by Jordan Marie
Hope starts laughing and I love her laugh, but still. No man wants to hear they’re freaking old. Shit, I know Hope said I was fifty, but I didn’t feel fifty—at least not until this moment.
“I’m not leaving her a tip,” I growl—which makes Hope laugh harder.
I enjoy that so much, I kiss her.
And in the end I left the waitress a tip, because with Hope’s kiss, and her laughter ringing in my ears, it’s impossible to hold a grudge.
41
Hope
“Hello?”
“Hey,” I whisper softly, Aunt Ida Sue’s voice instantly bringing a warm rush of memories of my father.
“Hope? Is that you baby doll?”
“It’s me. How are you Aunt Ida?”
“Bad time to ask. Lotus Petal is driving me nuts. I swear you would think she’s the first woman in the history of the world to go through morning sickness.”
“Petal is pregnant?”
“Yeah, Luka knocked her up months ago. She’s starting to look like she swallowed a watermelon now.”
“Nice, Mom,” I hear Petal in the background.
“Just stating the obvious,” Ida Sue laughs, then she lowers her voice. “I was actually being nice, because she’s so damn touchy. She looks more like she swallowed one of those huge beach balls.”
“Oh gosh.”
“And you know how short she is. It’s not pretty. Dang girl waddles when she walks and she’s only about four months. By the time she hits month seven we’ll all be crying if her attitude doesn’t improve,” Ida Sue continues.
“I heard that!” Petal yells in the background.
“I meant for you to! I was hoping it would untie a knot out of your ass and make it enjoyable to be around you for at least a hot minute,” Ida Sue screams back.
“Maybe I’d be nicer if you’d quit trying to force-feed me your homemade morning sickness remedies,” Petal responds, to which Ida Sue sighs.
“I keep trying to feed her those drinks because they make her sleep. Honest to God, I couldn’t stand her otherwise. She’s so hateful.”
“She is! It’s like she’s having Aunt Flo visit every damn day,” this comes from the background, it’s one of my cousins—I think maybe Black.
“Bullshit. She reminds me of one of those Sumo wrestlers,” I hear an answer. I think this one is Blue. “She’s like six hundred pounds of anger hurling at you and you just know she’s going to squash you.”
“Pfft… maybe if the wrestler had a yeast infection in his back flaps and he couldn’t reach it to scratch,” Ida Sue grumbles.
“Blue Lucas! Did you just say I weighed six-hundred pounds?” I hear Petal cry in the background.
“Oh shit,” Blue mumbles, and he must be sitting close to Ida Sue because he’s lowered his voice but I can still hear him. “When does Luka pick her up and take her off our hands?” Blue asks his mom.
“Not for three more hours. If I was you I’d find a place to hide and I’d do it fast. Shit, I’m going to as soon as I get off the phone with Hope.”
“You talking to Hope? Hey honey,” Blue says, and I smile.
“Tell him, hi. Listen if this is a bad time—”
“Don’t you dare hang up. I never hear from you girls anymore! How are Charity and Faith?”
“Charity is stationed overseas. She’s reporting about the rebuilding going on in Jabar. I don’t hear from her much,” I answer, talking about my younger sister who works for a major news outlet. “And Faith is in Las Vegas. Last time she checked in she was working as a blackjack dealer in a casino.”
“That girl. She’s got too much of her father’s wanderlust in her. She needs to start settling down.”
“I don’t see Faith ever settling down, Charity either for that matter.”
“Well, I get it. I sewed a lot of oats until I found my Jansen.”
“Mom if you start talking about sex this early in the day—”
“Bite me, Black. I swear I don’t know how I had such prudish children. I’m ignoring you now and talking to my little Hope.”
I hear more talking in the background, but Ida Sue must have moved, because I can’t really make any of it out.
“Listen, Aunt Ida, I can call later. I didn’t really—”
“Nonsense. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“How do you know something is wrong?” I ask, because everything is wrong, but I thought I was hiding that fact. I guess I was wrong.
“Please honey. What do you take me for? You sound so sad you sound like someone stole all your puppies and made curtains out of them.”
“Curtains?”
“I don’t have to make sense all the time. You get the gist. Now tell me what’s wrong?”
“I was actually looking for White?”
“He’s not here. He took Kayla to the doctor.”
“The doctor? Oh no, is she sick?”
“Knocked up. I think I overdid it on the fertility drinks with those two. She’s having triplets.”
“Oh my God! You’re kidding?”
“Nope. They have three kids already what with the adoption coming through. I think White’s aiming to beat Angelina Jolie in the how-many-kids-can-I-have category.”
“Wow. They’re going to need a bigger house.”
“That’s what I said,” she laughs. “Do you want me to have White call you?”
