by Molly Harper, Stephanie Haefner, Liora Blake, Gabra Zackman, Andrea Laurence, Colette Auclair
I nod my head in the dark, knowing she can feel the movement. She tucks her head closer to mine and lets out a heavy exhale, then falls asleep next to me the way she sometimes did when we were kids. Oddly, it feels like I’ve just met Lacey for the first time. A woman who has been living for years in the shadow of unfulfilled dreams and a million decisions that didn’t quite work out.
When we leave the dingy motel two days later, my phone trills at me as we pull out of the driveway. Looking down, I see my calendar pop up. “Back home to Trevor.”
Dismissing the alert, I toss the phone into the backseat and turn up the radio so loud that I can’t hear my own thoughts or feel the dull ache in my chest. Lacey gives me a side glance but says nothing, only turns the radio up a few notches more and turns away to stare out the window.
Halfway home, I pull off the interstate to fuel up. Lacey trots into the gas station convenience store to try to find something to eat that won’t turn our stomachs or make our skin break out before we get home. Standing at the pump, watching the little numbers tick upward, my phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Kate?”
The woman’s voice on the line sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t place it.
“This is Marilyn Jenkins.”
Shit. I look around me, wondering if the hit man she probably hired is visible in plain sight or obscured by the bushes. Clearing my throat, I can’t even figure out what the appropriate greeting should be. If I grovel, will she take mercy on me? If I cry, will she taunt me into a sniveling mess?
“Hi.” That will have to do. She called me, after all. I’m guessing I should let her do the talking.
“Look, I’m just going to get right to the point. As much as I want to rip your pretty little throat out right now, my son is in love with you, so I won’t. I don’t normally get involved in my kids’ relationships, but these seem to be special circumstances.”
“OK.”
“Are you really going to leave him over this?” I can hear her breathing through the phone, and I can swear she might be foaming at the mouth.
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Try me. I’m pretty sure I can keep up.”
“The short version is, he’s perfect and I’m screwed up. My backstory is too messy.”
Marilyn sighs exasperatedly into the phone.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. Is that all? Welcome to the human race, sweetheart: we’re all too fucked up for words.”
I start to laugh. This bold, feisty woman is probably the reason Trevor seems to know how to love so doggedly. Her voice softens and she sighs again.
“Kate, I’m sure this seems like the right choice to you, to leave him because you think it’s for the best. But, you’re taking the easy way out and it’s killing him. It’s a chickenshit move, really. Trust me, I know it hurts like hell to hold on when things get rough. So does he. My baby boy spent a lot of years punishing himself for things that aren’t his fault. Until he met you, he didn’t think another soul could possibly understand how heavy a burden that kind of guilt can be. Then he let you in, which is a feat for him.”
“I know.”
“I only have one more thing to say and then I’m staying out of this mess.” She pauses. “Let him love you, Kate. If you just do that, he’ll give you the world. And if you love him back, the two of you will be invincible.”
Before I can tell her how badly I want that, how thankful I am that she brought him into this world, or how much I needed to hear everything she just said, she hangs up.
Heading back onto the interstate, Lacey riding shotgun and offering me handfuls of Milk Duds at perfectly timed intervals, I figure out exactly where I need to go to find my soul again. Because if I walk away from Trevor, his heart and our story, that decision will end me. I lost James through a heavy-handed blow of twisted fate, but losing Trevor would different. And it truly would be all my fault. The result of shortsighted choices that I thought would make the pain less palpable.
If this were a movie, this is the part where I would roll down the window and dramatically toss a wrinkled map into the wind. Because I don’t need a map; I don’t need anything other than to follow my heart home.
28
I stand in the middle of my living room, boxes and bags surrounding me. Each stuffed with things from my life, divided into three piles. Things from my old life that can go away, things for the new life I’m hoping for, and things I’ll need if I’ve missed the bus on that new life I want.
