The Slow Burn ~ Kristen Ashley

by Ashley, Kristen

  We followed her, and as we did, I looked up at Toby.

  He was watching the back of her head like he couldn’t tear his eyes from it.

  I didn’t have the shot to ask after his state as she led us to a little dining room.

  She was right. There was a lot of food.

  “Wow, impressive spread,” I noted.

  “I’m completely incapable of letting anyone leave my house feeling anything less than bloated, but I’m going for that dude in the Monty Python movie that exploded. That’s a warning. I mean that not just at Christmas, when it’s a moral imperative to eat until you explode, but even when I have my semi-annual Magic Mike nights,” Lora told me.

  I again started laughing.

  She led us to a sideboard that was covered in booze and big tubs of alternate drinks.

  “Beer.” She waved her hand over a tub. “And what can I get you, Addie?”

  “Beer is good for me too,” I said.

  She put the bottle of wine down that I gave her and assessed our faces as she touched bottles, pulling out our preferences, snapping the caps and handing them to us.

  “Koozie stash at the end,” she said.

  “This is for you,” Toby told her, offering the chocolates.

  “Oh no you didn’t! Yay!” she cried, taking them. “I have to hide these. Immediately! Be right back.”

  Then she took off.

  I turned right to Toby.

  “You good?”

  “Guess the mild qualms I had that I was a colossal dick to Jocelyn are gonna go away. Even I didn’t know she was that big of a bitch.”

  “You had qualms?” I asked.

  “Babe, I was a colossal dick.”

  That was so Toby.

  I leaned into him and he put his arm around me. “You’re a Christmas hero.”

  “Whatever,” he muttered, his lips hitching, then he sucked back some brew.

  “And you’re the cool Gamble brother.”

  His eyes came down to me.

  “And you so totally are,” I finished.

  “Focus on the shit, gotta learn,” he said.

  “Sorry?”

  “You focus on the shit. The shit people say about you. The shit people feed you. And when people treat you like shit. Focused on that with my mom, focused on that with crap people would say about me. Didn’t focus on Margot thinkin’ I could do anything. Dave and Dad bein’ proud of me. Even with Johnny, when it was mostly all good, I focused on the big brother thing that was annoying the fuck out of me.”

  “Even I thought that last was a bit much,” I told him. “And you know I adore Johnny.”

  “Yeah, but I knew who I was and what I was doin’, and I’ve always known that. Fuck anyone else.”

  I leaned deeper. “Yeah. Fuck anyone else, baby.”

  He grinned down at me.

  “Oh God, you’re loved up,” Lora said after she returned. “I’d want to spend the rest of the night after everyone left plotting your murders out of sheer jealousy if you guys weren’t June and Johnny, that being the one with the last name of Cash. Though you have better hair,” she said to Toby. “And so do you,” she said to me. “And that’s saying something because those two could do hair.” She looked around muttering, “Your sister and your brother are Goldie and Kurt. Totally. Now where did I put my wineglass?”

  “You didn’t have it when we first saw you,” Toby told her.

  “Right!” She snapped her fingers in the air. “The other room! Be back.”

  “You don’t have to entertain us,” I said.

  “Sister, we need to talk,” she replied. “First, I open up the new year, obviously, with Magic Mike, the third Friday in January. Pencil that bitch in. It’s the official initiation ceremony for everyone in the posse and since our second showing doesn’t happen until July, you gotta come to the first one. Second, my cousin has a sixteen-year-old who is dying to buy a car, so she needs babysitting jobs. She’s a good kid. Totes responsible. Honor roll. Class officer. All that jazz. I’ll set up a meet and you can suss her out, and if you need her for your little cutie, she’d love me forever. Next, take your coats off for goodness sakes. Dump them on the bed in my bedroom, And last, I just need my wine. Be back!”

  Then she took off.

  “She’s making me tired,” I whispered on a smile.

  “She’s fuckin’ hilarious,” Toby did not whisper.

  “Do you want to take our coats off and stay awhile?” I asked. “Or down this beer and get out of here?”

