by Candy Sloane
“I told you it’s complicated.”
“Were you happier before you got to the reunion, or now?” Cynthia asked.
“Now,” Val admitted. She didn’t even have to think. For the first time all weekend, the answer was right there sitting across her line of sight at the bar.
Chapter Ten
Alec nursed his beer. The stools up at the bar were decorated to look like pool balls and a table was in use behind him. The soft thwack of the balls as they hit felt and slid into velvet pockets was a welcome theme song; anything was better than the buzzing in his head.
Honestly, he would have played stupid miniature golf, even with Reece’s obnoxious demands, but he needed to gather himself when it came to Val.
Right now, he was anything but gathered.
He was uncontrollably replaying every sensual moment they’d had and trying to figure out how he could convince her to repeat any and all of them. But she’d stipulated only one time, and he’d given it to her. Even if he couldn’t think about anything else, it was done. It wasn’t just sex, either; he wanted the after, too. He craved what they’d denied themselves, holding her, kissing the top of her head as she lay against his chest.
But she didn’t want that. Her rules—their past made that abundantly clear.
He took a sip of his beer, hoping the calmness would come. Welcoming the numbness he craved, the numbness he’d gotten used to. Maybe he couldn’t get her out of his mind because he wasn’t blackout drunk. That, at least, he could control.
Or he could have, if Valerie wasn’t on the hole directly across from him. She was bent over in concentration, her heels digging into the AstroTurf, her skirt riding up her thighs as she eyed a shot. His cock shifted as she bent lower, her tight ass calling out like a fucking beacon. The way she touched him, lay her lips on his shoulder, was everything he ever wanted in the world.
His eyes remained on her, and condensation fogged his beer glass. He needed to get a fucking clue. She didn’t want him, and he didn’t deserve her. Not ten years ago, and not now.
He forced himself to look away before she had him in orbit, pulled him across the bar and all the holes and into her arms.
What the hell is happening to me? All he knew was that now that he’d had a taste of Val, he couldn’t stop.
Could he not get her out of his mind because he’d known her forever, or was it because in the portion of his heart he usually crammed down, he wondered if maybe he could know her forever?
Know her as his Val and his Dirty Girl, the best of both worlds, the best.
But how could he even be considering that? When he’d offered her even a small taste of forever ten years ago, she’d rejected him. He was not the guy who could give her the promise she dreamed of, and she knew it.
He’d panicked at the thought of going to New York alone. His whole life he’d wanted to escape, but when he had it in his hands, the uncertainty was too much. The only certain thing in his life up to that point had been Valerie. He’d begged her to come to keep that certainty, that security. He’d asked for himself and not for her.
When she’d said no, it cemented what he always knew. What he still believed. Forever was for other people. For people who hadn’t grown up with his parents’ marriage—his father staying because he had nowhere else to go and his mother staying because she was too scared to leave—he bearing the guilt and weight of it all.
He pushed the thoughts away and attempted to enjoy the beer in his hand, the quiet he hoped it would bring to his mind, when Randy Tines strode up next to him.
Guess Reece had lost another of her flock.
“Alec!” He slapped his back sloppily and stumbled as he took the stool next to him.
Randy was clearly using this weekend for debauchery. Not that Alec should talk. Randy’s antics didn’t come close to what Alec got up to most nights, and his behavior was encouraged by the other guys in Chronic Disharmony, his manager, and the women who let him keep his life squarely in the now.
“Midget golf.” Randy groaned. “Who the hell put Reece in charge of this thing?”
“She did.”
Randy let out a long booming guffaw.
Alec missed being around people who really knew him. Not like he and Randy were close in high school, but the history they shared linked them. The guys in the band were great, but they only knew a certain kind of Alec. He gave them the past he’d always wanted rather than miring them in his truth. They didn’t know about his mom, they definitely didn’t know about his dad, and he never talked to them about anything besides the unholy trinity of bands—sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Only Valerie knew his real story, the shitty ashes he’d risen from and the way he carried them in his chest like an urn. Maybe that was why her touch haunted him like a ghost in racy lingerie.
“Besides,” Alec added, “no one else wanted to be in charge.”
“Good point.” Randy spit his P. He leaned in conspiratorially. “If I was running this thing we’d be doing a whole lot more of what we did last night.”
Alec’s mind reeled at the mention. He knew it had only been the night before when they’d played Seven Minutes in Heaven, but it seemed like weeks had passed. Between him and Valerie everything changed, or had changed. Why did he keep forgetting it was only going to happen once?
Because he wanted to forget. Because he hoped she might break another of her rules.
“You definitely found your calling.”
“I know.” Randy grew more animated. “I call myself the closet Casanova. Worked with you two, didn’t it?”
Alec shook his head and was about to correct him, but Randy continued. He was the kind of drunk where talking was the only thing rooting him in reality. “Fate had put you guys together years ago, but you”—Randy pressed his finger into Alec’s shoulder—“were too much of a pussy back then. Fate knew it would have another chance. Last night, Fate took it.”
“You have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.”
