by Emily Bishop
He eyed Max with that same strange anger he’d held since Max was born. Like, how dare he come into the world and fuck up my dad’s perfect portrait of his life? Mayor of Randall. A pretty cheerleader daughter. A wife who worshipped him. But Max—no. He fought bitterly in after-school brawls. He’d broken not just one tooth, but three, in bike accidents—racing the other kids.
“You gotta be careful with little girls like her, Max,” Anthony said, as if Max was doing anything but pressing his little hands lightly into Maggie’s back, pushing her. “I see she already has a cut on her knee. Was that your doing?” Dad twisted his head and narrowed his eyes at Amanda in the corner—a sucker between her lips. She cracked it against her teeth, giving him a small wave, then pointing toward me.
“Does this mean I can go home?” she called, anxiety straining her voice. “Because I can still see my show if yes. It’s the season finale.”
“You can go, Amanda,” I said, reaching into my pocket and drawing out a twenty-dollar bill. I handed it toward her as she approached. The tension around us only tightened as she pranced away.
Eric kept moving, past us and toward Dad, who turned to face him.
The men faced off, two dominant ends of two different generations. They’d been enemies for years, if from afar. I was sure Eric hadn’t given as much thought to my father as my father had given to Eric. Every day, staring at Max’s growing curls, his crooked smile…
“Eric Holzman,” my father said, finally, pressing his arms across his chest. He stood tall, or tried to—his mayoral posture stunted by his belly. “I didn’t expect you had enough familial love to come back for your old man’s funeral.”
Eric shifted. Anger radiated from him, his shoulders, his heart. His eyes glinted.
“Births. Deaths. I like to be around for the important things,” Eric said. “Although I have to say. It seems like you might have made me miss one of those. Huh?”
I caught my breath and walked over to them. “Dad, what are you doing here?” I asked. “I called you last night.”
My father’s gaze carved into me. “Checking.”
“Thank you for your concern, but I don’t need you to—”
“You don’t know what you need. You never have, and that’s exactly how you wound up in this situation,” Mayor Thames snapped. “If you’d known what was good for you, you wouldn’t have a bastard son.” He had the ‘decency’ to lower his voice for the last few words.
I clenched my fists. “Don’t you ever call him that again,” I said, burning a hole right through my father. “Eric’s right. You’re the reason that we’re in this situation, right now.”
“I’m the reason?” He growled. “I’m not the one who opened my legs.” His anger faltered. “Olivia, honey, wasn’t I there for you after it happened? I was a good father. I protected you.”
Although, in his ‘protection,’ he’d ruined everything.
“Protected?” Eric’s tone was calm, though the muscles in his forearms had corded. “You lied. You fucked up everything.”
“I did what I had to do. Something you’d never understand, you fucking cretin.”
“That’s enough,” I said, and looked over at the kids. “I won’t have either of you talking like that with the kids around, understand? They deserve better.” All my damn emotions had blurred together.
Truthfully, this should’ve been my worst nightmare.
Back in the day, the thought of Eric and Dad facing off had mortified me. Now, we were grown-ass adults. If Dad couldn’t butt out, I’d have to make him.
“I think you should leave,” I said.
“Yes, you should.” Dad directed a tight-lipped smile at Eric.
“No, Dad. You. You should leave. You can’t just turn up here unannounced whenever you want. It’s not okay. It throws off Max’s schedule. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me over the years, but I’d prefer it if you called first.”
My father looked at me as if I’d grown an extra head. Shoot, maybe I had—the head of a lioness. There was an image.
Mayor Thames switched his gaze from my face to Eric’s then back again. “I see,” he said, jowls purpling, now. “I see. Well, well, well. The minute this, this man comes back to Randall, your panties are in a twist. Suddenly found your backbone.”
“Don’t talk to her like that,” Eric said and shifted his foot forward.
I held out a hand. “The children.” We were all wound tighter than the spring of the mousetrap. Who was the cheese? Who was the mouse?
