Deeper Water_Once and Forever 3

by Lauren Stewart

  The voices got louder as I neared the kitchen. I considered stopping and listening to what they were saying, but if it was anything about me, I was better off not knowing. I pushed open the door and saw Lane sitting at the small table and her mom at the stove, laying strips of bacon into a cast iron pan. Is there anything better than the sound of that sizzle and the smell of fresh coffee? Besides the sound of Lane when she comes and the scent of great sex, obviously. Ain’t nothing better than that.

  “Morning,” I managed, rubbing my eyes and blinking.

  “Good morning,” her mom said, turning around to face me. That’s when her expression changed, her eyes lowered, and I heard Lane gasp.

  “Carson?” Lane asked somewhat calmly. “Where are your pants?”

  Oh, shit. I used both hands to cover my crotch and then looked down at myself.

  Could’ve been worse, but not by a lot. At home, I slept naked and never put anything on until after my first cup of coffee and a hot shower. I think we were all pretty relieved I’d opted to at least keep my boxer briefs on last night.

  I’d decided it would’ve been weird to roll around in someone else’s bed with my junk out. Turned out, it was also pretty damn weird to wander around someone else’s house in my underwear.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, backing out of the room.

  “He’s not a morning person. I’ll be right back.” Lane followed me to my room, shutting the door almost all the way. When I noticed it, she explained, “I’m not allowed to close the door if a guy is over. So they can hear what’s going on.”

  “Damn, I never would’ve guessed Bill and Jane were into that kind of thing.”

  “Eww.” She sighed. “It’s so they know I’m not doing anything, perv.” She tossed me a pair of pants. “Just be glad my dad’s not home. He would’ve flipped.”

  “Because your mom was staring at my package?” I smirked.

  “She was not!”

  “Oh yeah she was. Couldn’t take her eyes off me. Don’t worry—I think she approves.”

  “Gross. This is going to be the longest two days of my life. Can you please at least pretend to be normal?”

  “Maybe.” I shrugged. “If I knew how.”

  “Okay, we should’ve set some ground rules. Better late than after my dad sees you half naked.” She made my bed as she spoke. “Pants are to be worn at all times. Sex should never be mentioned, not even as a joke.”

  When she bent over to fluff a pillow or something, I came up behind her, pressing my cock to her ass.

  “Careful! It still hurts a little. Plus, look but don’t touch, remember? In fact, don’t even look while my parents are around.” She pushed me back, holding a pillow between us. “And no groping.”

  “Rules suck.”

  “I’m serious, Carson.”

  “Fine. Can I at least kiss you good morning?”

  “No tongue.”

  I wasn’t sure I could kiss her without tongue. “Can we go home now?”

  “This was your idea, remember? So, no. You can handle two and a half days of celibacy.

  “Yeah, but not by choice,” I whined. Obviously I’d survived periodic dry patches. Just not since I met her. “Fine. I’ll be on my best behavior. Treat you like you’re my sister. Except not like Anna, more like a stepsister I want to get naked and sweaty with.” I made my eyebrows bounce up and down. “What do you say, sis? Wanna get all taboo with me?”

  She smacked me playfully and ran for the door. “Come on, bro. Let’s get you some coffee. My dad wants to take you fishing tonight.”

  “Fishing? Is that a euphemism for killing me and dumping my lifeless body into the ocean?”

  “I wish.” Her laugh echoed through the hallway as we headed back to the kitchen.

  27

  Carson

  “Did you do these?” I asked Lane, gesturing to the paintings in the hallway.

  “Nope. My mom did. She’s the one who got me into art. I painted the ones in your room though.”

  “Thought so. They’re…” I squinted, looking for a word that wouldn’t get me in trouble.

  “Jerk,” she muttered.

  Now mostly dressed—I figured her mom wouldn’t mind a little flash of ankle—I followed Lane back into the kitchen.

