Broken Crown

by Susan Ward

  She makes a slight smile. She is moving more cautiously today. The tone having been set by her, I follow suit.

  “What did you mean by predator drone?” I ask.

  Chrissie laughs and rolls her eyes.

  “Krystal hates my classical music. Her friends think I’m cool for a mom. She’s afraid they’ll walk in, hear the music and realize I’m not. Every time my back is turned she reprograms the library. I can’t reprogram the library. How can she do it? And you wouldn’t believe the clothes she picks out for me to wear when I drop her off at school. It would irritate me if it didn’t remind me that she is a little girl. Not an easy thing to remember since when we discuss something she usually spins me in circles.”

  “Don’t let her spin you. You are the most incredible woman I’ve ever known.”

  She blushes a little and looks away. I let my gaze roam over her as she focuses her attention on the baby. Long golden hair only towel dried, fresh from a shower, her body hidden by a baggy white robe and she is still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.

  I set down my coffee cup. “Had some interesting moments with the girls yesterday. Kaley was openly hostile. I had a dose of spinning with the rabbits. Exactly what do your kids know, Chrissie?”

  A flush spreads up her neck and over her face. “Living with Krystal is like living with the FBI. She probably has the house bugged and a more complete dossier on me than they do. I wasn’t going to tell the kids until I told you, but she took me to the rabbits two months ago. It was obvious they all somehow knew. The rabbits were a confrontation for the discussion, and after it definitely required discussion. I was truthful. Not detailed, but truthful. Krystal taking you to the rabbits was her confrontation with you. I don’t think that confrontation is over because you didn’t put the pieces together. She’ll be fine if you’re honest with her.”

  Fuck. No wonder Kaley stared at me as if she hated me. And Krystal. I don’t know what to make of her behavior.

  I pucker my lips for a moment to hold back my reaction. “Damn. I figured as much.”

  Chrissie goes to the coffeemaker, refills her cup, and remains there with her back to me. “You can look at her, you know. It won’t hurt you to do that.”

  I find her watching, expectant and slightly challenging.

  I shift my gaze to Khloe. “I’m working on it,” is all I say.

  “Well, I suppose that’s something.”

  “Don’t be flip. If you’re angry, be angry.”

  “I’m not angry. Not at all,” she says calmly.

  “Like hell you’re not. You should be angry.”

  “I won’t fight with you today. I’m not up for that side of you today.”

  I let out a ragged breath. She’s right. I don’t even know why I’m trying to provoke her. It’s not why I’m here. Not why I came back.

  There is so much shit to work through. So many questions. It is probably not the right time. But this one I can’t let wait for later, for a better time between us to ask it. It’s the worst of the ones that left the house with me last night.

  “How do you know she’s mine?” I ask.

  Chrissie’s eyes narrow. “Outside of the obvious proof? I don’t sleep around!”

  “Oh fuck. That’s not what I mean. It’s a reasonable question, Chrissie. You were married to Jesse right up to the point of that night.”

  She lets out a breath. “They typed her blood in the hospital. She’s type O. I’m A. Jesse was B-negative. I’m assuming you’re O-positive.”

  O-positive. Not a DNA test, but I don’t need one with Chrissie. That’s enough confirmation for me. Something akin to pure relief floods my veins, shocking the hell out of me.

  I move my gaze back to Khloe. I have a daughter. No doubt, not any, that this is my daughter. A leveling array of emotions surges upward out of nowhere.

  Not what I expected.

  Not by a long shot.

  Holy fuck. After having royally fucked up three times in my life with Chrissie, I have a child with her.

  Thoughts I’ve locked away scream for my unfiltered acceptance. Thoughts I’ve dismissed as moronic, unavoidable, male territorial instinct since, regardless of who Chrissie was married to, in my head she has always been mine.

  No point not admitting the truth. Not now.