“I’ll leave,” Dad said, still mauve. Kinda reminded me of Veruca Salt in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, except less funny. And a little less buoyant. “But I’m warning you…” He stuck out his finger toward Eric, who grabbed it, held it.
“Warning me?” Eric asked. “Now, that doesn’t seem like a good idea, does it?” His voice was still icy cold, controlled.
All the heat that’d led to disaster during our teenage years had gone. Eric was a man.
The color finally drained from my father’s face. He wrenched himself free, then strode toward the front, his hands on his hips.
The kids watched us, now, Maggie, whose blue eyes were almost cat-like, Max remaining beside her, protective. He held onto her shoulders, the swing still.
Dad halted and turned back on the scene, then called back to us, loud enough for the kids to hear. “Listen, Eric, I know you have to be here for your dad. I get that. I’ve had my parents come and go from this world. But if you even think about coming near my daughter and her son a single time, after today, I’ll come after you. I’m the mayor in this town. I run things around here. Understand what I’m saying?”
Eric didn’t nod. He didn’t give any signal. He just burned his gaze deeper into the other man. My father’s big lips turned bright red. Max brought his arms around Maggie, lifting her from the swing. My father whirled toward Max, bursting his anger toward him, instead.
“Be careful with the girl!” he screamed. “Max, you don’t know your limits.” He whirled on the spot and stormed off before I could reprimand him. Something I wouldn’t do from across the lawn, yelling. I had more control than that, at least.
Except when it comes to Eric.
“Daddy?” Maggie called from the swings. “Who was that fat man?”
The ‘fat’ part broke the tension like a knife. Eric’s lips writhed, twisting up into a smile. He pushed it toward me, but turned around before I could give one back.
He walked toward Maggie, reached her, then gripped Max’s shoulder. “Thank you for taking care of my daughter,” he said, firm and sincere. “Thank you. From the bottom of my heart.”
With that, he whirled Maggie into his arms and strode from the backyard, slipping from the fence and toward the sidewalk. His vehicle was parked about a mile and a half away, near the diner, but I made no motion to drive him.
I turned to Max-o instead. “Come on, hon. Let’s go inside. We’ll make dinner and we’ll talk, okay?”
Max brightened at that and hurried toward me. I looped my arm around his shoulders and jiggled him against my side, kissed the top of his dark head. “You’re my sunshine.”
“I love you, Ma,” he said. “You know everything’s going to be okay, right? You know… I don’t think Grandpa can do anything. He can’t hurt—”
“Don’t worry about that,” I said, as we walked to the back porch. “You’re a kid. Your only job is to worry about school, homework, and—”
“Spreading the infection,” Max said.
“I – what?!”
Max gave a giggle. “You know, Ma, on Infectonator 3. That zombie game?”
“Right,” I said. “Remind me why I ever bought you a computer again?”
“Something to do with a birthday? Christmas?” Max stuck out his tongue, his spirits officially lifted, as we entered the kitchen from the back door. The warmth of it seeped through my bones, and the knowledge that Max, at least, believed everything would be all right.
&n
bsp; But what about Eric?
Chapter 7
Eric
Hours later, Maggie stretched out in front of the television, and her little toes peeked from beneath the knitted blanket at the rental house. I paced behind her, watching as her eyelashes fluttered over her cheeks.
My heart burned, throbbing against my esophagus, and my thoughts chased one another round and round in circles. This was my first goddamn night back in Randall, North Carolina. And already, Jesus. Everything had fallen to shit.
A son. I had a son. Max. That wasn’t the shit part.
But the kid’s darkness didn’t escape me. His eyes peered up at me as if he’d been visualizing our meeting all his life. Fuck, I’d missed so much. His birthdays. His Christmases. His first words. All those temper-tantrums at the toy store. Just watching him press his hands, so tenderly, into Maggie’s back as she’d swung back and forth had brought back glossy memories of those years back from elementary, middle school. When I’d eyed the pretty little string-like Olivia from across the fence, wanting only to care for her. To hold her hand.
“Like a Beatles song,” I muttered, then shook my head.
