She wanted to scream at her mother. But she grabbed his shriveled penis, forced it down, held on until there were only dribbles into the toilet water.
She was going to be sick all over the floor.
“Help me zip him up, Bree.” Her mother was now close enough to shove him back in his pants, and Bree held the bottom of the zipper as her mom tugged up the tab.
“I’ll clean up the mess,” her mom said.
Then her father turned, as if suddenly he was going to move under his own power. And his foot caught. On her mother’s shoe, the bath rug, who knew? He started to go down, and Bree grabbed, pulled, but he was like a dead weight, and her mother was shouting, stumbling back herself, knocking her hip on the countertop. Jesus, Jesus. Bree couldn’t hold him; she just could not hold on, and they went down in a tangle of limbs, his knees cracking on the floor, Bree’s back slamming into the edge of the porcelain bathtub.
Her mother was crying. “Oh my God, oh my God.”
He was half on her legs, and Bree couldn’t move him. Was he dead? Had she killed him, letting his neck snap when he went down? God, oh God. She wanted to lay there and die, never get up, let it be over. Please, please, God, I can’t do this.
Then she heard him curse. “Goddamn bitches.”
And she would not let him beat her.
“He’s okay, Mom, we’re okay. We just need to get him up.” Once he was back in the bed, she would never let him up again.
She pushed his legs off hers, got to her hands and knees.
It took fifteen minutes, her T-shirt was drenched with sweat, and her father’s breathing was labored, but they got him back into the bed.
“Have some water, dear.” Her mother bent over him, putting a straw into his mouth. He sucked like a child with a sippy cup. When he was done, she fit the oxygen tubing into his nostrils and turned on the canister. “You rest.” She patted his arm.
What about me? Bree wanted to shout at her mother. What about how I feel?
Her heart still pounding from the ordeal, the terror of that moment in the bathroom, she followed as her mother tiptoed out of the room.
She was so good to him, so patient. Bree didn’t know how she did it. Sometimes, she almost hated her mother for always doing everything he said. For always taking his side. For always making excuses for him.
But she couldn’t expect her mother to change now. That was the past; it was all over. Now, she was the one to blame for leaving her mom all alone with him. Her mother was simply coping the way she’d always coped, and Bree was the shitty daughter.
“I’m sorry,” Bree said in the kitchen. “I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten.” She hadn’t wanted to believe when her mother kept calling to say he was going down fast.
Her mom patted her arm just as she’d patted Bree’s father in the bedroom. “It’s all right, dear. This whole thing has been very fast. You’re right, we need the hospital bed.”
“And a bedpan. Even between us, we can’t get him to the bathroom.”
“What about a walker?” her mom suggested.
“I don’t know, the carpet could catch on it.” If he fell . . . Bree hated to think about it happening when she wasn’t there to help. “We’re safer if he doesn’t get up at all.”
Her mother squeezed her arm, sniffed away the last of her fright. “I don’t know what I would have done when he fell if you hadn’t been here.”
“I’m so sorry.” Her eyes ached, but Bree didn’t cry. “I’ll clean up the bathroom while you call hospice to order the bed.”
He was already asleep again when she went back in there. She pulled the curtains against the afternoon light, shutting out the sight of the dollhouse, too. Then she stood at his side a moment. His cheeks sunken, his eyes like big dark pools in his gaunt face. With the shoosh of oxygen, his breathing seemed a bit easier after the exertion in the bathroom. He’d been so strong, such a force. When he spoke, his voice had been thunder. When he slammed a fist down on the table, the house shook. When he told you to do something, you did it, right that minute.
He was a shrunken version of the man he’d once been. She wasn’t sure he even frightened her anymore.
She was more frightened of how she’d feel when he was gone if she let her mother do this all alone. It was the guilt. She’d only avoided it this long by ignoring it. After he was gone, she’d never get rid of the guilt.
There it was, staring her in the face. The old man was dying. She couldn’t ignore it, and she wasn’t such a bad person that she’d leave her mother to handle this by herself.