  It’s always bugged me. She’s the woman I love. I never wanted her to have even a speck of anything significant with any other man. And it’s been lodged in my gut in a repulsively galling way that she had a child with Neil, who I despised. Three with Jesse, who I liked, but that didn’t make it better. And none with me.

  Petty?

  Yes.

  Children: I adamantly proclaimed were not part of my equation.

  True at the time.

  Was I an ass?

  Sure.

  Am I OK with this?

  I pause to try to decipher what precisely I am feeling. Oh fuck, I’m blown away in an unexpectedly pleasant way.

  Well, there she is, and since Chrissie is into her forties she is just under the wire. Khloe. I wish I could skip over all the other parts left to work through with Chrissie and just fast-forward to where I can let myself be happy about this. But that’s not how life works with Chrissie. No shortcuts. There never is.

  I lift my gaze to find her watching me. It’s an emotional land mine question. I shouldn’t ask it.

  “Why did you put Jesse’s name on the birth certificate, Chrissie? What was that about?”

  Her lovely eyes grow intense. “Privacy. That’s all it was. I didn’t want you to get hit in the face with it before we talked. It bought me time. It’s as temporary as you want it to be.”

  I sidestep the last part of her comment. “You could have called me, Chrissie.”

  “Like hell I could. The last time we were together you ran from my house as if you couldn’t get away from me quickly enough. It was humiliating, Alan. And since then, you’ve been deliberately unreachable and the things I’ve been reading in the press were pretty clear confirmation that—”

  She breaks off, unable to finish.

  I take a moment to collect myself, because while everything she said is factual, none of it is right. I didn’t run from her. I ran from—I stop myself before I start to explain it to her.

  I stare into her eyes, willing her to see how much I love her. “The last thing you needed at that time was me.”

  Her face scrunches up. Her eyes flash. “How would you know? You never asked. You used to care about me enough at least to ask.”

  “I love you enough to stay away, Chrissie.”

  We stare at each other, held in a tense standoff of silence. She breaks eye contact first, scoops up the baby and leaves the kitchen quickly.

  I relax back against the counter and watch her go. A tactical retreat. A temporary cease-fire for both sides. Chrissie’s way of cooling the situation. Not bad. Not good. Intermission. This is far from over.

  The music shuts off, and I hear her footsteps in the hallway again. She drops the baby monitor onto the kitchen island and then adjusts it. A beep. She lifts her cell phone to read a text.

  “You have to leave soon. Kaley is on her way home. She needs to pick up something.”

  “So?”

  “I don’t want fighting in the house when my kids are here.”

  I can’t believe she said that to me.

  “You don’t think much of me these days, do you?”

  “Should I?” she challenges.

  I relent. “Probably not.”

  I watch her move farther away from me into the family room to sit and curl in an oversized chair. She’s different today, less generous, less accessible and less giving. Harder to read. In many ways completely unlike herself.

  The only familiar gesture is the repeated anxious fiddling with her hair. I note the gesture. She’s waiting for something.

  Something from me?

  A peace offering?

  It’s hard to tell what she wants by how she’s si
tting there. Alert. Remote. Unrevealing.

  I decide to go with peace offering.

  “I want to correct the birth certificate,” I announce into her silence.

  Her lips pucker. “Fine. I’ll have my lawyers contact yours.”

  I tense in a knee-jerk immediacy. “Christ, we’re going to communicate through lawyers now? Is that how you want things?”

  She looks up, startled, and anxiously searches my face. “How else do we correct all this?”

  I hold her gaze. “You could love me and be good to me.”

  Chrissie drops her eyes quickly. “I am, Alan. You just don’t know it.”

  I look around the room, not sure how to move forward from here.

  “So where do we go from here, Chrissie?”

  Chrissie looks upset, almost tearful. “You go home. I wait for my children.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I reply, frustrated.

  “I know, Alan. But that’s where we are today.”

