Talking After Midnight

by Dakota Cassidy

  “Much?” She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “Bah! Never you worry your pretty multicolored little head, MB. It took you by surprise. I understand. No apologies necessary. But we have it contained for now.”

  The phrase “for now” was what worried her the most. “So, how are you? I feel like I haven’t had the chance to sit and talk with you since you and Jax jumped into the pond of commitment. Is everything goin’ all right? The boys gettin’ along with Maizy?”

  Em’s entire face lit up. “We’ve had some moments of adjustment. You know, sharing me, sharing Jax, but on the whole, everything’s right as rain.”

  It warmed her inside and out that Em had found love and happiness. No one deserved it as much as she did. “I’m happy for you, Em. Really happy.”

  “How about you, MB? How are things with you and Tag and the relationship you’re not having?” she teased.

  Looking down at her lap, she fumbled with her words. Words she wanted to share to express the kind of giddy, light side to her Tag evoked.

  This was what Landon had meant about letting people in, sharing your life, the good and the bad with them. So she tried it on for size. “I really like Tag.”

  Em was up in a flash, pulling her into a tight hug and squealing her approval. “I knew it! I just knew it. I told Dixie and LaDawn I know what fallin’ in love looks like. I’m so happy for you, MB. Just bustin’ with sunshine.”

  Was this what falling in love felt like? Real love? Seeing Em all dimples and twinkly eyes made her smile, too. “I said I liked him.”

  “Oh, like-schmike. Does he make your heart flutter and your tummy tingle? Does the sound of his voice make your arms all goose bumpy? Does he make you feel all gooey inside when you least expect it? Safe, happy, warm?”

  From somewhere deep and buried inside her, a fizzle of Em’s excitement triggered hers. She wanted to share these new emotions with her friends. She wanted to giggle and tell secrets to them. She wanted. “Yes...” she mumbled. Then louder, “Yes! He does all those things.”

  Em jumped up and down, taking Marybell with her. “I’m so excited for you! What a lovely, lovely thing to happen to a person as lovely as you!”

  Lovely. No one had ever called her lovely. “Do you think I’m lovely, Em?”

  She stopped jumping and hugging her and held her at arm’s length. “Of course I do, MB. I think you’re probably one of the kindest people I know. Wait, let me list the ways. Wasn’t it you who held LaDawn’s hair back while she dumped her intestines into that toilet after she got food poisonin’ from Gaylan Foxner’s chicken wings at the fair and stayed with her till the fever passed?”

  She was still green just thinking about it. What a mess. “You’d have done the same, Em.”

  “But we’re talking about you. Isn’t it you who instituted give-Em-a-break day and took the boys off my hands every Saturday mornin’ for a play date in the park for an entire month while I worked up the new Call Girl’s operator policy? After workin’ an eight-hour shift, no less?”

  She averted her eyes, looking to the floor. “I love Gareth and Clifton Junior.”

  “And they love you. But wait, there’s more. Wasn’t that you who dropped everything and took Sanjeev to the doctor when he had kidney stones? Isn’t it you who makes that special blend of tea none of us can copy for Dixie just because you know she likes it? Wasn’t it you who dressed up as Binky the Clown when the real Binky canceled for Gareth’s party just two hours before our guests were due to arrive?”

  Marybell shrugged. “Well, I do have the makeup for it.”

  “That’s not the point. The point is, you’re a terrific friend. One of the best I’ve ever had. Of course, I think you’re lovely, MB, and I want lovely things for you because of it.”

  She didn’t know how to respond or how to get past the lump in her throat. So instead, she stared at Em for a beat before saying, “Thank you, Em.”

  Her lips instantly pursed. “Did that Louella Palmer say somethin’ to you to make you doubt what a kind, generous person you are? Because if she did, you might want to mention to her that it was you who shoveled her mean old mother’s driveway when Kitty was havin’ foot surgery and you were worried she’d slip on wet leaves. Louella was too busy takin’ her mean lessons that day to care what happened to her own mother.”