Pussy he was not. He’d tried to make something with Valerie. Sure, he hadn’t known what he was asking for, but he’d tried. Fate had been the one who fucked that up.
But it was hard to deny that it seemed like Fate was giving them a second chance. Valerie had just broken up with someone. He wasn’t really involved with anyone at the moment. He’d told her for some reason, just before they walked into a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven, that she needed to get her brains fucked out to forget her ex-boyfriend, and when she “spun the bottle” it had landed on him. Fuck. If it wasn’t Fate, or whatever, it was one fucking insane coincidence after another.
If what had happened between them was fated, shouldn’t it keep happening?
Or was Val’s request for only one encounter Fate, too? Life letting him know he would continue to get kicked in the balls when it came to love. Not that he’d ever tried to make friends with love in the first place.
Love? Fuck, he wasn’t drunk enough to be throwing words like that around, even in his head.
“You can thank me at your wedding.” Randy wobbled on his barstool.
“That is never happening,” Alec said quickly. His face heated, and clammy sweat clung to his skin.
A wedding was Valerie’s dream, not his—and not with him. That was why no matter what feelings she was starting to ignite in him, he needed to keep dousing them out. The point of every casual relationship he’d ever had was to run away from that word—the prison that his mother still lived in.
Only Val knew that. Val, the person who Randy thought he should marry. He took a long drink.
“Another round,” Randy said to the bartender, indicating their empty glasses. “On his tab.”
Alec tilted his head. This guy had serious balls.
“What? I know you can afford it, and since I won’t be at your wedding, you can give me that thank-you now.”
“Whatever,” Alec replied, giving a curt nod to the bartender. He could buy everyone at the reunion a beer if
Randy was going to get technical about it.
“Dude.” Randy tried to focus his bloodshot eyes on him. “It’s too bad you’re with Val now, because I am getting so much pussy at this reunion. It’s like a vending machine.”
Vending machine? Alec’s cock pulsed, as if that term had turned it Pavlovian now.
But why the hell had Randy picked that word? Was he going to say he called the women he slept with Dirty Girl next? Of course, Alec had never called anyone that before Valerie. He knew he would never call anyone that again.
He remembered those old Hollywood movies where an angel was sent down to help the main character put his life into focus. He glanced at Randy Tines, sweaty, red-faced, a thick neck topped by a blond buzz cut you could use to scrub pots and pans. Randy was no angel. He proved that as he continued.
“Yeah, stick a compliment in about how much hotter they are since high school and bam, a pussy slides out.”
“Congrats, man,” Alec replied with zero enthusiasm.
“That must be what your life is always like, huh?” Randy considered. “Pussy as far as the eye can see—acres and acres. Instead of a vending machine, you have a twenty-four-hour pussy farm.”
“Pretty close,” Alec admitted quietly. Once the band took off, it had been a smorgasbord of willing, docile, seemingly sex-starved women who were eager to do whatever he wanted.
That had been his life; his uncomplicated, perfect life. But he was starting to see that those women were using him as much as he’d been using them. He was starting to see that he’d been treating those women like Band-Aids for a wound they could never heal. A wound that had started with his father’s blows but had been opened by Valerie’s rejection the day after graduation.
“It must be fucking great.” Randy smiled wistfully.
That was when he noticed the gold wedding band glinting on Randy’s finger. “You’re married?”
“Not this weekend.” Randy smiled, his teeth sticky with beer.
“Fuck, man.” Alec’s voice went low, his jaw clenched. “You can’t be doing that shit.” His father had cheated on his mother for years. An abuser and a cheater and a liar, and yet his mother still stayed with him.
“Seriously? The guy with a pussy parade is telling me that.”
“I’m not married,” Alec said.
“That’s because for the past fourteen years you and your wife,” Randy hissed, “couldn’t get up the balls to fuck each other until someone forced you.”
Alec screeched his chair back, his muscles quivered and tensed. He wanted to knock the shit out of Randy Tines. He wanted to turn him into a sniveling stain on his barstool. But he didn’t fight people. He’d been hit too many times to ever hit anyone, even someone who deserved it.
He turned to Randy and steadied himself. “Finish your fucking beer and get the fuck away from me.”
Alec noticed a commotion coming from the front window of the bar; a few local news guys were setting up with cameras. He hated this part of fame.
Alec leaned over to the bartender. “Is there a place I can have a drink with no windows?” He glared at Randy. “Preferably alone?”
…
They set Alec up in the pinball room. People who weren’t a part of the reunion were using it, and Alec had softened the blow by saying yes to their autographs and selfies and buying them all a round of drinks.
He’d let any fan who asked take a picture with him, have anything they wanted from him because they actually gave something back—energy or drive or inspiration.
The media was a different story; they just took. It reminded him of the way his father treated his mother. Taking, taking, taking, and giving nothing back but a roof over her head, from what Alec could see. That was why Alec had bought her the house, so maybe she’d stop letting his father take before there was nothing left.