  “Tobe! Hey, man!” a male voice called from the room.

  “Coats off. Stay awhile. Suss out a babysitter. Make a friend. And I’m eating every last one of her peanut butter cookies with the Hershey’s Kisses shoved in because I’m still not down with giving her the last of our nut clusters, and I feel the need to get mine back,” Toby replied, shrugging off his jacket.

  I shrugged mine off too.

  “Hey! Cool you’re here,” the same male voice said as Toby took my jacket.

  Toby introduced me. Then said he had to get rid of our jackets.

  Someone else came to us and took them away.

  Toby introduced me to that somebody else too.

  And it was then Toby stood by the drinks and held court, maybe not getting he was doing that, standing there in all his handsomeness, coolness and mystique, a treasured son of Matlock, town royalty, and simply just the guy, maybe one of all of two in the whole county who could show at a Christmas party and make a fun ’do the place to be.

  And while he unknowingly did this, I stood in the curve of his arm, sipping beer, chatting, and wondering if I should tell him.

  I decided to find the right time to tease him about it.

  And I sipped beer in the curve of the arm of town royalty, enjoying a Christmas party.

  The place to be.

  The party had been fun.

  And I was glad we stayed.

  Even as long as we stayed.

  Because it was, as I mentioned, fun.

  Also because we stayed long enough to decimate Lora’s peanut butter and Kisses cookies.

  Now I was glad to get home.

  Have caveman sex with Toby.

  Sleep by his side.

  Get up, sort the apps for Christmas Eve, do my shift, and then start Brooks and my first Christmas in Matlock.

  With Toby.

  Okay, so I had a few presents to wrap still.

  But what mom worth her salt didn’t stay up late Christmas Eve wrapping presents?

  And anyway, Tobe and I had already had a present-wrapping night.

  He was hopeless.

  But he was good at putting his finger on the ribbon and handing me tape.

  Though we wrapped presents like we did everything.

  Addie and Toby style.

  This meaning not to the strains of Bing.

  But to Rammstein.

  I’d done it.

  What Izzy had done.

  I’d worked hard.

  And built the life I wanted for me.

  So, it was a work in progress.

  But so far, it was working for me.

  Seriously.

  “Jesus, shit.”

  The words were said and then I felt the mood in the cab turn oppressive right before Toby braked to a halt almost at the end of his drive.

  “Jesus, shit,” he repeated.

  I stopped gazing out the side window, ensconced in my happy thoughts on my way to imminent orgasms, and looked to him.

  He was staring out the windshield.

  I turned that way.

  There was a car in his drive. A sedan. I couldn’t tell the color, but it was dark.

  A woman was standing outside it.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “Jesus, fucking shit,” Toby rumbled.

  “Baby, who . . . is . . . that?”

  “I’m not sure. Haven’t seen her since I was three. But I think that’s my mother.”

  My head snapped aroun
d to look out the windshield.

  Jesus.

  Fucking.

  Shit.

  Moonlight and Motor Oil

  Addie

  THE WOMAN HAD parked in front of Toby’s side of the garage, which meant he couldn’t roll in and shut her out.

  I didn’t get the chance to advise him to slam it in reverse and peel away.

  He drove forward and parked on my side of the garage.

  His seatbelt was off and he was knifing out before I could blink.

  Which meant I scrambled to get my seatbelt off and jump out so I could get to him.

  Shit.

  I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t have the time to make up my mind. She’d walked to the trunk of her car and Toby was already squared off against her.

  Thus I had no choice.

  I did the only thing I could do.

  I rushed to him, burrowed under his arm until he was forced to put it around me, plastered my front to his side, wrapped my arms around his middle.

  And I stuck.

  “Tobias—” she started.

  “This is not happening,” he rumbled so low, it wasn’t a growl, it was a roll of muted thunder.

  “Tobias, please,” she begged, leaning slightly toward him.

  I looked at her.

  And I saw it.

  I got it.

  Or some of it.

