Still Standing

by Kristen Ashley

  I decided not to protest.

  Firstly, because Buck still seemed in a mood, and secondly, because it felt comfortable and nice. It was weird and I couldn’t imagine the position was comfortable for Buck, though he didn’t seem to mind.

  It was also extremely proprietary in a way I liked.

  There was no one there to see him stake his claim so the claim he staked seemed less possessive and more protective with not a small amount of him simply wanting to be close to me.

  As with all things I was discovering about Buck, except an albeit important few (that “few” being only one), I liked this.

  A lot.

  I silently let the Hardy men have their own thoughts, and as I did this my belly began to feel warm.

  And this was because, a week ago, if you told me I’d be sitting on the deck of a secluded house set in a beautiful hill outside Phoenix, sipping coffee with a handsome biker and his equally handsome son, I would have told you that you were insane.

  But here I was.

  And I’d had Pop-Tarts.

  I stifled a giggle at the same exact time Buck suddenly and inexplicably roared, “Get your ass out here!”

  I jumped and looked at him to see he was twisted to look into the house.

  I looked too, and when I did, I saw Tatiana, wearing a girlie set of drawstring pajama shorts and a little camisole opening the door.

  I watched her wince at the sun and saw she looked both pale and a little green at the gills.

  She closed the door and made the decision to approach our congregation on Gear’s side. She leaned heavily on her arms on the railing like she couldn’t quite hold herself up and stared at the view with squinty eyes.

  I was happy to note she had a big tumbler of water in one hand.

  “Can we do this shit later, Dad? I feel like crap,” she muttered.

  Gear moved in his chair and I looked at him to see he looked like he didn’t know whether to smile or bolt.

  “Say again?” Buck asked in his spitting-venom voice, and I instantly understood Gear’s reaction.

  He knew Tatiana’s question would not be met favorably and he was torn between watching his sister get it and getting the heck out of Dodge.

  I was feeling the same dilemma.

  I braced as Tatiana let out a heavy sigh before repeating, “I feel like crap.”

  “Yeah, could guess that, Tatie, seein’ as me and your brother mopped up your puke last night,” Buck remarked.

  “Dad—”

  “And smelled it after you hurled into the toilet, Clara rubbin’ your back,” Buck added.

  She sighed again, straightened and turned toward us, but leaned against the railing and took a sip of her water.

  Thus positioned, she invited on a resigned yet annoyed, “Just get it over with.”

  Oh dear.

  “You got one warning,” Buck stated, his voice low and sweltering, “put away that fuckin’ attitude.”

  I made a move, whispering, “Maybe I should—”

  I stopped when Buck’s arm around my thighs got tight and he ordered, “Do not fuckin’ move, Toots.”

  “She can go,” Tatiana put in.

  Oh…dear.

  Gear went solid on my one side while, from the other, I felt the heat coming off Buck sear through me and Gear on a direct path to Tatiana.

  “You forget last night, girl?” Buck asked quietly.

  “No,” she snapped.

  “So you’re sayin’ you didn’t forget Clara pulling your hair outta your face so you didn’t puke in it?”

  I bit my lip and watched Tatiana turn her head to look at the view, taking another sip.

  “Girl, eyes…on…me,” Buck demanded, and Tatiana looked back at him and raised her brows.

  I wasn’t sure, I was never sixteen and in trouble with my dad for over-imbibing, but I was thinking she wasn’t playing this right.

  “Answer me,” Buck ordered.

  “I didn’t forget,” Tatiana snapped.

  “How ’bout rubbin’ your back, givin’ you water, coverin’ you with towels? You forget any a’ that?” Buck asked.

  “No,” she clipped.

  “I get Clara bein’ here is new to you. It’s new to me. It’s new to your brother. And heads up, girl, it’s also fuckin’ new to Clara. I’m guessin’ your brother sees the upshot to this and has noticed that I got someone in my house I like bein’ with and he digs that.”