For a long moment, she simply hung her head, and breathed in the stale scent of him. Then she went into the bathroom to clean up the mess her father had made.
IT WAS BARELY TEN O’CLOCK, BUT SHE WAS EXHAUSTED. LYING IN her old bed in her old room with the rain pattering on the roof, Bree was slightly woozy from the wine she and her mother had drunk. After finally getting her father fed, into his pajamas, his pills taken, her mom using an old piece of Tupperware as a makeshift bedpan, and all the other tasks Bree had never known could be so hard, they were drained. He’d fought every step of the way. When Bree had tried to get him to take his pain pills, he’d groused and spat them out. When her mother tried to take off his pants, he’d called her a whore. The language had turned her cheeks crimson, but she just kept on doing things for him. Like she always had.
Bree wondered how her mother could still sleep beside him, smelling his decay, hearing that throaty rattle.
Well, tomorrow, she wouldn’t have to. The hospital bed would come first thing in the morning. Along with a portable potty. Jesus, the indignities.
She wanted to go home to her own bed, her own house.
In the darkness, her cell phone suddenly broke the quiet. She grabbed it, her pulse racing. Not that it would wake her parents since they were two doors down. But who the hell was calling her at ...
Luke. God, it was Luke. He never called her. Yet he must have known how badly she needed him, so badly she could feel her heart pounding against the wall of her chest.
“Hello?” She was sure her voice cracked.
“Are you alone?”
“Yes,” she murmured.
“Touch yourself for me and pretend I’m there with you.”
“I can’t. My parents are down the hall.”
“Do what I say. Just don’t scream when you come.”
“Luke.” What was she supposed to say? My father’s dying down the hall so I can’t play right now? She didn’t want to talk about it. When she’d made the suggestion to him this morning—God, this morning, almost a lifetime ago—she hadn’t really thought of the enormity of it.
“Do it. You need this, baby.” He rarely called her pet names, probably because she liked him to call her the bad names, but this one warmed her inside. “You’ve had a hard day, haven’t you.” His voice melted her.
It wasn’t a question, and she made a guttural noise of despair he obviously heard.
“Let me make you feel better,” he murmured.
For a moment, he brought her close to tears. Sure it was kinky, but there was a sweetness to it, a caring in his voice. She so needed that soft, deep, gentle tone that soothed yet turned her liquid inside.
“No one will hear,” he cajoled. She felt the rumble of his voice along her nerve endings.
They’d had phone sex a few times when he was traveling. He’d email when he arrived at his hotel and tell her when to call. Usually late. She liked it deep in the night.
She needed it now, even with her parents just down the hall and her father on his deathbed. She needed sex, not talk. She needed Luke to transport her to a place where none of this was happening. She needed this, his voice giving her relief and mindless release.
7
LUKE WANTED TO ASK HOW HER FATHER WAS DOING, HOW SHE WAS doing, how she was handling it all, offer his comfort. He didn’t know details; she’d merely said her dad was dying. Yet that could mean anything from slow and degenerat
ive to something virulent, though it had to be serious if her parents wanted her at home. But she didn’t need questions right now.
Bree had always needed a different kind of comfort from him. She’d revealed it at the condo; sex made her feel better. “You’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever known, so precious. The way you touch yourself, the sounds you make. Make them for me now.”
She moaned softly, and he envisioned her naked on his bed, legs spread for him, just as she’d been last night. Before he called her, he’d turned off the lights, pushed up the heater to ward off the night’s chill, tossed his clothes on a chair, then lay across the bed with his Bluetooth on. He stacked his hands beneath his head and drank in every sigh that caressed his ear.
“Tell me how wet you are,” he instructed. He wanted her words as well as her sounds.
“I’m so creamy, Master.” She gasped.
Master. She needed more than phone sex tonight. She needed to feel bad, nasty. He wouldn’t deny her. “You’re such a dirty bitch. When I listen to you, you make me need to stroke my cock.”