  A thick head of what I suspected, as we only had the moonlight, white-gray hair that was long and falling down in soft waves that hung past her shoulders. Tall and slender, even willowy, and I could see that regardless of the fact she was wearing a female version of a bulky peacoat.

  Both fabulous.

  Same with her face.

  Perfectly proportioned feminine features that would not only turn a man’s eye but capture his mind and his heart and not let go.

  She looked like a mature model. Like she could walk right into a Viagra ad and have half the male membership of AARP reaching for their phones to make a doctor’s appointment.

  “Sierra, I don’t know what you’re doin’ here . . .” Toby began, and I saw her head jerk sharply when he used her given name, “but I can tell you right now, it serves no purpose.”

  “Please, Tobias. Give me thirty minutes. I’ve been waiting for two hours for you to come home. It’s cold. And—”

  I knew she said the wrong thing when I felt Toby’s tense body string taut.

  “Well, shit, Sierra,” he spoke over her. “Two hours? That sucks. Hell, waiting sucks. I know. Seein’ as I waited thirty fuckin’ years for my mother to come home.”

  Oh God.

  My man.

  I held on tighter.

  She winced at his words.

  “Go back wherever you came from, I don’t wanna hear your shit,” Toby finished.

  She reached out a hand when it seemed Toby was preparing to move us.

  “Please. Please,” she begged.

  Toby started to move us.

  “I know your dad passed,” she declared. “I’m so sorry. So, so sorry, Tobias. He was too young to go.”

  Toby stopped moving us.

  She dropped her hand.

  “My dad?” he asked. “My dad?”

  Oh shit.

  Her being there was all wrong. Everything that came out of her mouth was all wrong.

  But now she’d said something really wrong.

  “Yeah, Sierra, my dad passed. But also, your husband passed.”

  Yeah, what she said was really wrong.

  “Tob—”

  He interrupted her again. “Just gettin’ this out of the way, you fucked his shit up, but he was never stupid. He changed his will, Sierra. He gave Johnny and me everything. If you’re here to cash in, think again.”

  She reared back. “I’m not here for money.”

  “That’s good ’cause you’re not getting any.”

  “Tobias, I want to explain.”

  “Explain what?” It was Toby’s turn to lean toward her, and since I was latched on, he took me with him. “I was three.”

  “Son—”

  “I’m not your fucking son,” he snarled. “You’re nothing to me. You’re nothing to Johnny. Nothing but a bad memory.”

  “My Lord,” she breathed, staring at him, her face pale in the moonlight.

  Toby didn’t miss it.

  “You expected a different reaction?” he asked, straightening us both. “Seriously? I’ll stay for this just ’cause I’m curious. What did you expect, Sierra? Tears and hugs and me tellin’ you how much I missed you? Well, I didn’t miss you. I didn’t ever fuckin’ know you. I missed the concept of having a mother who carried me in her body who would not leave. I wondered what the fuck was wrong with me, my father, my brother, that she could go without even an explanation, and never come back. You I did not miss.”

  “There were reasons. And I’m asking you to give me the courtesy of hearing them.”

  “At eleven thirty, a half an hour before Christmas Eve when you ambush me at my home?” he shot back.

  “You can imagine I didn’t know how to approach,” she murmured. “And I didn’t expect you to be home this late.”

  “I can’t imagine dick, Sierra, ’cause, you see, I would never do what you did. I reckon this is probably hard for you, but I cannot express how little I care. Get gone. I have no interest in what you have to say. I don’t when you show as an extra special Christmas surprise at my house, and I won’t if you send a letter askin’ me to sit down with you on neutral ground and hear your shit. And to make this crystal, I don’t now, I won’t later, and I never will.”

  With that, Toby moved us, me shuffling because I was turned to the side.

  I was about to let him go with an arm and shift so I could walk normally when she said, “I know Johnathon lives at the mill.”

  Toby stopped dead and both of us turned our heads to look at her.

  “Is that a threat?” Toby asked.

  “I’ve been . . . I’ve been in town for a while. I’ve been watching my boys. Trying to figure out how to . . . well . . .”