  At these words, surprising ones, lovely ones (in a biker-lovely way), I held my breath and felt my belly get warm again.

  Buck kept talking.

  “I also get that it may take you longer to see your old man has found himself a good thing. That said, I did not raise a fuckin’ kid who gets sick in the toilet because she acted like a fuckin’ moron, and my woman took care of her, only to have that kid be a fuckin’ brat the next morning. You work out your issues with your brother, with me, and you ask, I bet Clara would talk to you, you’d get to know her and even she might help you work them out. You wanna be a pain in the ass, you do it so Clara doesn’t feel it and Gear doesn’t have to pour you, shitfaced, in his car and leave his friends because you’ve decided to be a pain in the ass. I talked to you about this nice last night. You didn’t listen. Now, I gotta know if you’ve heard me. So, Tatie, tell me, have you heard me?”

  I felt that was pretty intense, and maybe a smidge too intense.

  Then again, I’d never had a dad, much less a biker dad, so I didn’t know.

  Though, I’d had foster fathers, but I’d always put every foot right and didn’t taste my first sip of beer until I was nineteen, so this was completely foreign to me.

  At the end of the day, however, this lecture had been delivered in this manner because Buck had tried it a different way, Tatiana hadn’t listened, and the heart of it was that Buck cared, Buck worried, and Buck wanted all of us to get along.

  And Tatiana was not with that program in any way, and she didn’t seem to be swinging in that direction.

  So perhaps intense was appropriate in this situation.

  Not to mention, it explained Buck’s Saturday morning bad mood.

  “I’ve heard you,” Tatiana gritted between her teeth, her eyes glittering, her face still pale, and I had the distinct feeling she blamed this on me, and I had that feeling because her glittering eyes shifted to me frequently while her father was telling her off.

  Fantastic.

  “Now, say thank you to Clara for bein’ cool with you last night and then you can do whatever the fuck you need to do.”

  Okay, according to me, that was taking it too far.

  “I…that isn’t necessary,” I put in quickly, and said to Tatiana, “You don’t have to thank me.”

  Buck’s arm gave my thighs a squeeze. “I said she did, Toots, that means she does.”

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  “Whatever,” Tatiana muttered. “Thanks…” She hesitated then sneered, “Toots.”

  “Tat, sis, be cool,” Gear advised.

  “Whatever,” Tatiana repeated and looked at her father. “Can I go now?”

  “Oh yeah, you can go. But fair warning, girl, I see you and you’re still throwin’ attitude, I’m not gonna like it.”

  I watched her clench her teeth. She looked to the scenery again, took a sip of water then pushed away from the railing and walked to the door.

  Before she made it, I heard her murmur, “Who woulda thought I’d ever prefer it in Flag with Mom and fuckin’ Knuckles?”

  I felt Buck’s arm tense around my legs, and I sucked in breath.

  Then I heard the door close.

  I let out my breath, thinking, oh dear.

  I waited until afternoon, after Buck made the best French toast I’d ever tasted, and after I’d made grilled cheese for him and Gear for lunch, probably not the best they’d ever tasted.

  I wasn’t a bad cook, especially considering I’d never had anyone teach me, so I was entirely self-taught, and whenever that happened, it w
as bound to be hit or miss.

  But Buck had natural talent, and I couldn’t say I had that with cooking.

  Or with anything.

  As they had between breakfast and lunch, after lunch, the Hardy men disappeared back under the hood of the Nova outside and I made another grilled cheese sandwich, put it on a plate, grabbed a Diet Coke and walked to Tatiana’s closed door.

  I knocked and walked in when I heard her impatient, “What?”

  “It’s me,” I announced, closing the door behind me and walking in to see her sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, her phone on the mattress, the vampire novel opened and facedown next to her phone, what looked like a journal balanced on her knee, a pen in her hand.

  She narrowed her eyes at me, flipped the journal facedown and set it on the bed too.

  “Can I help you?” she asked snottily.