  Praise was always murky for her. It was a foreign concept she always felt uncomfortable accepting—even when it was lavished upon her by Em. She just wanted to know that somehow, even if she struggled to share her appreciation, these people, who’d grown so important to her, knew she cared.

  Shooting Em an amused gaze, she covered herself. “Now, you know Louella better ’n that. All I have to do is snarl at her, and she’s in a corner huffing. She didn’t say anything to me. I don’t know why I asked you that.”

  One pat to Marybell’s arm, and the concern fled Em’s face. “Good. Now, let’s dish boys. Tell me everything!”

  Easy. She felt easy and lighter, and as Em encouraged her to chat about Tag, she found a new aspect to her inner workings.

  There was a part of her that liked having someone to sigh with over how adorable Tag could be.

  And that was nice.

  * * *

  Tag took a hearty bite of one of the cookies Em had left them on the counter and tried to sort through Marybell’s strange reaction today.

  She’d been utterly panicked, her eyes wild, her hands shaking. It didn’t make any sense. She’d nearly bitten Em’s head off over a low-life reporter as if he had the power to take Dixie and crew down single-handedly.

  He was far less worried about Call Girls than he was about Marybell. He’d felt her panic. He’d seen it in her eyes.

  Jax grabbed a cookie from the plate and nodded a greeting at Tag. “Some kind of crazy over there at Call Girls, huh?”

  “Yeah. No kidding. Em okay?”

  Jax smiled. “My Em? The one who’s suddenly all teeth and snarl? She’s fine. I’ll go pick her up when she’s done for the day. She’s gotten pretty tough, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some asshole stick a mic in her face. MB all right?”

  No. He had the strangest feeling she wasn’t. He just couldn’t figure why. “She was pretty shaken up, but she’s okay now. I’m going to do the same and get her after her shift. Just to be sure that dick isn’t lurking somewhere in the bushes. Can’t figure why any reporter worth his salt would listen to Louella Palmer.”

  “You mean Davison? I hear she got him here by telling him about Landon and the contest between Dixie and Caine. Even I have to admit, it’s pretty damn crazy how they ended up with the company. It’s interesting enough, but will it do what Louella wants it to do—run the girls out of business? Especially in this day and age where everyone outside Plum Orchard won’t find this nearly as appalling as some do here.”

  “Guess it doesn’t matter now. Louella still managed to get someone here. It must have been worthy enough for them to bring a camera crew.”

  Jax stuffed another cookie in his mouth. “But I think she forgets who she’s jacking around. She’s messing with Dixie Davis. I think just because Dixie’s gone good, Louella forgets who she’s playing this game with. Add in LaDawn, and I have to think this won’t last long.”

  He hoped to hell not. Marybell would have a cow if it did.

  “So, are you okay?” Jax asked, peering at his brother over his coffee cup.

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You’ve had your own go-round with the press.”

  Tag shrugged. “I was a big nobody in that mess. They wouldn’t even remember my name. Most of the sympathy and spotlight, rightly so, went to the seniors that jack-off stole from. I managed to lie low except for that one day after they took my deposition. You know, because I was too busy drinking myself into a stupor.”

  “You heard he’s supposedly been seen, right?”

  The fury associated with Leon and what he’d done to Tag’s thriving company had once left him s
eeing red. But if he allowed all the crap he’d been reading as of late to get to him, he’d be right back where he was—drinking at his endless pity parties, missing the things that were important. “I saw, and I’m fine. I’ve given up hope anyone’s ever going to actually find him or his intern or all that money. But I’ve made my peace with it. I think I can safely say, I’ve moved on.” Yeah. He was saying that.

  “Good to hear. And Harper? I know it’s a touchy subject for you, but this is me, touching base.”

  There’d been a time when he didn’t know how to address Harper with anyone but the therapist he’d seen and the mirror he had to look in every morning. Yet, after talking with Gage, it was becoming easier. His response was honest. “I miss her.”

  Jax grimaced, rubbing his jaw. “Me, too, buddy. She was sort of our glue, huh?”

