Keeping Never (Never say Never)

by C. M. Stunich

  “Okay,” I say simply because I have to see the situation for myself before I judge. I hated Danny when I met him briefly before. If he's going to be staying for an extended period of time, hate might become loathe, and when I loathe, I get angry. Let it go, Never, I say to myself. Just let it go.

  “Danny,” Beth says, trying to smile when she sees me coming down the hallway with Ty McCabe at my back, hands tucked into his pockets, head tilted to the side. “This is Never. I believe you met her before?” Yeah, I think as I reach out a hand and study the one that grasps it with dry, smooth fingers. I did, but you never introduced us, and he didn't inquire about me. Hell, he didn't even say hello to you.

  “Nice to meet you, Never,” Danny says, ignoring my sister's question in a subtle show of dominance. As soon as he retracts his hand, I get the urge to wipe my fingers on my sweatshirt. This may sound strange, but Ty's rough, calloused fingers seem so perfect to me, so real, so raw. This man's fingers are flat and empty; there are no life lines, and I'd be surprised if he even had fingerprints they're so blank. I don't like that, not one, little bit. Besides, he has big, square teeth that are faker than a pair of press on nails, and his hair is greased back, sandy blonde and obviously the product of a very expensive dye job.

  Danny is handsome underneath his raunchy aftershave and horrible veneers, but his soul, while not tortured, is far darker than either Ty's or mine could ever be. I didn't examine him last we met, but I was not impressed. Now, I am horrified. Beth cannot marry this man, child or no. I need to separate her from him, but I don't know how to do that without distancing myself from her. This is a sensitive situation, and I am not a very sensitive person. Crap.

  Beth puts her hand around Danny's bicep and I see a diamond ring glinting on her finger. When the fuck did that happen? Shit.

  “Oh, you … ” I begin and point. Ty wraps his arms around my waist, possessively, protectively. I both like it and hate it. I wouldn't change it for the world. Beth grimaces but tries to smile, flashing the rock in the poor lighting of the foyer. Noah Scott and Zella Regali watch silently from the archway to the living room. In the background, I hear the Nightmare Before Christmas playing softly on the TV.

  “I'm just trying it on,” she says, but in her voice, I hear a hundred girls crying out for help, asking why somebody didn't take the initiative, the hard path, break them off from the devil and send them on their way. Why me? Why does it have to be me?

  “Good,” I say and try to smile to lighten my words a bit. “Because this is definitely something that Jade and India are going to want to talk about with you.” Danny watches me carefully, pale blue eyes as cold as an arctic glacier. This is the kind of man that hits his wife without any idea of the mental pain he's causing her, who relishes that physical crack and thinks he's in the right because he owns her. This is a man that will terrify Maple, who will keep her down and questioning, who will install the very framework that could lead to the life I've led. I want to just say what I think outright, but I can't. This man is rich and probably powerful because who am I kidding, in this strange, strange world we all live in, one often goes hand in hand with the other. “They're not ready to lose their mother yet,” I say and Danny laughs. It's not a pleasant laugh. I think, but I'm not sure, that Ty growls softly in my ear. Wherever McCabe is right now, it is not in this room. Mr. McCabe is somewhere else altogether, in another time, another place. Not good. I need to remove him from the situation before things go downhill and end up putting us all in an even worse frame of mind than we are now. After all, this is a time of fresh starts and healing, and I cannot lose sight of that.

  “I think Jade and India are old enough to start living their own lives and letting poor Beth find her own happiness.”

  “I agree,” I say and continue before Danny's grin of triumph can send me into a rage. It's been awhile, but I've always been prone to rages. I once smashed a girl's head against a stage at a concert because she elbowed me. “But I don't think her happiness is with you.”

  “Excuse me?” he asks, stepping forward, rather aggressively. In my head, I go back to dog analogies again. Dogs are so simple and so straight fucking forward. They tell you the way it is and they don't bullshit. Man's best friend. Never were truer word spoken. When I get home, I am definitely getting a dog. Can't have a baby in the dorms anymore than you can have a dog. I'll have to find somewhere else to live, preferably with Ty by my side.