  I walked to the nightstand, put the plate and diet on it and then walked back to the corner of the bed.

  “Thought you might want something to eat,” I told her.

  “Thanks, Toots,” she mocked, tossed the pen to the bed and picked up her phone.

  Bending her head to it, her thumbs started flying over the screen.

  “I get you,” I told her, and she ignored me, so I pulled in a huge breath and carried on, “I grew up in foster care.”

  “Poor you,” she muttered, obviously hit send, then tossed her phone to the bed again and grabbed her vampire novel before lying back on the pillows and lifting the novel in front of her face.

  I persevered.

  “I never really had a dad, so I can see you being territorial when you’ve got a good one.”

  “It’s so cool you understand,” she lied to her book.

  “A few days ago,” I pressed on, “my best friend’s husband, who is not a good guy, but who I had to work with so he wouldn’t hurt my friend, which he was doing in bad ways I won’t share, picked me up, beat the heck out of me and tossed me out of a moving vehicle. Your dad arranged for me to receive medical help and then he arranged for my protection.”

  She moved the book an inch aside and her eyes came to me.

  “So you’re here because he’s protecting you?” she asked, perfectly arched brows up.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “And you’re payin’ him back by fuckin’ him?”

  I sucked in breath.

  Clearly, even the female Hardys didn’t shy away from that word.

  I didn’t get into that.

  I said quietly, “No.”

  “You sleep on the couch?”

  “No.”

  “You sleep with him.”

  “Yes.”

  “What, you only do blowjobs as payback for protection?” she asked snidely.

  I held her eyes.

  I pulled breath in through my nostrils.

  Then I said softly, “Never, in my life, have I met a good man. Not in my life. You’re lucky, Tatiana, you were born to one, so you’ll keep being lucky because you know what to look for. I wasn’t that lucky. Not until now. I get you, honey. I get what it feels like to wake up every day and be in a place you don’t want to be. I totally get that. What you need to get is that, as terrible as that is, you know, right to your soul, that there’s someone out there who you mean to the world to, who cares about you, who worries about you and who likes you close, even though he can’t have that and he can’t give it to you. You know that you can’t wake every day feeling safe, knowing that person is in the house, but you can get to him. I’m sorry things aren’t good at home, but you’ll one day rest in the knowledge that you had something good and you’ll be grateful for it. You don’t have to be nice to me, but you and me, we can keep that between us. For your dad’s sake, though, I’m asking you to pretend. He deserves that, and I’m just guessing here, but I think you know it.”

  I didn’t give her the chance to respond.

  I stopped talking, turned and walked right out of her room, closing the door quietly behind me.

  I went to the living room, stretched out on the couch and clicked through programs, looking for reruns of Dynasty.

  The time wasn’t right, so I had to make do with CHiPs.

  I preferred Dynasty because Alexis Carrington Colby Dexter had a great wardrobe and was good with a catty one-liner.

  But it had to be said, Officer Poncherello was not hard on the eyes.

  So I was back with as good as I could get.

  And again…

  It didn’t stink.

  15

  Do You Need CPR?

  Tatiana emerged in time for Buck to take us to the Valley Inn for dinner.

  I had never had occasion to frequent the area where Buck lived (in other words, until I found myself living there, I’d never been).

  Thus, I found the Valley Inn was a no-nonsense but comfortable place that catered directly to the local clientele.

  This being, as far as I could see, bikers, cowboys and mountain people, all who maybe worked in the city, but they didn’t want to live there.

  In other words, they served two things at the Valley Inn: Mexican food and steaks.

  And I would find, on the Mexican food side of things, they did it really well.

  I had chili rellenos and topped up my body’s supply of margaritas.

  Tatiana didn’t throw attitude and was mostly silent.

  Buck matched her silence, and I suspected he did it to concentrate on his Badass Biker Dad Attitude-o-Meter. I suspected this because he kept a close eye on his daughter and seemed prepared to take her down a notch should she mouth off or act in any other way like a brat.