“Could you? I really need to talk with him about something.”
“I’ll do it, baby doll.”
“Thanks Aunt Ida, love you.”
“Come see me and bring Jack with you. I miss all of you girls, you make me feel closer to my brother.”
“I might surprise you,” I tell her, smiling.
“Promises, promises,” she chides, laughing as we hang up.
I’m left staring at the phone and praying White calls soon. I need to have answers for Aden when I tell him the truth. Maybe if he knows who he is and I can answer his questions he might not hate me.
I say that, but I know it’s hopeless.
He’s going to hate me.
42
Aden
“Who were you on the phone to?” I ask Hope when she hangs up.
She’s still lost somewhere in her head. She’s lying on the bed, staring at her phone and she’s looking like she’s lost her best friend. It’s a look I’m seeing more and more and I don’t like it.
“I called my Aunt Ida Sue. I wanted to talk to my cousin, White. He wasn’t there though.”
“He’s probably playing house with Kayla, like I want to with you,” I joke and lie down on the bed beside her.
“What did you say?” she asks, stiffening in my arms.
“I said he’s probably playing house with Kayla, like I want to with you,” I tell her pulling on her shirt.
“How did you know Kayla’s name?”
“What? I don’t know you must have told me. Honey, hold your arms up and help me here.”
“But I don’t think I told you, Aden. I don’t remember telling you at all.”
“Hope, you did. How else would I know?”
“Because you remember?” she says her voice panicking. “Is the past coming back to you?”
I stop for a minute and consider her words. Did I remember that. I think back and try to recall anything of my past and nothing comes. I frown.
“Nothing… the first real memory I have is waking up in the hospital with a hell of a headache.”
“But—”
“Honey, you told me all about your cousins, remember? I’m sure you mentioned Kayla’s name. What’s wrong with you, why are you so upset?”
“I’m not upset,” she denies immediately, but I know she is. You can tell it in everything she does, especially her posture.
“Babe. Spill. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” she mumbles and my response is to grunt—indicating my disbelief without bothering to call her on the lie. “Fine. If you’re remembering you should tell me. I dese
rve to know,” she mutters, refusing to look at me, but her fingers are tightened into the cover on the bed so violently that the skin on her knuckles are white.
“I’m not remembering. I would tell you if I was. You would be the first one I share that with—and not just because Jack is probably the only other human being I talk with.”
“Well—”
“And our son is many things, but—”
“I’ve been trying to talk to you about Jack. I tried before, but you didn’t listen. Aden he’s not—”
“Not very attentive when I talk,” I finish, shaking my head at her. She’s doing it again, trying to make an escape plan, trying to disengage our lives—creating an out.
It suddenly dawns on me why she’s so upset. I should have seen it before. I should have been prepared for it. Of course she’s worried I’m going to remember. She already doesn’t trust what we are with each other. She has to be scared that I will go back to being the same asshole who hurt her, treated her and Jack as if they were nothing more than an obligation, a bother. I’ve been trying to show her I can be a man she can depend on. A man she can be proud of, and all this time she’s been terrified I will change back into the man I was before.
“Aden, please, we really should talk—”
“You need to quit worrying, honey.”
“I don’t think that’s possible,” she murmurs, biting on the corner of her lip and worrying it with her teeth.
“Then we’re going to have to find other activities to fill your mind.”
She can read the intent on my face. I know this when she stops biting on her lip and it spreads into a half-smile—an exasperated half-smile
“You have a one track mind. I don’t think other activities will help us clear anything up.”
That’s when I throw a leg over her body, essentially straddling her. Though I put all my weight on my legs and not her body, she’s trapped, unable to get away and beneath me. I really like her beneath me.
“I think it will help us clear up quite a bit,” I inform her, pushing her shirt slowly up her stomach, my eyes glued to hers.
“Like what,” she says, her voice softening and her body relaxing underneath me.
“Like showing you who is in control here.”
“Because you’re on top?” she asks.
“Because I’m your man,” I correct her. “Raise your arms up, Hope,” I order, pulling her shirt up further, revealing her breasts which are trapped in a bra of black lace.
Beautiful.
“I think there are other activities besides sex, Aden,” she mutters, but she raises her hands.
I pull the shirt over her head and then the rest of the way off, before throwing it against the floor.
“Oh, I know honey. That’s why I’m going to do one now,” I tell her. I can feel her gaze on me, but I’m looking at the small metal clasp on her bra, between her breasts. I release that and the bra breaks apart, giving me an unencumbered view of her tits.
Jesus.
How do they just keep looking better and better?
“You are?” she asks.