She moaned deeply. He imagined she’d pushed her fingers inside.
“You drive me mad, just the sound of your sluttiness.” He took his cock in his hand. He was already hard and pulsing. “That’s what you do to me. It’s all your fault, filthy slut.” He gave her the words she needed, and his cock throbbed in his fist.
“Oh, Master, I’ll do anything for you.”
In this state, he had no doubt she would. On the phone, she usually came hard, as if the distance released more of her inhibitions. “Tell me what you’ll do for me. Get kinky. The kinkier the better.” He’d learned more about her fantasies that way.
“I would go down on my knees and suck another man for you if that’s what you wanted.” She groaned. He knew it was what she wanted, almost as if it were a token of her fealty.
“I’d love to hold you against my body, your ass to my cock, then lift your skirt and let another man see your pretty pussy.”
“Would you let him touch me?” Her breath puffed so close to his ear, he could almost feel her heat.
“I’d let him stand within an inch of you and put his hand between your legs.”
“Oh.” She let out a deep moan. “I can feel him fingering my clit, Master.”
“You love it, don’t you, you dirty whore.”
“Yes. Because you’re holding me, keeping me safe. I love feeling you at my back while he touches me. Oh, oh God.” She panted.
“I tip your head back and kiss you while he’s fingerfucking you. I can feel the ripples of pleasure straight through your body into mine.” Christ, he was so hard he almost couldn’t speak. He got off on the fantasy of giving her away, being totally in charge of her body, owning her. But the words were important, his only tie to her over the phone. “I want him to lick you, get down on his knees and worship your pretty, slutty little pussy.”
“Yes, Master, make me do anything, Master.” She made soft cries that reached up inside and took possession of him.
“Master, Master, Master,” she chanted softly, obviously with enough thought left to keep her voice quiet.
Yet he wanted her out of control and screaming, willing to do anything for her master. “I want to fuck you while he’s licking you.” He let himself be caught up in the fantasy, too, imagined unzipping his pants and shoving inside her while the other man licked her clit.
For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of her sighs and moans, her soft chants, then the huff of her orgasm filtering through her voice, and he climaxed across his abdomen.
“Jesus,” she swore.
“Christ,” he punctuated. Then he laughed. “Baby, you never cease to amaze me.”
Her only answer was the puff of her breath as she calmed.
“Do you feel better?” He had to know he’d done the right thing for her.
“I feel sleepy.” Her voice had the dreamy quality of satiation and exhaustion.
“That’s good.”
“I was thinking too hard. Now I don’t have to think anymore.”
Wasn’t that exactly what he’d hoped for, that his words would help her step off the merry-go-round of life and death so she could rest.
“Sleep, baby. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” He waited a beat; there was no sound but her breathing and he thought she’d already dropped off. He was just about to hit End.
“Luke?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Thank you. That helped.” She sighed, then there was the silence of dead air.
He cleaned up in the bathroom, then stretched out on the bed once more. His body now sated, he felt a sense of power. He’d anticipated her and given her what she needed. He enjoyed the element of kink to it, got off on calling her a slut and imagining other men touching her. As long as he was in control, the one calling the shots, allowing only so much, then cutting the other guy off at the knees.
His cell rang, and in the dark, his heart raced. She needed him for more. Perfect. “I’m here,” he said softly, waiting for her voice.
“Dad?”
Shit. He threw the covers over himself as if Keira could see, his sense of satisfaction disappearing in a flash like he’d been caught at something. And fuck if he hadn’t. It was kind of laughable. What if he’d opened the conversation with something dirty? Jesus. “What’s up, kiddo?”
“I miss Billie. Even if he is a butthead,” she said softly.
“Sweetie, you’ll be okay. You’re strong.” And Billie was a dickhead if he couldn’t accept Keira the way she was, perfect. He’d spent his entire fatherhood teaching her and Kyla not to take shit from anyone, to stand up for themselves. He was so damn proud of them both.
