by K. L. Kreig
I jump when a hand gently grips my neck a second before scruff tickles my cheek. My earlobe is then between the gentle bite of teeth. “What’s wrong, Swan?”
“Nothing,” I rasp back just as Cathy sets another clear-tinged drink in front of me. She scoots her attention briefly to Kael before moving along to the next customer.
“Really? Why the switch to the hard stuff?”
“I—” I freeze. I don’t want to lie to Kael. That’s no way to start off a marriage. But I don’t want him to know I was just hobnobbing with Killian in the dark in the back of the bar if he doesn’t already know. That I almost kissed him. That I’m still thinking about kissing him. And I can’t tell by his tone if he does or not.
“It’s MaryLou, isn’t it?”
The lids on my eyes fall shut. Out of relief or guilt, I can’t be sure. You’re sure, my inner self quietly chastises. He’s giving me an out, so what do I do? Do I do the right thing? Oh fuck, no. That would be too hard. Right now, I just can’t deal with any more hard.
Black-hearted sinner. That’s me.
So I take the gift he’s handing me.
I take it and sprint.
“Yes.” I’m not sure he hears me, but he does feel the nod of my head.
Kael takes the glass I’m currently clinging to like a buoy. Pries my fingers off. Sets it down before gently spinning me around. Patrons are elbowing on either side to get their next mind-numbing fix, but Kael shelters me. Protects me. As always. When he takes my face in his hands and tips up, the movement causes a stray drop of water to slip from the corner of my eye. He wipes it away with his thumb.
“Baby, don’t cry.”
“I’m not. I’m just…”
“Hurt?” he prods.
“Yeah.” It’s not technically a lie. I was hurt. I am hurting. Just not for the reasons he thinks.
“This is a big step for them. I’m sure she just doesn’t want to get her hopes up and then have everyone know about it if it doesn’t happen for them again.”
“I know,” I manage to muster.
I should be thinking about MaryLou. About Kael. About anything except what I am. Instead, I want to look around. See if Killian is still here. Watching. Waiting for another opportunity to strike.
In some ways, I wish Kael did know he was here. Maybe then Killian would just leave us in peace. Maybe I should just tell him? Be courageous. Do the right thing. I stare into his guileless, loving eyes and I know I need to vomit it all. Tell him everything. I want to deserve the way he’s looking at me right now. I open my mouth to do just that when J Ton—aka Johnny Littleton—announces Kael’s name.
The crowd goes wild. And I mean, on their feet, clapping, screaming, cheering wild. The place is nuts. The grin that comes over my husband’s face is absolutely boyish. Glorious. I fall into it, forgetting everything that happened just minutes ago.
“What’s going on?” I laugh as he drags us through the crowd toward the tiny half-moon stage. When we reach the front, someone sets a chair right smack in the meager open space. Kael gestures for me to sit then proceeds to lean down and kiss me hard, slow, and very, very thoroughly. The catcalls spur him on and he comes back for one more. I’m panting. Damp, in all places one can be damp.
He hops up on the stage where J Ton has placed a stool. He hands Kael a guitar. Kael’s mischievous eyes snap to mine the second he’s taken a seat and has perched the guitar just so in his lap.
This is exactly what he did the night he asked me to marry him. Not only can he play the guitar like a pro, he has a voice like melted butter. He got up on that stage and turned me into a blubbering mess when he sang Lenny Kravitz’s “I’ll Be Waiting.”
If you’ve ever listened to that song, it starts out with him singing about how he knows someone else broke the girl’s heart. Says he’ll give her time. Says he’s the one who truly loves her. How he’ll be waiting until she’s ready. Kael never took his eyes from me the entire time. Every perfectly tuned note, every haunting word was sung just for me. When he was done, he hopped down, dropped to both knees in front of me, dug a three-carat diamond from his pocket, and nearly wept himself as he bared his soul to me.