When Sharon knocks on the front screen door to catch my attention, she is holding two open beers in one hand and the look on her face, hopeful and reassuring, makes me want to hug her until she begs me to stop. I head outside to join her and we stand on the porch, watching the last moments of the evening sun disappearing behind the mountains.
“He called me a few days ago.”
“Who?” I say it automatically, even though I know exactly who.
“Trevor.”
“What did he want?”
“I think he may have been a little drunk, I’m not sure. He just wanted to find out if you were OK. We didn’t talk long.”
“What did you tell him?” I drop my gaze to the ground and kick a loose nail head with my shoe.
“The truth. That you weren’t OK. That he just needed to hang in there a little while longer. That he should wait for you.”
When I look back up at her, she’s smiling at me and then she moves to hug me good-bye. I squeeze her hard and just as I’m about to thank her for every single time she held me up in the last five years, she says, “Don’t be afraid. Just go get him.”
The taxi drivers outside LAX are moving boisterously, and before I can even figure out the final details of my plan, one of them is grabbing my bag and tossing it in the trunk of his green hybrid. He waves me forward and gestures impatiently for me to get in.
“Where going?” he barks with a melting-pot kind of accent I can’t really identify.
Digging around in my purse, I shove things around, trying to find the address I need. There is far too much junk in this thing, and the tiny slip of paper I want is eluding my grasp.
“Where going!”
“One second, hold on.” Can’t this guy tell that I’m already flustered within one inch of my tenuous sanity? Yeesh, I’m about to throw myself on the mercy of the man I love and hope he hasn’t come to his senses enough to tell me to pound sand. Wanting a smidge of patience wouldn’t be unheard of in this situation.
He groans and points to the meter, as if I don’t understand that in his world time is money. The purple sticky note finally peeks out from next to a pack of gum and I grab it.
“Uh, OK. I need to go to Pacific Palisades. Here’s the address.” I shove the little paper at him. Before I can even lean back against the seat, he floors it and makes a series of jarring turns that roll me into the door. Finally, he zooms onto the 405 like the authorities are chasing us. At least we’re moving in a straight line now, so I can relax my grip on the seat a bit.
When I called Marilyn and told her I wanted to come to McKenna’s birthday party, she actually asked me if I intend to “jack an innocent little girl’s birthday party by screwing with her uncle’s head.” As calmly as possible, I told her that isn’t remotely what my plan is. Then she gave me her address and told me to be damn sure I knew what I was doing before I put my scrawny ass on a plane. Apparently, our last conversation, the one where she was being just the teeniest bit compassionate to me, is an anomaly I shouldn’t get used to.
The driver pulls into the residential area I recognize and starts to take wild turns at fifteen miles an hour again. If I weren’t already feeling nauseated, this would have done it. Craning my head to look down the street, I see her house up ahead, where expensive cars line the street, and the sidewalk up to the house has pink streamers and white balloons along the path. He halts in front of the house and turns to look at me, draping his arm over the seat back. After I hand him sixty bucks,
he jumps out to heave my bag from the trunk and onto the street.
Before I can even ask if he’ll wait a few minutes, I hear him put the little hybrid in gear and speed away. So much for having a getaway car. I guess if Trevor tells me to get lost, I’ll have to walk. I’m definitely wearing the wrong shoes for that.
Taking a deep, powerful breath and letting it sit in my lungs as long as possible, I pick up my bag and tread slowly up the sidewalk. Reaching the door, I right my shoulders so that my skeleton can do its job properly and hold me together. I poke the doorbell and hear it echo in the house, just barely drowned out by children’s laughter and boisterous voices.
When the door opens, an utterly beautiful blonde is standing there, wearing skintight distressed jeans and a little white T-shirt that barely covers her flat, tan belly. She’s barefoot and her shiny flaxen hair is flowing over her perfect shoulders. A few tendrils graze her arms where colorful tattoos mark her skin.
She narrows her emerald-green eyes at me and her mouth tightens into a thin line.
“Can I help you?” The venom and spite in her voice are off the charts.
