Roland went unnoticed until now.”
I winced at the mentioning of my mistakes in her backyard. “Sorry, sis. I just had a lot on my mind the past month.” That was putting it mildly. “And I wanted to keep as much of my troubles from you and Hayden as I could. You guys have went through too much with Bethany and Jarod already. It wouldn’t be fair if you had to deal with my issues too, and I did push Roland away.” And then stopped him from leaving. Look how that turned out.