  The best kind of glue there was. Pretty, levelheaded, smart, protective glue. She’d always been the soothing balm to their brotherly arguments, the voice of reason, the first one to chip in when Jax kept Maizy after his best friend left her to him when he died. “She was.”

  “But you know, I’d like to think we learned how to make our own glue without her here. She taught us well. It took a lot of manpower, and one helluva learning curve, but I think we’re back on track.” Jax’s smile was fond, just like always whenever Harper’s name came up.

  Tag’s head dipped, his eyes focused on the floor. “I didn’t help that much. Have I ever said how sorry I am for what happened?” Jesus, he was sorry.

  “You have,” was his brother’s husky reply. “I don’t want your apologies. I just want you to feel good again. Start over, get your life back into the game again. That’s the best way to honor Harper, you know. It’s what she would have demanded from you had it been me or Gage.”

  He did know. It was slow to sink in, but it was happening in small spurts.

  “So, Gage tells me you two are making a bid for Falsom’s mill.”

  A deep sense of satisfaction welled up in him, and the pain of remembering Harper eased. “That’s the safely-moving-on part.”

  Jax slapped him on the back. “Proud of you,” he said, wandering out of the kitchen with a smile.

  For the first time in a long time when bringing up the state of his life, he and Jax managed to get through a conversation without any angry words shooting out of their mouths, and it felt good.

  It was pretty safe to say, that, too, was all part of moving on.

  * * *

  Tag waited for her just outside the guesthouse doors when her shift was done, a hot chocolate in his hands and a kiss on her lips. “You feel better tonight?”

  His eyes were fraught with concern. Why wouldn’t they be? She’d behaved like a raving lunatic. With time to gather her senses, she’d talked herself back off that ledge she teetered on lately.

  Today, and her reaction to today, was a perfect opening to the discussion they had to have. Yet she clammed up tighter than a drum, too afraid. But the incident had also motivated her to find a private investigator. He was expensive. It would cost her a chunk of her savings, but finding out who took that picture of her would be money well spent.

  He draped an arm around her shoulder and began to walk toward the square. “So, I’ll ask again, you okay?”

  She sipped the hot chocolate, grateful for the warmth on her hands. “I overreacted. I’m sorry. I was overwhelmed and it set my mouth to runnin’, and... Anyway, I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t embarrass you.”

  “Rest your pretty spiked head, there’s nothing you can do to embarrass me that I haven’t done myself.”

  Leaning into him, letting his warmth pick away at the icy layer of fear she’d carried around all night, made her curious. “I can’t imagine you embarrassing yourself.”

  “That’s because you’ve never seen me drunk.”

  She heard the pain in his words, the effort to pull them from his throat. “Bad subject?”

  “Not so much anymore. I’m an alcoholic. I always will be. I’m an alcoholic because I let myself be.”

  “Why?”

  He stopped walking and stared her right in the eye. “Because my life fell right apart, Marybell Lyman, and I was too lazy to pick up the pieces. Buying booze was easier.”

  The word How? slipped from her mouth before she could put any sensitive thought behind it. “Wait. Stop. I’m prying. If you’re uncomfortable, don’t—”

  “I lost my business, got completely ripped off. Then I lost my fiancée.” More directness. It was refreshing considering that she lived a life full of secrets. Yet it frightened her because she couldn’t live her life without her secrets. Not yet.

  Her antennas went on alert when she considered his fiancée. He’d lost a fiancée, too. There was no end to this havoc. “I didn’t know you had a fiancée.”

  His smile was wry under the moonlight as they began to walk again. “She apparently didn’t, either. Alison and I grew up together and eventually became college sweethearts. We’d been together a long time. She left me at the beginning of my downward spiral—just after I lost all my investments and my company and when she realized if we were still going do this thing, it was going to be on the cheap. There’d be no cathedral weddings and ten K in wedding dresses. There’d be no honeymoon, either.”

  She couldn’t ask him how he’d lost his money and manage to stay comfortably in her skin. To play dumb and behave as though she didn’t know the intimate details of his financial downfall made her want to vomit. That was going too far.