  Jane had set out two plates. The appropriately-filled one was in front of the chair Lane had been sitting in. The other was across from her, piled high with all the breakfast items a lumberjack needs before a week of work. What looked like a half-dozen scrambled eggs, four full slices of bacon, two sausage mini-dicks, and two flapjacks. I was pretty sure flapjack was the lumberjack word for pancakes.

  I remembered Lane telling me her parents had been high school sweethearts in a small town somewhere back east. She hadn’t specifically mentioned it was a logging town, but the proof was sitting on the plate in front of me.

  The scoop—no joke, it was an actual scoop—of butter had started to melt on top of the flapjacks, telling me that Jane had actually heated up the pint of syrup before she’d poured it over them.

  “Sit down and eat before it gets cold,” she said, leaning against the counter and sipping a cup of tea.

  “Is all that for me?” Maybe she was hoping the cholesterol would kill me. Or that I’d balloon up to seven hundred pounds in the next two days, and Lane wouldn’t want me anymore.

  “Geez, Mom. Why’d you give him so much food?”

  “He’s a man,” she replied as if that were answer enough.

  “Yeah, a man. Not ten men. Dad doesn’t eat like this, does he?”

  Her mom paused. “I don’t get a chance to cook very much anymore. I may have gone a little overboard.” She poured me a cup of coffee and set it down next to my heart attack platter. “You don’t have to eat it all, Carson.”

  One bite was more food than I usually had for breakfast. “These eggs are delicious. Thank you.”

  “What can I say?” Her smile was huge. “I’m a mom. I just wanted you to feel at home.”

  “Then you should’ve just tossed a cold pop-tart at me.” I smiled back at her. “My mom’s specialty.” On the one day a week she got up early enough for breakfast.

  “Your mom didn’t cook?”

  “My mom didn’t mom.”

  “Oh.” She tilted her head and looked concerned. “Did she work a lot?”

  I shook my head while I finished chewing.

  “Renee is… different,” Lane answered for me. Although, I would’ve used a much harsher word to describe her. “Carson’s family isn’t as close as we are.” Definitely would’ve used a harsher word to describe our family dynamics.

  “We don’t get along much at all, actually,” I added unhelpfully. Jane looked more confused than ever, so I tried to swing the conversation around. “Not like you guys do. Lane talks about how great you are all the time. She forgot to mention you’re also an artist, though. Now I know where she got her beauty and her talent.”

  Jane stared at me in silence for a minute. Fuck, I’d always thought I was pretty good at reading women’s expressions. But mothers didn’t count as women, or at least, they didn’t make the same kind of expressions other women did. And now that it was actually important, all I could think of was a book I was supposed to have read in high school but didn’t. Flashback to the feeling of standing in front of a classroom of giggling kids and a pissed-off teacher, trying to explain why the damn grapes were so angry.

  “Was that laying it on too thick?” I asked solemnly.

  She looked away briefly, and Lane sighed.

  “I’m not an artist,” Jane said quietly. “It’s just something I did for a time.”

  “What do you mean, Mom? A person who makes art is an artist. By definition.”

  “Those aren’t art. Anyway, I don’t do it anymore so it doesn’t matter.”

  “Ever?” Lane’s voice held such shock, I knew something was up.

  “Your father and church keep me too busy nowadays.” She busied herself by replacing the single
sip of coffee Lane and I had taken from our cups. “So, Carson, tell me more about your family.”

  “Mom!”

  She cut her daughter off with a raised hand. “Enough, Laney. I want to know more about Carson. He’s much more interesting than I am.”

  And here I was trying to be subtle when changing the subject. But the last thing I needed was to be stuck in the middle of a mother-daughter argument, so I sucked it up and told Jane about my family.

  “My family? Sure… um…” Sticking to the positive left me with very few things to share. “My older brother and I get along really well now.”

  “That’s nice. You didn’t get along when you were children?”

  Damn it, why hadn’t I left out that last word? “We did, but… um… we had a pretty tough childhood.”