  “Never,” Beth admonishes, but she seems almost relieved. That really freaks me out. If Beth is beyond the point of scolding me, then she's in a bad place. I can't help but wonder where and when this newest baby was conceived, and then I get this really sick feeling in my belly and I know that this sickness isn't from my baby but rather from my disgust at Danny.

  “I think you should go,” I tell Danny and that should be that. If he was a good man or even an okay man, he would understand how family dynamics work and he would know that even if Beth was his soul mate, that her girls need time to adjust. He would nod his head slowly, kiss her cheek, and wave goodbye with a Merry Christmas. Danny … wow. Danny proves himself rotten to the core by getting in my face.

  “I have a right to spend Christmas Eve with my family,” he says indignantly, pointing over at poor Darla who isn't even his child. Obviously, Maple is not his real priority here, not truly. His priority is to claim and own. He wants to see Beth submit to him. Think dog, I tell myself as I meet Danny's eyes challengingly and wait for him to spring at me, to tear at my throat with metaphorical teeth. “You've been back, what, a few weeks? And you think you have the authority to tell me what to do?”

  “Excuse me,” Noah Scott says from the sidelines, but I'm not Noah's concern anymore. I'm Ty's, and he's just gone off the deep end.

  Without a word, McCabe releases me, steps forward, and decks Daniel Delphino aka Danny square in the face.

  5

  Ty strips off his shirt and steps into the hot water of the shower with a hiss. While I can't deny that he kicked the shit out of Danny Delphino, he didn't escape unscathed.

  “You want a raw steak or something to throw on that shiner?” I ask as I lean against the shower door with my shoulder and try not to stare at Ty's rock hard ass glistening with moisture and shrouded with steam. Remember to breathe, Never. I tear my gaze away from his body and try to focus on his face as he turns to look at me, letting the water run through his hair and down his face. Ty isn't looking at me, and he isn't answering. In fact, he didn't speak the whole time he was beating the shit out of Danny nor did he say a word after when Noah and I managed to pry the two men apart. Suffice it to say, Beth was not pleased, but Jade was, and India, too, I think. When they came out of their rooms to check on the commotion and saw what was happening, neither of them moved. Jade gazed down with undisguised glee on her face, and India watched with a hopeful but guarded expression. Beth just cried. I slam the butt of my hand into the door and Ty cringes when it shakes. “I had things under control.”

  “Did you?” he asks and then he cringes again and turns away from me, grabbing a bottle of shampoo and lathering up his dark, dark hair that glitters like friggin' ebony when its wet. “He was getting tough with you, Nev.”

  “So?” I ask, refusing to admit to myself how nice it was to see Ty's ringed fingers smash into Danny's perfect jaw. Pretty sure he's going to need Botox or some shit to fix that up. “When have I ever needed you to protect me? I am capable of taking care of myself, you know.”

  “Maybe, but … ” Ty begins and just stops talking. He's done talking anyway. Before I know what's happening, Ty has my wrist in hand and is pulling me fully clothed into the steam of the shower, slamming my back against the tile wall and kissing the hell out of me. I lift my hands to push against his chest and come across hard, soapy muscles that make my whole body sag like I've just downed a bottle of muscle relaxers. Wow. “You're my wife to be. I had to step in there. I'd expect you to do the same for me.” I wrap my arms around Ty's neck and let him kiss my
ears, my jawline, my throat.

  “That's why you attacked him?” I ask and then follow that serious question up with a moan.

  “Yup.”

  “That's the only reason?” We both know that it's not, and I'm just waiting for Ty to lie to me, to prove that we're both the same, that I'm not the only one that can make a mistake. Ty pauses his kisses and puts one hand on the wall above my shoulder. The other slides up my side under my soggy sweatshirt, looking for the quickest, easiest way to get it off.