  So she chose to stick to the parts she didn’t know. Alison leaving him. It was when people stayed that counted. Maybe that’s where this understanding between them came from—this connection? “So she left you at the worst point in your life?”

  “I can’t really blame Alison. I was pretty shitty up to the point that she left. But she was cheating on me before I shut everyone in my life out. My drinking was the perfect escape for her.”

  “That’s awfully fair of you.” What had a drunken Tag been like? She’d encountered her fair share of drunks on the seedier side of Atlanta, but she’d never been involved with one. He was so funny and playful, she couldn’t imagine him any other way.

  “I’m a mean drunk. I don’t mean physically abusive, but I was definitely surly and difficult. That’s how I got a Little Mermaid tattoo, remember? Alison was halfway out the door when I lost my company, but she’d been lying to me for a long time. She nailed me with her cheating, completely floored me. It was the last thing I expected, finding out she wasn’t who I thought she was. The drinking was just my excuse to feel sorry for myself.”

  Finding out Alison wasn’t who he thought she was. The words made her want to confess right then and there. They instilled fear in her, panic for the time when she’d have to tell him who she was. Instead, she said, “Sounds like something right out of AA.”

  He nodded his head in the shadows. “It is. Maybe not word for word, but it’s what I took away from it.”

  They stopped at the pathway leading to her apartment. “What made you turn the corner?” She stopped him before he could answer. She was asking him to reveal his innermost demons—she was asking for full disclosure, yet she was hiding. Unfair. “Don’t answer. I’m just pryin’ again.”

  Wrapping an arm around her waist, Tag fused his hips with hers. “Well, you are my girlfriend. Girlfriends can ask questions.”

  “But...I...”

  He read her mind. “You’ll tell me whatever you need to all in due time. Until then, I’ll be the open book. My big shot in the head, when I finally got a grip on myself, was when my sister, Harper, died.”

  Tragedy, the bucket of ice water over your head. Yet she didn’t know what to say, how to make the flash of pain in his eyes better.

  How did you make someone’s death better? You didn’t. You waited it out. You prayed it would ease. She’d never experienced sorrow like when Landon died, and while it probably wasn’t the same as your sibling dying, it was a hurt she un
derstood.

  “I’m sorry,” she offered, putting her free hand on his chest, feeling feeble and stupid.

  “I was sorry, too. I was sorry that I was passed out cold in a hotel room, my cell phone shut off because I didn’t pay the bill. I missed Jax’s phone call when he called to tell me Harper’d been mugged and stabbed.”

  Tag paused for a moment while Marybell waited, instinctively knowing there was more.

  His sigh was ragged, his body tense. “But what I’m sorriest about is the final phone call I missed when the doctors realized she wasn’t going to make it, and I screwed up my last chance to say goodbye to her.”

  Marybell stared up at him, her heart crashing in her chest, her throat tight. “Because you were too drunk.”

  Tag stared right at her, no hiding. No plays for sympathy in his eyes—just dead-on and matter-of-fact. “Because I was too drunk. I was a goddamn drunk, and that’s who Taggart Hawthorne was just a couple of years ago.”

  Tag was opening his scars and bleeding right out in the open.

  Now, more than ever, she wanted to tell him she knew what it was like to bleed, too.

  Sixteen

  When the words were directed at Marybell, Tag was surprised to find that when he finally said them, they came out far less venomous than they had in a long time. He’d said them only in angry rants to a therapist, to his brothers, to his mother, to himself.

  He’d almost choked on the pain of those words more times than he cared to remember. The impact of Harper’s passing, the last opportunity to tell her how much he loved her got all fucked up because he was lying in a puddle of his own damn vomit.

  That was the truth. He’d never forget the pounding of his head when Jax and Gage finally reached him. That ache, that incessant drone of sound in his head, compounded by a massive hangover. He almost hadn’t been able to process the words for the ache in his head.

  He’d never forget when they’d broken his door down that next day, thinking he was dead, too. He’d never forget the worry on their faces until they realized he was doing nothing more than drowning in his own damn misery.