  Obviously, my description didn’t translate naturally. Thankfully, Lane provided the explanation—No, I didn’t grow up in poverty. I wasn’t in a gang or arrested for drinking behind the liquor store either.

  Lane left the other stuff out. Stuff like, yes, after my bastard-father croaked, my mom went through a slew of men who treated her just as cruelly as my dad had. And, yeah, I’d had a few run-ins with the law for stupid rich-kid crimes like truancy and drinking high-end booze behind my private school. Nothing that ended up on my permanent record, though—records were for people whose parents didn’t have lawyers on retainer.

  But since I knew how important Lane’s parents were to her, they were also important to me. I needed them to like me, to approve in a way my own parents never had. In a way, I’d never really cared if my parents had.

  I’d been the one to start this whole thing. I’d called her folks and changed the plane tickets. I’d wanted this to happen, so it was now my unfortunate job to make it work. And if that meant I had to talk about my family, I’d suffer through it.

  “My father passed away when I was young, and my mother lives in Los Angeles, so I don’t see her often.” Thankfully. “I have a stepsister who’s…” My glance at Lane for advice didn’t pan out. She was in wide-eyed shock, probably wondering why I was choosing to talk about my family at all. “Anna fundraises for the charity now, so I see her regularly.” Pretend that was a good thing. “My brother Hayden and his new wife live in San Francisco, too. We’ve definitely grown closer, and a lot of that is because of your daughter’s influence. They’re big fans of hers.”

  Jane smiled at me, then Lane, then me again. See? I could do this.

  “She’s definitely taught me a lot about family, and a lot of other things. I’m very lucky to have her in my life.”

  Lane’s shock had warmed into something better. Pride, maybe? Or maybe it was relief.

  28

  Laney

  I felt a little bad about letting my dad take Carson off without me. Not nearly as nervous as I was about not being able to monitor Carson’s every word, but he’d be fine. Probably. I just didn’t see a way around it.

  Who knew? Maybe they wouldn’t even do much talking. Maybe they’d just sniff and growl at each other a little, silently determining dominance, like males of every other species did.

  Carson was as alpha as they came, but he’d accept an older alpha. That was a thing, right? An older alpha? I wished I were more of a dog person. And understood men better.

  With them gone for at least a couple hours, I had a chance to talk to my mom alone. I was worried about her. She looked older, more tired, more… not the woman I remembered. Her smile was still there, like always, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Looked more like the exhausted smile she wore after a full day of serving cake and coffee and listening to church parishioners whine about their lives.

  I found her reading in the living room and sat right next to her on the couch. She set down her book and wiped a lock of hair off my forehead.

  “You need a trim.”

  “Stop.” I brushed her hand away. “If I want bangs that fall into my eyes, I can have bangs that fall into my eyes.” I didn’t though. She was totally right—I needed a trim. “I’m not a little girl anymore, Mom.”

  “Don’t I know it.” She sighed. “So this boy makes you happy?”

  “Yes, but…” That wasn’t what I wanted to talk to her about.

  She turned toward me and took my hand in hers. “But what, honey? You can tell me. Something about Carson?”

  Great. Now she was worried about me. “No. Carson’s amazing. He is. I have nothing to complain about.”

  She smiled. “I can’t tell you how happy hearing that makes me, Laney. It really does.”

  Why had I ever worried about my parents hating him? I couldn’t believe I’d waited this long to have them meet. Crap, when I thought of all the time I wasted worrying about it…

  “He’s not the kind of man I thought you’d end up with, of course. Carson is so much less…” When her brow came together as she searched for a word, all the guilt I’d felt for waiting so long suddenly seemed like the best use of time ever. What horrible word was she going to say?

  “Boring.”

  Wait. What? “Did you just say you expected me to end up with someone boring?”

  She stared at me for a moment. “If Carson makes you happy, that’s all that matters.”