  Her gaze fixes on me, unblinking, intense, and there is something very far back, nearly hidden, that draws me in effortlessly. In that moment, it flashes like a movie in my head: every moment we’ve shared; everything we’ve ever said or done; the moments we’ve loved; the moments we’ve fought; the moments she ended us and the moments I hated her.

  Staring at her has the strange power to make the weight of the bad times shrink to something I can’t feel. The weight is gone, but not the pressing urgency to understand some of them finally.

  “Why did you marry Jesse so quickly after walking out on me?”

  Her eyes flash. She pauses, rapidly scanning my face. “If I hadn’t, I would have gone back to you. And I couldn’t do that.”

  Emotion tightens my throat, and I feel the wrench of those words in my gut. That comment says it all. The answer isn’t in the words; it’s in how she says them.

  “Loving you is like being strapped on a runaway train,” she whispers so softly I can barely hear her. “The highs are so high, but the lows are too low. It’s exhausting trying to keep up with you, Alan. I couldn’t do it anymore. I needed to slow down. It was better for us both that I walked away.”

  My eyes burn, meeting hers directly. “Maybe better for you. It wasn’t better for me.”

  She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t look away. She lifts her chin.

  “You are and always will be the love of my life, Alan. Even with all the things that have happened, that hasn’t changed. I’d like to think that’s better for us both.”

  Chrissie’s gaze glistens and fills with brilliant shimmers. Christ, I was an ass to her last night. I was an ass this morning. How can she look at me that way? It is humbling.

  “Better for us both,” I concede, holding her gaze unwaveringly.

  She looks away. “I still want you to go.”

  I laugh. “I know, Chrissie.”

  The laughter feels good. The touch of her eyes feels good. Yes, it is a good time to leave. No more questions. Better to let it all rest for a while.

  I cross the room to her, for the first time realizing that I stayed in the kitchen and talked to her from the there. I stop at her chair and ease down until we are at eye level. I kiss her, just a brief, light contact. Nothing more. But the feel of her lips, the gentleness of her response, and the sweetness of her flesh is everything I remember.

  The touch of her feels good. We are in a surprisingly good place considering how this started. A better exit point than last night.

  I go for the door.

  Chapter 10

  By the time I reach Malibu, I’ve pretty much lost interest in all my favorite pastimes: music, drinking, parties, being purposely obnoxious to people, and sex. It doesn’t surprise me. It always happens when I am in this phase with Chrissie.

  I’m in the in-between state. We’re not over and we’re not together. I’ve been here before: not good, not bad, just in between. Now comes the part where I figure out how not to fuck it up before she decides what we’re doing.

  I contemplate firing the Indian girl when I get home, but that would be just some moronic, pointless gesture that’s only going to leave the girl unemployed without reason. I wasn’t even remotely interested yesterday—that was before I got to even see Chrissie again—I sure as hell don’t want Aarsi today.

  I am now in the hold of Chrissie. All women lose their appeal. I can’t see, I can’t feel, and I can’t smell another woman, not when I’m with her. Not even when I only have the possibility of her. The possibility of her combined with that unrelenting want of her is like a testosterone inhibitor with all women except her the second I become aware I can have her again.

  I can smell Chrissie’s scent on my clothes even after having only the briefest feel of her and my cock is rock hard—though there is nothing about the scene that went down at Chrissie’s that should give me an erection.

  Amusing?

  Definitely.

  Pathetic?

  No doubt.

  But I can’t deny it.

  The only thing I really want to do is to go home, lie down, jerk off thinking of her and then sleep. The last twenty-four hours have been one hell of a ride. I’m exhausted. Going to bed alone and emptying my cock sounds like a fine way to end the first round of being with Chrissie again.

  Two days pass at a snail’s pace.

  I sit on my back terrace, staring at the ocean, wide awake and restless at 11 a.m. after having spent days and nights mostly alone, only filling the vacant minutes by repeatedly checking my phone hoping to find a call from Chrissie.

  I look at my cell again. Nothing. Then I tense. Oh fuck, somehow I left her house condemned to be the woman in this next phase of our life together.