“I know it’s soon, Swan. But at the same time, it isn’t. I’ve been by your side our entire lives. No one knows you better than me. You breathe, so do I. You hurt, I ache. When you smile…fuck, Mavs, it’s hard to see through the stars blinding me. Every time you laugh, I fall a little more in love with you, if that’s possible. I want to be with you until we’re gray and wrinkled and don’t give a shit if what we say offends people. No one will love you like I do, Swan. Your soul belongs to me. Everything you need is here, staring right at you. If you’re not ready, I understand. But know that I’ll be waiting. I’ll wait as long as it takes. As long as you need. But if you are…then put me out of my misery and be my wife. I promise you won’t regret a single second of our life together.”
I laughed and sobbed through his heartfelt, heart-melting proposal. How could a girl say no to that? No one in their right mind would. Every single woman and half the men in the bar that night were misty-eyed. I couldn’t have the man I really wanted and here was a man who genuinely wanted me. Loved me so much I could actually feel the warmth of it surround me. I was wrapped up in the moment; I said yes.
Kael was already a household name, but after that night, people from surrounding towns started coming out on Friday karaoke nights just to see if there would be a repeat performance.
Guess he chose tonight to do it. I half wonder if it’s coincidence or more?
With a wink and a smirk, Kael strums the strings, dragging me back from then to now. He clears his throat and announces, “This song is for my new crazy-hot wife, Maverick Shepard. There’s no one I’d rather waste time with than you, Swan.” The last part is said low and sultry with promises to come later.
All the females swoon. Including me.
Then he starts singing.
“Oh fuck,” I mutter before covering my mouth with my hand. I’m welling up as the raspy words of Saint Asonia’s ballad “Waste My Time” filter into a room that’s now humming quietly with anticipation.
The lyrics are soft and beautiful. Once again, our world narrows. Me and him. He’s telling me I’m that one person he just wants to lay back in the cool grass under a moonlit sky with and simply do nothing. The nothing that is perfect. The nothing that isn’t wasting time at all, but becomes moments that live inside you always, no matter what else is going on around you. You know you’re with the right person when you can do that. Just be. I’ve always, always felt that way with Kael. There’s a sense of peaceful comfort and tranquility with him I don’t have with anyone else. Even Killian.
At that realization, suddenly those cracks I told MaryLou about widen and spread. I practically feel them snaking around me, splitting me open. So much of Kael floods into me in a single second it makes my breath catch hard. I sink into the words he’s singing. Live in his joy. Break apart a bit more.
The song ends way too soon. The room is still. Not even a sniffle or a cough. We stare at each other until he professes, “I’ll love you ’til the day I die, Mavs.” I whisper it back, my voice gone. My face streaked. My heart crammed full and beating out of my chest.
Our thrall breaks when a deep male voice yells, “Thanks for making the rest of us look bad, man,” and the entire bar erupts in laughter and whistles and deafening chatter. Then someone starts chanting, “Encore, encore,” and everyone else joins in.
Kael glances at me and raises a brow. Silently asks for permission. At this second, the only thing I want to do is take my husband outside, unzip his denims, and suck him off until he’s dry and spent. But he’s a showman, too, and I can tell he’s itching to do this. So I shrug and smirk. Hold my index finger up indicating one more.
J Ton comes over, and he and Kael confer quietly. Kael hands him the guitar. A few seconds later, the familiar notes of eighties hair band Steelheart’s “I’ll Never Let You Go”
blare loudly through the speakers. Kael grabs the mic once again and proceeds to not only put on one heck of a show, he continues to melt me in the process with a song he used to teasingly sing me when we were teenagers. He even falls to his knees during the crescendo, like he always used to.
Everyone is on their feet. Fists pumping. Lighters and cell phones in the air. Singing every word. It’s like falling back in time ten years. The only thing he’s missing is the long, permed hair and a red-checkered headband.
I laugh.
He laughs.
We take more baby steps forward.
And I never do look around to see if Killian is still there.
I no longer care.
“I heard you put on quite the performance Friday night,” Jilly says in a catty tone she has down to a science.
Fuck her.