I strode toward the fridge, drew out a cold beer and cracked it, shaking my head. Over the past year, Olivia and I had done nothing but flirt over miles—telling one another the raunchy things we wished to do to each other’s bodies. “I want your tongue on my clit, baby, rubbing back and forth, come for you. Moan for you. Anything for you. You’ll know how much I want it. You’ll feel it. I’ll drip for you.”
Fuck, I’d been blue-balled over those letters. They were all impossibilities, fantasies. Right?
Nope. Apparently, not.
I’d stripped Olivia down, bare, her tits bouncing in the light from the flickering bathroom sconce. Her body had been wire and sweat and come, and I’d drawn my teeth against the softness of her neck.
“Fuck,” I whispered and walked out of the house, my footsteps creaking on the boards.
What now?
I had a son. A funeral to deal with. A mayor on my ass. And the woman I’d once loved, whom I’d left behind, here to complicate it all.
Love? Not love. Not now. No time. Can’t do it.
I sipped the beer out on the front porch, watching the town of Randall. The beer ran cold in lines like a waterfall down my throat. I reached for my phone and read through the many steps I’d written out for myself, for this trip. Meet with the funeral director. Make sure to secure a plot for Dad. Clean out the house. Then, get the fuck out of Randall.
There was a reason I hadn’t wanted to meet Olivia over the past year. I’d believed that we were in the past, nothing more than a fantasy. And grasping at that fantasy would only lead to bad shit.
Instability for Mags. Couldn’t have that. Couldn’t have Olivia and her batshit crazy father in my life again.
Couldn’t let myself feel again. I wasn’t that man anymore.
With Max, this set a different course into action. I couldn’t very well leave him like this: painfully aware that I was his father. It was crystal clear across his face. And his mother anxious, for her son, for how I felt about the fact that she hadn’t told me for twelve fucking years.
Jesus. Could I blame her?
I could believe that her father had manipulated in the time after Max’s birth, when she was at her most vulnerable.
Anthony Thames had always been a jerk.
I couldn’t leave Olivia, either. My cock throbbed, hard, against my leg. I pressed my free hand against it, trying to control it. To halt my stirring, sexual fantasy of tearing into Olivia’s house again. Demanding how the hell she’d allowed it to go this far. And then stripping her bare, ensuring she felt how serious I was about this as I shoved the girth of my cock into that wet, tight pussy.
But Thames, that old bastard, had been incredibly clear about his intention. He’d glowered at me in the backyard, his voice stern and his skin blotchy. He probably rode around town in that fancy car of his, gloating. His head big as a balloon. Mayor. He was goddamn mayor.
He didn’t scare me. Losing control did. I could do it so easily with Olivia. Or against her father. To protect her. And Maggie. And Max.
Shit, the only reason I’d left tonight without a word, was to get my girl home to sleep. And to fucking think about this.
I stood out on the patio, I watched as a bike drew closer. A lithe, almost-familiar girl sat atop it, with her ponytail flapping behind her. Her eyes were glossy, bored, as if she’d been gazing at the same sights for far too long. When she turned her bike into my rental house’s drive, I raised an eyebrow.
“What do you want?” I asked her, as she strutted toward me, dropping her bike on the pavement like laundry. She was probably sixteen, seventeen years old, and she eyed me like a fresh piece of meat.
“You’re the guy who was at Olivia Thames’s place this afternoon,” the girl said. She halted at the base of the steps, gazing up at me. “She told me to bring something to this address. The old guest house on April Avenue.”
Man. This town crept in on itself, becoming smaller, tighter. This was the old guest house on April Avenue—a place that had been remodeled, painted a bright red, and probably passed down from one clown to the next who had to take refuge in Randall for more than a few days’ time. I pressed my hands on either side of my waist
“So. What was it she said to bring?” I asked. It was hard for me, at any moment in time, to remember that I’d once escaped this life. That back in New Orleans, Maggie and I shared a little house with windowsills and a roof, with paintings taped to the fridge, ones we’d done together.