  Waiting.

  Checking the phone.

  Paralyzed into inaction.

  Fuck.

  I’m stalled. But then, I’m in uncharted territory. I’m out of my comfort zone. What the fuck am I supposed to do?

  Usually Chrissie sets the ground rules, we fight, I say something inane, we fuck, and then we’re together again. This time she set the ground rules, introduced me to my daughter, we fought, we talked, and then she sent me away. I don’t know how to work with this.

  I shake my head. There must be a way expeditiously to get out of my isolated purgatory. Maybe I’m just in this wretched place because Chrissie doesn’t want me at the house with the kids and she’s short on staff. It could mean nothing that she’s ignoring me.

  The patio door opens and I glance over as Aarsi appears. She smiles and says nothing—her version of being invisible—and starts to collect my breakfast remains from the table beside me.

  She’s wearing a tight, short violet sundress with a pleated hem that puffs with the gusts of wind. Nice touch. Clearly the girl didn’t listen when I said I wasn’t interested. Time to send her away. She’s becoming annoying in her obviousness.

  I grab my coffee before she can take it and smile. Hmm? Maybe not get rid of her. Relocate her. Better. I definitely could use an ally in Chrissie’s house.

  Since Aarsi works for me, she’s been thoroughly vetted, down to the point where even the most minute detail of her life rests in a file with the people who hire my staff. Brian Craig screens my employees better than the FBI. I couldn’t hire a better nanny for Chrissie if I tried.

  No risk if she’ll do it. Would she do it?

  “Do you like kids?” I ask abruptly.

  Her eyes widen, surprised that I spoke to her. She blinks. “Yes. Why?”

  “Do you have experience with them?”

  She nods. “I have three younger siblings. And I did a lot of au pair work before I got the job here.”

  Perfect. Interview done. Decision made.

  “Go get me something to write with,” I order.

  She runs into the house and returns. She hands me a pen and a notepad that looks like it’s from her school things.

  “Here’s an address. Go there. I want you to work there as much as you are needed, whateve
r hours you agree upon with Mrs. Harris. Tell Mrs. Harris I sent you there as a nanny or a housekeeper or whatever she needs. Call me if there’s a problem.”

  She stares at me like she wants to argue—or worse, ask questions—then she shrugs. “OK. When do you want me to go?”

  “Now. Then text me with your schedule if she keeps you.”

  I’m starting to feel more upbeat. A sense of doing something to move things in the direction I want them to go. A moronic optimism that I might get to fuck Chrissie again sometime soon if I get her a little help so she’ll maybe focus a little more on me.

  Probably an asinine move.

  I don’t care.

  It’s worth a try.

  I need to do something.

  I’ve had enough of this.

  My phone beeps two hours later. I read the text. Brilliant. Chrissie didn’t toss out the girl. There’s hope.

  After a run on the beach, I shower, dress, and head out into the garage. I stare at the line of cars, pick one and climb in.

  I jerk it into reverse—everything I want, always, and never anything that I need—and back into the driveway. I merge into traffic on Highway 1 and then cut onto the road to Hollywood.

  I don’t have a plan. I’m not even working on a new release. I’ve been here three days, Chrissie and I are still on separate pages and I haven’t gotten anything going, but the Rainbow is always a good place to start. A rockers’ bar in Hollywood. Even though it’s afternoon, there will be someone, something going on there.

  A good place to start if I want to get quickly plugged in to the goings-on in the LA scene.

  Which I’m not sure that I do.

  Fuck, I’m going there anyway.

  I’m tired of being alone, waiting for Chrissie to call.

  The minute I step through the door, I’m quickly swallowed up by people. Christ, I’m not in the mood for this bullshit. I smile. Make appropriate replies and scan the crowd, picking out the faces of a few here I actually like.

  Ah, Ian Kennedy, music producer extraordinaire, out drinking at two in the afternoon.