Of course, his father also gave her things Alec couldn’t see. Things he could hear, the same things he’d given Alec when he was too small to fight back. Things they’d both had to hide in long sleeves and pants even on the hottest summer days. When Alec got too big to hit anymore, his father seemed to go double time on his mother. While he wanted to stop him then, he also hoped his mother would do it—finally stand up to him, be strong enough to walk away for both of them.
She never did. So instead of blasting music as loud as he could in his bedroom to drown out the sound of her cries, he’d escape to Valerie’s.
The guilt still ate at him. Yet another reason he’d bought the house for his mom. The house he would probably have to sell. It had been vacant for so long they were starting to have problems with vandalism. The neighbors were complaining, and it was in the kind of neighborhood where if someone didn’t occupy it soon, he would have to let it go.
Lose his mother’s one chance at escape because she wouldn’t accept she needed it.
He had to try one last time. He stood up straighter and clicked his mother’s number on his phone.
“How’s Valerie?” she asked before he could even say hello.
He hadn’t called to talk about Valerie; fucking Fate needed to mind its own fucking business.
“She’s fine, she says hi,” he managed.
“Oh, tell her I say hi, too.” His mom’s voice trilled with the excited pitch it got when she talked about Val.
His mom had always wanted them together. The minute she met Valerie when he was fourteen, she’d whispered, Hold on to that one.
At the time he’d responded, “Gross, Mom,” with the signature whine that he carried until his deep baritone came in.
Could Fate have been working then, too?
“I already told her, Mom,” he breathed, trying to keep his focus. “You texted when I got here, remember?”
“Oh, I know, but tell her I say hi again.”
“Okay.” He couldn’t help but let out a chuckle at his mom’s obvious quasi-daughter-crush. The laughter grew when he remembered Val’s face as he gave her his mom’s greeting in the elevator last night. Hopefully he’d have better timing sharing this latest one.
It was one of the only things his mom ever asked him to do once he left home, say hi to Valerie and please come and talk to your father.
The Valerie request had been the only thing he ever complied with. His parents lived in Maine now, moved onto his grandfather’s old farm. He’d never been there. He would never go there.
He took a long breath, kneaded his fingers into his temple, anticipating the pounding pain he knew would come. Valerie would have had this conversation over with already. Might even have had his mom moved in and settled by now.
Communication: one of the other things his family wasn’t big on.
“I’m going to see the house tomorrow. I wanted to make sure your garden is being taken care of.” His fingers moved up to his forehead, the disgustingly familiar throb building in intensity. It hadn’t been what he wanted to say. What he wanted to say was, It is time for you to finally move into the home I bought you. It is time for you to finally leave him. It is time for you to be able to do what I was able to do.
I am doing for you what you could never do for me.
His mother’s garden was her one sanctuary. Dad could yell and push and squeeze her arms until there were worm-like welts on them behind the shielded walls of the house, but in the garden she was free. They both had been. As free as he’d felt in the band room or in Val’s bedroom.
As free as he’d felt inside Val that day.
“Alec.” She sighed. “It’s not my garden, it’s yours.”
They’d had this fight, this passive aggressive fight, what seemed like hundreds of times now. Something about this time was supposed to be different if Fate were truly on his side.
Wouldn’t his mom finally see? Wouldn’t she finally say, yes I’m ready. Get me away from this monster.
Unfortunately, she also loved that monster in her own sick way. That monster was her husband, his father. He paced the floor trying to think of a response, but there w
asn’t one. There was only what he wanted and what she was not willing to do.
Instead of doing what he’d asked, what he’d begged her to do, she chose to stay with the man who’d made his life hell for eighteen years.
“I’m going to have to sell it if you don’t move in,” he said. It was a new addition to their conversation, but she had to suspect it was coming.
Besides, he needed her to know this wasn’t going to be her somewhere over the rainbow forever. If she didn’t take it now, it would be gone.
“Honey.” Her voice went low. “I appreciate it, Lord knows I appreciate it more than I can even say, but you know I can’t.”
“You can,” he said simply. “You deserve to be happy.” What he didn’t add was you deserve to be free—like me.
Even in his thoughts, though, he was a hypocrite. He could believe he was free all he wanted, but the pounding in his head told a different story.
He heard her breath on the line as she took a sip of what he knew was peppermint tea, and there were crickets behind her. She was on the porch, or in her new garden touching one of the petals on the rose bushes she was so proud of. It made him think of Val, the smell of her perfume.
“You know I appreciate whatever strength I was able to give you that got you away from him, but I’m not you. I chose this life, and divorce is not an option.”
Her excuse, her forever excuse: the church wouldn’t let her leave.
“He cheats on you.” It was the freshest offense in his mind.
“Not anymore,” she said. “You know he doesn’t do any of the things he did anymore. He’s changed, Alec. I wish you’d come here and see.”
“Right,” he managed. It didn’t seem coincidental that things got better for his mom once he was gone. Maybe he’d bought her the house just so he could have a home where he could feel welcome again.
This was where the conversation always dripped down to. That his father had changed. Gone to God—the God who wouldn’t let his mother divorce him—and had all the dickhead sucked out. For his mother’s sake, he hoped it was true. He hadn’t seen his father in ten years, since he took off for New York City.