  “I'm a whole barrel of reasons, Nev, but I don't want to talk about them.” He pauses and then gives up and uses both hands to tear off the sweater unceremoniously, tossing it out the shower doors and slamming them behind him. “I just want to fuck you and have a very, merry Christmas.” I smile, but the expression is tight. There is so much going on inside Ty's head that it's scary. One phone call is changing everything, and I don't like that. My lover boy is like a ball of yarn, ready to unravel, to roll across the carpet and unwind until he's nothing at all anymore but a tangled mess. I cannot let that happen.

  “Something about your mother, obviously,” I say, trying to prompt him into a story, but only if he's ready. If he's not ready then I'm just going to have to wait because to force Ty to open himself up to me when he isn't ready is like asking him to commit emotional suicide, and if I can't live in this world with Ty fucking McCabe by my side, damaged but perfect, then I'd rather throw myself into the sea. Ty stares at me, and he looks pissed, but his hands are massaging my breasts through the white lace of my bra, so I know he's not about to lose it completely. I can still push him a little.

  “Should we … should I leave tonight? Let you spend Christmas with your sisters and just get this over with? I don't want you to miss out on presents and shit because the bitch decides to up and die on the worst day of the year. She was always like that, selfish. You know?”

  “No, I don't know,” I say and Ty stops massaging my breasts. Not good. “Because you never tell me. I don't know anything about your mother except that you stole her rings and that she ran over your cousin with her SUV.” I huff, but I'm not angry at Ty, not really, just at the circumstances of our lives and how fucked up they are.

  “She also liked to photograph cars and keep her son in a house with a twice accused child molester, so there's that, too.” He is full on frowning now, standing there soapy and naked and wet and miserable. I don't know if it's because he's really worried about his mom or if he really does hate her as much as he says, but I know I only have one choice in the matter and that is to calm Ty down. He's been guiding me since that day he took me to the clinic and to SOG, and now he needs help. I imagine another dog reference and am surprised at how much that simple idea calms me. Take control of the leash and when he's calm, reward him.

  “Ty,” I begin and he takes my face in his hands and kisses me gently on the lips, nipping lightly with his teeth when he pulls back. It's a weird kiss, like a goodbye or something, and it really freaks me out, so I reach around him and grab hold for dear fucking life. “If you leave without me, I will hunt you down and castrate you.” Ty chuckles, but I'm not done. “And if you leave without opening presents with my sisters, they will collectively hunt you down and kick your ass, so don't suggest it again, you're staying.”

  “Beth might be pissed,” he begins, but I reach down and wrap my hand around his surprisingly erect cock. See, stud. I told you. Even ticked off, he's ready and rearing to go.

  “Beth will be fine,” I promise as I use the slippery lather of the shampoo to run my hand back and forth along Ty's shaft, feeling with my fingers, exploring, caressing. We don't do stuff like this often, so it's nice. I'm getting to know Ty's body in a way I've never known anyone else's. I like that. “Now shut the fuck up and kiss me,” I say and Ty makes a small clicking sound in the back of his throat.

  “Not until – ” he begins, and I'm forced to increase the strength of my grip until he moans and presses into me, wrapping his long fingers around my biceps as he sucks in a massive breath and lets his head fall back. “Just say it,” he groans, and since I don't know what he's talking about, I continue my journey, stepping in and running my fingers through his hair, pulling his face to mine and kissing him hard and fierce.

  “Say what?” I ask as Ty's eyelids flicker closed and his breathing relaxes into a slow, heavy pant.

  “Fuck Noah Scott,” he whispers as the muscles in his arms and shoulders tense and he gives fully into the pleasure of my hand, the touch of my lips as I press them into the hollow of his throat. “Say it.”

  “Fuck Noah Scott,” I tell him and mean it.

  6

  Later that night, I wake to find Ty missing from bed, leaving this warm, empty place where his body had been resting. It's a strange feeling for me to process, but the thought that I now have a 'side' of the bed makes me unbelievably happy while at the same time, I stress because I am so positive that Ty McCabe has run away that by the time I find him smoking on the porch, I have tears in my eyes.