Fuck me. This is the last place I want to be. Kael and I have barely left the bedroom since we arrived home Friday night. In fact, we didn’t even make it to bed for the first round. I jumped him the second we were in the car. My hand was down his pants before the door closed. I had his already-stiff cock trapped between my lips before we pulled out of the parking space. I thought for sure I’d make him blow before we got home. But the guy has the stamina of a prize bull. Instead, he had me riding him the second we pulled into the driveway, both of us too impatient to make it inside. I came on a cry that I’m sure carried over to Helena’s open windows. Whoops. Oh well.
Kael takes Jilly’s goading in good stride, though. “Oh, I’m sure it was blown out of proportion. It was just a couple of songs.” He brushes his lips against my temple. I smile.
“Oh, it wasn’t blown out of proportion, babe,” I say smugly, eyeing my sister with glee. I wonder who she heard this story from? Killian? Did he stay and watch, then? Was he witness to what I felt was an obvious change in Kael’s and my relationship? If he was, I can’t read his face. He’s been avoiding me since we got here and disappeared ten minutes ago with his cell pressed to his ear. He always works. Twenty-four seven. He’s driven, I’ll give him that, but I surmise it’s to get away from his wife.
“He was almost as brilliant as the night he asked me to marry him,” I add. A night I never stopped to appreciate. That makes me sad because I’ll never get it back.
“Thanks, Swan,” Kael whispers against the shell of my ear.
Jilly looks away, angry. Jealous, more likely.
I’ve never been able to work it out, but my sister has always had something against me. If I’m happy, she tries to snuff it out. She took the man I loved; yet that still doesn’t seem to have satisfied her.
The story she tells about how Killian asked her to marry him has to be embellished or simply made up. It’s so cheesy. Killian would have never done anything like that. Hire a mariachi band? He hates mariachi bands. Mexican food gives him heartburn. And he’s not a grandstander in any sense of the word. But he always stays silent when she tells her tall tale. He never validates or refutes. Just stays mute and grimaces.
“So, Kael, how is the Mills County contract coming along?” my father asks. “We need to secure that project, son. The potential bonus on that one is huge.”
Kael stiffens slightly beside me. He never talks about work with me. Never. It’s like this big black hole he doesn’t want me sunk in with him. My daddy is demanding, driven, and ruthless. I sometimes wonder if everything he does is aboveboard. When I worked for him for two years, I didn’t see outright unscrupulous behavior, but it was questionable at times. Government contracts are tricky. You’re talking about millions and millions of taxpayer dollars at play. It’s all too easy to shuffle that money around with a simple sleight of the hand that would take auditors years, if ever, to find.
“There are a couple of snags with completion requirements, but we’re working through it, Richard. No worries. I always get it done.” I did not mistake the fact he bit out the last part as if telling my father to butt out.
“And the Frigid Airways lawsuit? Did you get the deposition pushed out?”
Now, this one I’m familiar with. A small airline is suing my father’s company because a piece of the runway was damaged during landing, causing an eight-passenger Cessna Crusader to lose control and crash. Luckily no one was severely hurt, but since DeSoto Construction was responsible for laying that particular part of the landing strip, they are named in the lawsuit.
When Kael removes his arm from around me and leans forward, proceeding to launch into a bunch of legalese I couldn’t care less about my attention shifts to my mother.
She’s anxious. It’s so obvious. I want to ask her why she let us in her hallowed little space in the first place if she’s going to need an entire bottle of Xanax to get through it. Her gaze keeps flitting to the plush, pure-white carpet now matted with dozens of footprints. I hope when Kael’s parents arrive that lessens the tension somewhat but since it will multiply the rug mashing by two more souls, though, I doubt it.
The posh “sitting” room we’re currently occupying is a sanctuary we were under no circumstances allowed to enter as kids. I never understood why. It’s just a room. I always wondered if this was a shrine of some sort. Did this space hold someone’s sacred ashes? Precious artifacts? Family secrets? Jilly and I both got busted several times sneaking in here. We attempted to cover our tracks. Every time, we failed. Somehow, someway my mother could always tell. She has a carpet rake, for God’s sake. A. Carpet. Rake. Who rakes their fucking carpet? It’s carpet.