“Oh. Right.” The girl knocked up the steps and shoved a letter toward me, tilting her hips left, then right. “This is for you.”
I gripped the letter. I couldn’t verbalize a thank you before the girl had darted back toward the bike, yanking it back into her arms. Flipping her ponytail once more, she winked at me and then drew her long leg over her bike seat. “You know,” she said, coughing. “Everyone in town knows about you. Knows that you’re the one who’s Max’s daddy.”
I gripped the letter tighter, a bit of nail poking through the paper.
“He’s such a weird kid. But I guess that isn’t so shocking, is it? What with you being the one who started the carnival fire all those years ago. And you know what? Nobody even told me it was you for sure. I can just see it in you. You’re Max’s dad, clear as day. And my friend down at the diner downtown said that your daddy was old Isaac Holzman! Man, he was mean. Once he chased after me on my bike when I was twelve years old, screaming at me to get the hell off the road. Everyone knew to steer clear of him.”
My nails dug deeper into the paper. Nostalgia clamped over my neck, tightening.
“Thanks for the letter,” I said, my voice low, grizzly. “You’d better run back home now. This town gets a little rough at night.”
“Ha. Nothing’s happened in this town since you left it,” the girl said. “Anyway. Guess I’ll see you around. Or not. Mayor Thames has a hard-on for murdering you.”
With that, she jolted off down the road on her bicycle, her thin legs working. I tilted my head back, taking in the last dregs of my beer. The teenage girl was strangely familiar. Shrugging into the porch swing, I brought my thumb beneath the top lip of the letter and tore.
It was written in an anxious, tighter scrawl than Olivia’s normal handwriting.
Eric,
Hey. Shit. Hi.
I know you’re angry. Jesus, I would be angry, too. All this time, Max has been living here, growing up, forming into a little mini version of you.
Max wants to know you. He hasn’t been able to shut up about you since you left. “He looks just like me, Mom!” He just called that from the living room, where he’s watching cartoons and eating macaroni and cheese. See? He’s still a kid. He still needs his dad.
And if you’re willing, I’m willing to make that happen.
Listen, tonight was a mistake. Most of it. Meeting Ma
x could’ve gone better, sure, but not a mistake. The sex… that was not supposed to happen. I lost control. I’m not weak like that, I just, fuck, Eric, you drive me crazy and you know it. If we’re going to take this seriously, we have to do it clean.
And by that I mean hold off on the complicated stuff and focus on Max and Maggie. I know you’re worried about her too. Trust me when I say I understand, completely. Hope her knee is feeling better. Hope you feel better. Tonight must’ve been like a slap in the head.
Please meet me tomorrow night. I can link you up with a babysitter. Plenty of girls around town hunting for a bit of spare change. Montgomery’s Steakhouse, in the next town over. We can talk properly, without the kids running around the backyard—and without my father lurking with his threats and ‘fat’ as Maggie so aptly put it.
I broke from reading to chuckle at that. Maggie was at the age where she called a spade a spade. Then again, I’d always been that way. Olivia too. That was probably why we’d hit it off as kids.
Let’s try to get this all out in the open, without letting anger take hold of us. I think that anger will only serve to destroy Max, our son, and… what’s left.
Olivia
I read the letter once more.
It was serious, focused. Womanly.
Fuck!
My cock grew thick and hard against my leg again. I folded the letter up, brought it to my nose, and inhaled that familiar scent—the lavender or lilac I’d smelled for the past year, just through the letter, which I’d seeped from her skin, even as she sweated beneath me. Even as she came.
See her again? I had to.
Claim her. Yes. That had to happen too.
I’d be serious about this, adult, of course, but my gut feeling said us avoiding touching each other, fucking, would end fast.
I was volatile, powerful. Despite past mistakes. The scar on Olivia’s cheek fucked with my psyche. Had I really done that?
Didn’t matter. I was different now. And I would fight for what I wanted: Max, my son.
And Olivia? She needed my protection. She needed to get out of this town. Away from Thames and his cronies.