  He's shirtless and pretty standing in the bright moonlight that reflects off the snow like a mirror, highlighting the bright butterflies on his hands and arm, turning them neon, spots of color against all of that white. When he hears the screen door, Ty McCabe turns around and finds me with wet cheeks and puffy eyes.

  “Babe,” is all he says as he opens his arm and I step into it, comforted by the smell of cigarette smoke and the faint glow of the cherry. Ty drapes himself over me and rests his hand on the porch railing, cig clutched between two fingers. His bracelets are missing so all is strangely quiet when he lifts his smoke up to his mouth for a drag. I miss them already.

  “Thought you'd run away,” I say because guys like Ty, well, that's what they do. When he smiles sadly, eyes locked onto the far away and the has been, the past and the positively painful future, I know that I'm still living with that old cloak of shame and doubt draped over my shoulders. Ty is not the same type of man that he once was, and I'm not the same type of woman. We have both come a long way in a short while, and I need to remember that.

  “I'm tired of running,” Ty says as he passes the cigarette to me and draws another out of his pocket. I raise it to my lips, but I don't smoke it, just brush it along my mouth until I'm salivating and my heart is pumping a hundred miles an hour. Addiction. It's the second most powerful emotion there is. There's only one that can trump it, and that, that is love. I close my eyes and try to feel Ty's presence, his warmth, his belief that we are worth more in one another's eyes than we were in our own. Love. Love. Love. The only emotion that ranks first in both the pain and pleasure categories on the tumultuous scale of human feeling, the only one that can both start wars and end them, that can kill but that can also make new life. I touch my fingers to my belly and know that this is a good time to tell Ty about our baby. “I guess to move forward, I have to go back?” he asks and I nod.

  “Sometimes, the only way to go forward, is to take a few, careful steps back,” I say, echoing the very lesson that Ty taught me before with his patience, his confidence, and his trust. “There's something I want … ” I pause because the words aren't right and they need to be. They need to be just right. “No, something that I need to tell you,” I say and the change in Ty is immediate. Behind me, he tenses and his cigarette falls from his hands, tumbles end over end and hits the snow with a hiss. Ty curses and moves away from me, leaving me shivering in the icy cold starlight. “Ty?” I ask as he moves down the steps and into the snow barefoot, retrieves the cig and comes back with a frown on his face.

  “What?” he asks and his demeanor is completely different from before, like he's just turned a 180, gone off in the opposite direction and lost touch with reality. What the hell? I shift my feet nervously as I look at him and notice that my cigarette has burned down to a dangerous nub. I deposit it into the ashtray next to the porch swing and try to convince myself that there will be no better time than now to tell Ty. If I keep waiting for a certain ambiance, a
certain facial expression, a specific tone of voice from Ty, then I might be waiting a long, long while. The past few weeks, he's been perfect, but then, he's been focusing on me and my problems, not on his, and despite his calm, quiet strength and reassuring attitude, he has a lot of them. Maybe living vicariously through me has cured some but not all. There are things living inside of Ty that even I don't understand. After all, I never worked as a prostitute, never saw my worth in dollar signs and making ends meet. I'm not saying that I'm any better or any less damaged than Ty, only that I don't always understand what he's thinking or why. What I can say and that I do know for sure is that Ty McCabe has not gotten snippy with me in a while, and I know, know, know that at least ninety percent of his attitude is because of his mother. I have to remember that, so I can work gingerly with him, take him under my wing and show him the same love and consideration that he showed me.

  “Sit down with me?” I ask as I hold out my hand to indicate the porch swing. Ty looks at it and then at me, and he stares for a long time, eyes shadowed by his position against the moon. I can't see what he's thinking and it makes me nervous. He smiles but there are no dimples, and shakes his head.

  “My feet are cold. Let's go back to bed.” Ty holds out his hand and I take it though I don't move. Instead of him pulling me forward, I hold him back and try to look him straight in the face. Once again, like a frightened dog, he won't look at me, turning this way and that like he doesn't want to hear what I have t say.