He hung on the phone with Keira for the five-minute call. Until she blew him a good-bye kiss and told him he was wonderful for making her feel better.
He’d been a great dad, but in his quest to give his daughters what they needed, he’d also ended up being a poor husband. He’d ignored Beth’s needs, never even figuring out what they were. As he laid the phone on his bedside table, it came to him that Bree was his second chance at getting it right. Sure, he enjoyed all the kinky stuff, the naughty punishments she craved, the dirty words, but now was his opportunity to take care of her, too. No way was he fucking that up.
“DO YOU HAVE A MINUTE?”
Erin started. Bree stood in her door. She was always so quiet that, despite the fact the desk faced the door, Erin hadn’t even noticed the shadow of Bree’s movement. It was unnerving the way the girl moved so silently. Like a wraith.
She shook off the thought. “Sure, come in.”
Bree closed the door. Unusual. Erin feared this meant Bree’s father hadn’t improved over the weekend.
“I need to adjust my work hours,” Bree said as she sat in the chair opposite.
She was striking, with long black hair and unblemished skin. At her height, she could have been a model. Today, she’d dressed in jeans, a white shirt, black vest, and a black jacket, a combination that came off as completely sophisticated on her. They didn’t have a dress code at DKG, except that one needed to at least look presentable, but Bree wasn’t generally the jeans type. Sometimes she dressed as if she were the auditor she’d started out as before she couldn’t take the lack of routine that came with moving from assignment to assignment.
Erin had always felt there was more to Bree’s work history than that. She needed routine. Erin was sure that characteristic added to Bree’s unsettled emotions about her father’s illness.
“Take all the time you need, Bree. Set your own schedule.”
Bree dropped her head slightly, her hair falling forward to obscure her face. “I was thinking that if I could come in by ten, do my stuff, then try to leave again at two-thirty.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and glanced up as if pressed to make eye contact. “I can work from my parents’ house, too.”
“Are you going to stay with them?”
“Yes. My mother can’t do it
alone.” She clasped her hands, holding them so tightly they turned white. “We had a hospital bed brought in yesterday. The man was very nice. He set it up and helped my father into it. And the hospice aides have already started coming in to help him—” She stopped, her lips parted, and her dark eyes glazed as if she were seeing all the indignities her father had to endure at the hands of strangers no matter how well intentioned they were.
“I’m sure it’s very difficult for you and your mom. But you’re doing a good thing, Bree, as hard as it is.” Erin knew Bree hadn’t been able to face it. No one can really face it. Erin understood all about losing someone. There were still moments when she saw something that reminded her of Jay, like his favorite Pop-Tarts at the grocery store, when she felt like her legs would collapse under her. But then she’d force herself to move down the aisle, to keep going. Somehow it was getting easier to talk to Bree about grief, to do what was necessary, to say the right things.
“My mom’s great,” Bree went on quickly. “She’s stoic. And my dad, you know, he’s such a special guy and it’s really hard for her to see him like this. But he’s been very careful over the years to make sure she’s taken care of.”
“That’s good. I’m sure he’s very proud of all you’ve accomplished, too.”
Bree started tapping the heels of her shoes on the carpet. “Oh yeah. He’s a mechanic, he had his own shop, and he was really proud when I graduated from college. Yes, that’s really why this has been so hard, facing that he’ll be gone and all, and he’s such a special man. I just don’t know what it’ll be like for my mom. But I’ll be there to help in any way I can.”
It wasn’t that Bree’s tone was false. It wasn’t even how quickly she spoke or that her heels kept beating out a rhythm on the carpet and her knuckles were white. It was that Bree simply didn’t talk. She said what was necessary. She smiled at appropriate times. She laughed when you’d expect her to. But she wasn’t effusive. Erin didn’t think she even dated. She never talked about any boyfriends. She was completely private, and this was the most she’d said about her mom and dad. Ever. It was as if she had to explain away the indecision she’d felt over the last couple of weeks, as if she believed Erin would think awful things about her.
What Happens After Dark Page 6