  This left me and Gear carrying on the conversation, which, as it had in the beginning, came easy, mainly because Gear was easygoing, easily likeable and easy to talk to.

  I learned that Gear was playing the field, never had a steady girlfriend, and after he graduated from high school, he wanted to join his dad’s MC and work with the guys in some capacity at Ace in the Hole.

  Though, not in the store.

  On the contracting side of things.

  “Thinkin’ electrician,” he said between huge bites of prime rib. “Though might do it all, ’cept plumbing, ’cause…gross.”

  On my side of things, Gear (and Tatie, if she was listening) learned I’d divorced a jerk, was between jobs, and my best friends were a woman on the run and a Mexican American woman old enough to be my grandmother.

  Gear suggested that Mrs. Jimenez be invited up to Buck’s house the next weekend they were there so she could give her cultural stamp of approval to his dad’s enchiladas. Though I sensed he did this only partly because he was a friendly, sociable guy and wanted to meet Mrs. Jimenez, but mostly he did it as an excuse for his dad to make enchiladas again.

  That said, I was uncertain enchiladas were genuinely Mexican, seeing as Mrs. Jimenez definitely was, and she’d never made them. Therefore, I made a mental note to check on that (I was a librarian, albeit not a practicing one, we did research like no other—in fact, the only people who beat us in research were attorneys and thriller writers, of which many of the latter were both).

  I also decided I liked this idea.

  Both kids took off to their rooms when we got back, and not long after, we heard metal music drifting down from upstairs.

  Buck opened a beer, and without asking me, made me another margarita.

  He then guided me out onto the deck instead of to the TV.

  I found this an interesting choice and I liked it.

  August was quickly heading into September, but the weather was still warm and mild, and any deck should be utilized to its fullest when the opportunities arose.

  Still, this caused me concern as Buck had never done it before.

  We sat in our chairs of the morning. I put my feet up to the lower railing and sipped my margarita. Buck shoved his legs under mine and stretched them out on my rung at the railing so my legs were draped over his.

  Then he spoke, and I would come to under
stand why we were outside.

  “Did a recon of the bathroom, Toots,” he stated, then sipped his beer.

  I thought this was an interesting opener but had no clue why he was imparting this information on me, though I was hoping he wasn’t going to take issue with me commandeering so much of his vanity space for my girlie stuff.

  Therefore, I replied with a noncommittal, “Yes?”

  “Babe, you aren’t on birth control.”

  My body went rock solid.

  Oh God.

  This was true.

  I wasn’t.

  I wasn’t on birth control.

  And a week before, we’d had sex six times.

  Six.

  All unprotected.

  He hadn’t even pulled out.

  So much had happened, it hadn’t even occurred to me.

  And during the act(s), so much was happening, good and bad, it didn’t occur to me.

  Oh.

  God.

  I tried to calculate my period mentally and couldn’t. I’d lost track. Life was too insane. I used to mark it in my day planner religiously. I even had specific little stickers (tiny little presents) I could stick in on the day it began…and the happy day it ended.

  But I no longer had a day planner. I didn’t even have an alarm clock (Buck did, but it was flashing twelve and I couldn’t figure out how to set it, so to stop it from flashing, something that was annoying, I’d just unplugged it).

  It was a wonder I knew what day it was!

  Oh God!

  “Toots,” he called.

  “Give me a minute, I’m trying not to hyperventilate,” I whispered, and he chuckled.

  Chuckled!

  I came unlocked and woodenly turned my head to look at him.

  “This isn’t funny, West,” I informed him of the obvious.

  “Babe,” was his reply.

  I shot bolt upright in the chair, my legs jostling his, and Buck’s arm swung around my shoulders and curled me into him so our faces were close.

  “Calm down, Clara, it’s cool.”

  I knew a lot of things it was, but the one thing I knew it was not was cool.

  Therefore, I cried, “It isn’t!”