  “So you’ve been stalking us,” Toby said.

  “Watching you,” she replied quietly. “Watching my boys.”

  She lifted a hand our way and I didn’t know what came over me. I actually leaned toward her and bared my teeth.

  She looked to me and dropped her hand.

  “You both chose well,” she said quietly to Toby. “Better than your father.”

  “No shit?” Toby clipped.

  “I was thrilled, Tobias, to see you both settled and so happy.” Her gaze came to me. “Your son is adorable.”

  God.

  This horrible woman had been watching me, Toby . . .

  Brooks.

  “You are totally creeping me out,” I spat.

  “They’re my boys,” she replied.

  “Go away,” I returned.

  “They’re my boys,” she said plaintively. “I’m sure you, of all people, understand.”

  “Are you insane?” I asked. “No, I don’t understand.”

  “But—”

  “Go away,” I demanded.

  “I—”

  I pulled from Toby, spun on her and snapped, “Get gone or I’m calling the police. You’re trespassing. We’ve asked you repeatedly to leave. So you’re also harassing.” I had no idea if this second was true, I was winging it. And I kept doing that. “And you’ve admitted to stalking. If you don’t want your return to Matlock to include jailtime, get in your car and go.”

  With that, I snatched up Toby’s hand and tugged him toward his front door.

  He didn’t fight it, he came with me. His legs longer, he surpassed me and eventually was tugging me, so I started moving double time.

  We walked down the long porch that ran the side of the garage (that really could use some Adirondack chairs or a cool bench) and he put his key to the lock in his door.

  We were in and he flipped the lights so the cannisters over the kitchen il
luminated.

  He needed some lamps. He only had a standing one by his sofa.

  Sadly, I was getting Christmas ideas way too late.

  Though what I’d gotten him, he was gonna love.

  After he hit the lights, I closed the door.

  Locked it.

  Turned to him.

  Squeezing his hand, I whispered, “I hate to say this, baby, but I think you need to call and warn Johnny.”

  “Yeah,” he muttered.

  “I’m gonna keep a lookout on her,” I told him. “If she doesn’t go, I’m calling the cops. Are you cool with that?”

  “I’m absolutely cool with that.”

  There was that pissed-off growl I loved so much (well, I did when it wasn’t aimed at me).

  He let my hand go and moved into his house.

  I turned to look out the door, realizing belatedly I left my purse in the car and my phone was in my purse.

  Shit.

  Fortunately, in no time at all, I saw her taillights in Toby’s drive.

  “Johnny, yeah, sorry, no. Everything’s all right but everything isn’t all right,” I heard Toby say.

  I watched the taillights turn right and only then did I move into the room, pulling off my coat.

  “She gone?” he asked me.

  I nodded.

  He went back to his phone. “Yeah, I know, sorry it’s late and thanks, glad Brooks is okay but . . .” Long pause. “Fuck . . .” he bit off and said no more.

  I moved into the kitchen to start going through his cupboards.

  Tobe drank beer.

  He might partake of Izzy’s infused vodkas, but only because he liked my sister.

  And on occasion, he, his brother and Dave enjoyed a fine Kentucky bourbon.

  I had a feeling it was Bourbon Time.

  “Shit, brother, okay, no way to soften this,” he said. “Addie and I got home and Sierra was waiting for us in my driveway.”

  I located the bourbon and switched my mission to finding a glass.

  “Yeah, I know.” Pause. “No, it wasn’t pleasant. Addie had to threaten her with calling the cops to get her to leave.” Pause. “Yeah, she did. Sierra’s gone.” Pause, then lower, “I know, Johnny.”

  With glass and bourbon, I turned to the island and glued my eyes on him.

  He was at the far end of it, head bowed, phone to his ear.

  I opened the bottle and poured.

  “She said she wanted to explain. She said she’s been watching us. She knows about Adeline, Eliza and Brooklyn. And she says she knows you’re at the mill.” Pause. “Yeah, like a threat. She could be comin’ to you, Johnny.”