Wow. Maybe my mug shot is pinned to a dartboard somewhere in this house, ensuring that everyone in the vicinity knows exactly what Trevor’s crazy ex looks like, just in case I show up holding a creepy cow’s heart in my hands and babbling about our destiny.
“Hi. Is Trevor here?”
Without any attempt at a polite response, she shuts the door in my face and I can hear her stomp off from behind it. I’m not sure what to do. I turn around on the stoop a few times, dazed and shocked. This was not in my plan. I did not role-play this in my house last night. I went through a series of other scenarios: Trevor yelling, Trevor kissing me, Trevor telling me to get on my broom, but this was not in my playbook.
Maybe it’s fate, divine intervention from the universe telling me to walk away. I am so going to have blisters by the time I find a cab or a bus station. When I start to take a single step forward, I hear the door open behind me.
“Kate?”
My heart thrums in my chest and I curve my body back toward the open doorway, where Trevor stands with only fatigue and sadness in his expression. When his eyes meet mine, I swallow and try to commit everything about him to memory, since this may be the last time I’ll get to enjoy looking at him in person.
“Hi.”
“What are you doing here?”
“McKenna’s birthday. You told me it would be a rager. I had a present picked out for her, so I figured I could drop by and make sure she got it.”
His soft, sensual eyes train on me and I can’t breathe. He shoves his hands into his pockets, and his shoulders slump. I wait for him to say something, but he just keeps looking at me, silently assessing me.
“I didn’t mean to upset her.” I gesture into the house where I can see the blonde still glaring at me. Trevor knits his forehead into a bewildered expression and follows my gesture. When he finds the object of my attention, he shakes his head and rolls his eyes.
“That’s my sister, Devon. She hates you now, by the way.”
“I picked up on that.”
My stomach is starting to tumble, sensing I might still have a chance. I shuffle back through my role-playing scenarios from last night and try to get this love train back on the tracks.
Trevor’s voice cracks. “Why are you really here, Kate?”
“I was hoping you would want me—” Suddenly, McKenna comes bounding down the hallway, skipping and waving around a purple fairy wand that has little jingle bells on it. She lands next to Trevor and wraps her arm around his leg.
“Hi, Katie! It’s my birthday!”
Kneeling down, I start to open my bag. “I know. That’s why I’m here.” Pulling out a box wrapped in bright pink wrapping paper, I hand it to her. “I got this for you. Happy birthday.”
She lets go of Trevor and wraps her arms around my neck in a tight hug. Clutching the present, she skips back down the hallway and leaves us there. Inside, I grin, thinking about how much Marilyn will absolutely despise the art set I got McKenna. It has tons of little jars filled with glitter and confetti, things she’ll be vacuuming out of that pristine carpet for weeks.
When I stand up, I step closer to him. I can smell everything that is Trevor, the spiced sweetness of his body, the scent of his clean laundry, even a little sweat on his skin.
He leans back incrementally. “Kate. Finish what you were saying. Tell me why you’re here.”
“I came here hoping you would take me back. But I wasn’t sure.”
I drop my eyes and try to look aimlessly over his shoulder. If he says no, it might hurt just an iota less if I don’t see it in his eyes. Trevor snorts and scrubs his hands down his face.
“How could you not be sure? Christ, tell me what I have to do to prove to you that you’re my entire fucking world. I’ll do it. I don’t know how many ways I can say it, how many things I need to do to show it. I’m yours, Mosely.”
Something like this was in my playbook, but now I can’t remember what I wanted to say at this moment. The words I practiced to convince him to take me back are nowhere.
“I love you, Trevor. All I want is you.”
A torn expression covers his face for a second, followed by a small smirking pout. I stand there awkwardly, not sure what to do next, hoping he will show me some sign that I’ve said the right thing.
“What about some cake? Do you want to come in and have some birthday cake? It’s chocolate.”