As the boring discussion drones on, I take the opportunity to escape my family for a few moments. Making sure to squish my toes extra hard into the fibers below, I mosey into the kitchen to get a glass of iced tea. For all my mother’s faults, she makes a mean sweet tea. It’s only 10:00 a.m., but it’s shaping up to be a real scorcher today, a little unusual for late September. A cold glass of tea is the perfect antidote to the heat.
I’m halfway across the kitchen when I falter. Killian is standing off to the left, by the fridge. Not even two feet away. Staring at me. His eyes burn. I know it’s for me. I want to turn around and flee back to the safety of Kael’s arms, but dammit…I want that tea more. I’m so thirsty my mouth hurts. And I’m not going to let the way Killian is scoping me up and down stop me. As much as I wish I could, avoiding him for the rest of our lives is simply impossible. I just need to develop enough calluses that he can no longer penetrate me.
Yikes. Bad word choice.
“You look stunning.”
“Thanks,” I reply tightly trying to skirt around him. But he gently wraps his fingers around the crook of my arm as I brush by, stopping me.
“Don’t…” he chokes softly. “Don’t go yet. Please.”
Don’t do it, I coach myself. Don’t look at him. Don’t give him that satisfaction. Unfortunately whenever he touches me, any resolve I’ve built up melts like a sugar cube in water.
My head turns, even though I command it to stay forward. When my gaze lands on him, his pierces me so far I should feel violated. I stand there for seconds, minutes. I don’t know because time now seems irrelevant.
I take him in. Really look at him, deep and long.
Friday night it was dark, but in the light of day, he looks…defeated.
He has more worry lines circling his eyes and forehead. The grooves framing his mouth look thicker, cutting into his otherwise youthful face. His eyes…they’re hiding ghosts, secrets. He looks as if he’s aged ten years since he got married. He deserves it, Mavs. Sometimes, the bed you lie on is filled with shards of glass and duplicity and it fucking hurts to sleep on it night after night. I should know.
“I’m not on board with the baby thing. That’s what I’ve been trying to talk to you about. I just wanted you to know,” he proceeds to whisper.
I push back against the hope stirring within me. It doesn’t belong there anymore, and if I keep letting it gasp another goddamn breath I’ll never snuff it out. “Maybe you and your wife should get on the same page then,” I retort sh
arply.
“You know your sister once she gets something in her head.”
Boy, do I ever.
“What do you want, Shep?” I finally make myself ask.
“I don’t like it when you call me that,” he bites on a low growl.
What the fuck? Even his wife calls him Shep.
“Why? Everyone else does.”
“You’re not everyone else. You’re like no one else, Maverick.”
Our eyes remain glued on each other. They bounce back and forth, gauging. Once upon a time, when he said something like that, it would stir flutters deep in my belly. I would replay the words for days, always finding new, poetic meanings. Now all it does is blend confusion and anger and regret until it’s runny brown and stinks of shit.
I sigh heavily, tired of his fucked-up head trip. “Back to my original question, what do you want, Shep?”
His eyes harden at the punctuation of his nickname that “everyone” uses. He leans toward me until I think he’s going to kiss me. My entire body tenses, unsure if I want his face wearing my lipstick or my handprint.
“I want every fucking thing I can’t have,” he tells me hotly.
Handprint, without question.
“Whose fault is that?” I prod evenly, proud of myself for holding it together this long. “You gave me up. You walked away from everything we had. No answers. No explanations. No second thoughts. No nothing. Even now. I get nothing from you except…nope, nothing. You don’t deserve me.”
“You don’t know shit,” he practically thunders. “Everything I do is for you. With you in mind.”
What. The. Actual. Fucking…fuck?
“That sounds like a line from a song. Or a really bad Kevin Costner movie,” I snap.
His half smirk is self-deprecating. Good luck trying to convince me sleeping with my sister and then marrying her was for me. It wasn’t. It wasn’t for him, either. I’m convinced of that. But it sure as hell wasn’t for me.