  “I guess so,” I said warily, wondering if I wanted to know why she thought I’d choose to be with someone boring. Then I remembered I had been with someone boring. A few someones boring, actually. Every jackass before Carson.

  “You’re right—he’s definitely not boring. He’s funny and sweet and supportive of what I want to do. Not to mention that he puts up with me, which, as you know, isn’t always easy.”

  “You forgot to mention he’s not too bad to look at.”

  “Mom! Gross!” I said, laughing with her. “Yeah, he’s not too bad to look at either. Honestly, I didn’t even know men could be so great—except Dad, of course, but you know…”

  Her smile faded. “Yes, I know.”

  “Mom?” I started, not knowing what I was going to say next. “I’m glad the men are out because I wanted to talk to you privately.”

  “Uh-oh. If it’s not Carson…”

  I shook my head again. “I wanted to talk to you… about you.”

  “Me?”

  The amount of surprise encompassed in that one word felt like a lifetime of guilt slamming down on me.

  My mom was incredible—giving, kind, supportive, helpful, and a great listener. Sadly, all of that meant I could almost guarantee no one had ever wondered how she was feeling—including her. She was a rock, there for anyone and everyone who needed her. But who’d been there for her? Not me, that’s for sure.

  “How are you? Really?”

  “I’m…” She paused for a breath. “I’m busy. We started a new support group at the church for women and mothers, and it’s going wonderfully. Some of their stories are difficult to hear, but it’s important for them to have a safe place to talk.” She continued, telling me a few horror stories of abuse or neglect, along with a few happier ones like women finding jobs that paid enough to support their kids.

  And while I could tell my mom was proud of them and the hard work they were doing to reach their goals, I wondered if she’d ever shared her own story with the women. Sadder still—in a purely narcissistic way, mind you—was the jealousy I felt flare up at the idea she might’ve shared something with them that she’d never shared with me.

  She was amazing, and brilliant, and had it all together, and nothing could ever change how much I loved her. But realistically, how much time had I ever spent actually getting to know her?

  “That’s awesome, Mom. I’m sure they really appreciate it. But how are you besides busy?”

  She looked at me silently for a minute, maybe weighing how honest she could be.

  “Are you happy?” I prompted.

  She took a deep breath. “I’m always happy to be of service to others.”

  I cringed. “Geez, Mom. I know that. And it’s great. But I want to know if y
ou are happy when you’re not doing things for other people. When you’re here with Dad or by yourself.”

  “I don’t know.” Three of the most common words in the English language that, most of the time, held no meaning. But when she said them, they were full of fear, confusion, and regret. “I don’t know anymore, Laney.”

  I waited for her to continue.

  It took her a while, but eventually, she did. “I have so much—it feels wrong to want more.” She straightened out the bottom edge of my t-shirt until I brushed her hand away.

  “That’s not wrong, Mom. That’s normal. We all deserve to be happy. You don’t think less of those women because they want that for themselves, do you?”

  She shook her head. “Of course, not.”

  She must have been a little selfish at some point. All young people were. I just didn’t know how to help her think that way again.

  I glanced around the room, hoping something would trigger a good idea. But it was all the same crap that—

  Crap.

  I’d almost kicked Carson out on the street this morning because he’d come very close to suggesting the paintings I’d done were crap. Fortunately for him, he’d stopped talking at exactly the right moment.

  My mom had always been the painter in the family, but the stuff hanging on the walls now wasn’t hers. I couldn’t remember a time growing up when she wasn’t painting or sculpting something. Taking down one painting and putting another up, or reorganizing a space so there’d be room for her latest sculpture.

  Looking back, I guess she’d stopped while I was a teenager, but I’d been too selfish and preoccupied to really care. She’d been my biggest supporter, had taught me about form and perspective, had signed me up for my first wood carving course, and bought me my first set of chisels.

  And now, the artwork on the walls was somebody else’s, and picture frames had replaced the carved figures that used to take up every horizontal surface.