At this point, I had planned on some very steamy kisses that led to me doing a wild number of hot things to show him how much I missed him, loved him, wanted him. I overlooked the fact that I would be declaring myself at a child’s birthday party. Not exactly the appropriate venue for reacquainting ourselves. Trevor takes my hand and drags me into the house, past his sister, who still looks like she is considering how to drop me without making too much of a mess in the house.
In the kitchen, Marilyn has one of her unreasonably large knives out and she’s cutting into a giant cake covered in rainbow-colored frosting. I catch her gaze and, miraculously, she gives me a tiny sliver of a smile. I’ll put that in the win column. It’s probably the best I’ll ever get.
We eat some cake, McKenna opens her presents, and after a few hours, people start to filter out. I spend most of the time trying to hang back, hoping I can go as unnoticed as possible. The time away makes me feel like I’m starting over again, trying to find my place in his world.
The only thing that draws me out is Trevor’s hands on my body. As the minutes tick by, the way he touches me gets more pronounced and his hands start to feel insistent. What starts with resting his hand formally at the small of my back leads to his hand slipping lower to the top curve of my ass, then eventually firmly against it. Later, when he goes to stand behind me and wraps his arms around my waist, his hands brush the side of my breasts and linger for a moment longer than they should. By the time he whispers to me that we should go home, I’m feeling so keyed up that I’m unsteady on my feet.
This dizziness does not serve me well when he wanders off to say good-bye to a few people and leaves me standing in the hallway alone. The hair on my arms pricks up when I see Devon skulking down the hall toward me. With her perfectly toned body and that glossy shampoo commercial–esque hair, she sidles up to me and gets right in my face.
“Let’s get one thing straight, Kate. You clearly have Trevor’s balls in your grasp, but I swear on my dead brother’s grave, if you hurt him again, I will go completely Cleveland projects on your ass. They won’t find your body for decades. Are we clear?”
I’m not sure how, but the fact that’s she’s agonizingly hot makes her scarier. She’s like some kind of angelic-looking gangster hooligan. Now I can see it, though. She looks just like Trevor, all sexy and gorgeous, but with impressive breasts and a tiny waist.
My mouth goes completely dry as she stares me down and from behind her, there is a low chuckle and su
ddenly Simon appears. I have no idea who would invite Simon to a kid’s birthday party, because he probably doesn’t belong anywhere near impressionable minds. He steps behind Devon and gently snakes his arms around hers, holding her back from socking me or strangling me, whichever she was going to choose.
“Down, girl. I think you made your point.”
Devon’s shoulders relax incrementally and she shuts her eyes for a beat. When she opens them, I get another stare-down, but this time her eyes are gentler. “He’s the only brother I have left. So just . . . take care of him.”
I nod and look up to catch Simon gazing, dare I say longingly, at the back of Devon’s head. His gray eyes are soft, nearly sleepy looking, and there is a tender grin teasing across his lips.
Oh. Wow. It’s distinctly possible that the SS Loveship Simon wants to drop anchor in Devon’s port. And if my suspicions are correct, then that would be all sorts of inconvenient—for everyone involved.
Good luck with that, Simon. I’m guessing it takes a serious emotional pickax to break through Devon Jenkins’s hard shell. But the way she just pleaded with me to take care of her only brother, nothing but loyalty and devotion in her request, probably means that any man tenacious enough to persevere will discover that she’s totally worth it.
Leaving the house, Trevor modestly holds my hand and strokes the back of it with his thumb. But before he opens my door to the car, he grabs me around the waist and shoves our intertwined bodies against the vehicle. His mouth is on me, gasping into my lips, and his body is grinding along mine. I drop my hands to his back, sliding one up his shirt while letting the other move inside his loose pants, and merely the feel of his skin under my fingers is nearly too much. We’ve been apart too long, so every touch spins and vibrates inside my exhausted body until I end up stiffening to stave off the intensity of it. When his hands move upward, his fingers trace my breasts, teasing my nipples into tender little buds that ache for more.