“Definitely,” I answer. I bring my hand to each of her breasts, planting one hand over each of them and for a minute, I can only enjoy the view. Her creamy, pale white skin against my hand which is rough, dark from working in the sun, and riddled with more than a few scars. Completely opposite and yet nothing ever looked so good together. I squeeze her breasts and then release. Repeating the action because the feel of the pillowed flesh is better than anything I’ve ever experienced. Her tits should be declared national wonders.
“What are you going to do?” she whispers and that brings my gaze back to her.
“Don’t move,” I order her, my tone leaves no room for argument. I stand up and she tilts her head to look at me.
“Aden…”
I unbutton my pants, pushing them and my briefs down my legs, before stepping out of them. I’m half afraid she’ll try and run away from me; she doesn’t, although her eyes do drop down to stare at my hard cock.
I wrap my hand around it, and stroke it slowly, with a firm grip.
“We’re going to play a game, Hope.”
“Oh God,” she shudders as she moans, her voice whisper soft. “What are we playing?”
“How hard,” I answer her, slowly getting back on the bed, straddling her body again.
“How hard?” she repeats, watching as my throbbing cock gets closer and closer to her. Does she think I’m going to make her swallow him down? It’s a thought, and one I might act on—later.
I have other plans for now.
I slide my cock against her body, leaving a wet, clear trail of pre-cum in my wake. The cool of her body feels delicious against my hot shaft. I pull her breasts apart, making the perfect valley for my cock and then I roughly push them back together and hold them with bruising force.
“We’re going to play how hard can Aden fuck Hope’s tits,” I growl, thrusting.
“Fuck,” she whispers, and I like that dirty word on her lips. I’ll have to try to get her to say it more often.
“And maybe after that, we’ll play how deep can Hope swallow Aden’s cock,” I tell her.
“Yes…” she moans, but I don’t respond after that. I’m too lost in the pleasure.
43
Aden
I remembered. Not anything of substance, and definitely nothing I can share with Hope. Sometime in the middle of the night, Hope’s voice popped in my mind.
“Women like me?” she asks, and there in the dark, with my eyes closed, I saw her pain.
“Ones who try to trap a man by his dick,” I accused her, ignoring her pain and going for the jugular.
“Do you really think that I’d pick some idiot who has nothing to his name to father a child with?”
That’s when I woke up.
I wanted to scream and remember more—yet, at the same time, I didn’t. That memory was painful; it was clearly a horrible moment between us. Is this why Hope has been so worried? Is she scared that I will get my memory back and be this asshole again?
Jesus, I couldn’t blame her. I wish I could forget the memory again.
Then, almost as if fate knows that I don’t want to remember my past at all now, another far more painful memory emerges.
“Operation?” Hope asks, pain, hurt and confusion covering her features.
“Trying to get knocked up so I’ll have to support you and your bastard child”
Her hand comes up to slap me across the face, to stop the words, but it doesn’t matter. They’re out there.
“If you finish that sentence, so help me God they will be finding pieces of you hidden in the Clancy valley for fucking years. My son is not a bastard and I take care of him just fine. I don’t need any man to support me or him.”
I close my eyes tight.
How could I have done that? How could anyone use such a vile term when talking about sweet Jack. What kind of bastard was I?
I want you gone and if you’re not loaded up and out of here in the next twenty minutes I will call the law to escort you!”
I get physically sick to my stomach with that memory. I can clearly remember standing at the pool when I said it. Was Hope finally kicking me out of her and Jack’s life? Did we have some huge fight and she felt guilty and has let me stay because of that guilt?
Can she ever forgive me? Last night she admitted she cared about me. Have I done enough to repair some of the damage from the past?
Is there anything I can do to fix the mess of our past?
I have to try. I don’t want to lose her. I love her. I might not have told her, but I do. She makes me smile, she makes me feel… cared for, important. Hell, sometimes she looks at me and I feel like I could conquer the world. With what I’ve remembered, I have no idea why she put up with me as long as she did. All I know, is that I don’t want to give it up.
I don’t want to give her up.
I need a plan. I need a thought out pla
n to capture my wife’s heart again. Surely, if I go about this logically, I can win her. Last night was good, instinctively I know that it’s never been better in my life. I need to protect that—protect her. I need to make sure she knows that taking a chance on me is something she will never regret again.
The most important things in the world to her are Jack and this motel. I think she knows I love Jack, but he’s special—not a tool to win her back, he’s my son. That leaves this motel. We’ve been averaging two to five visitors a night, thanks to being right off the interstate, but that’s not enough. It’s barely allowing us to pay the bills. If I can do something to make the motel a big success, so that she doesn’t have to worry about us paying our bills…
A thought begins to form in my mind, it might be a longshot—but I think it could work. I head straight out to the reception area, and then outside. One of the only rooms we haven’t rented out was room number seven. I was afraid to assign the number to anyone else, even after I started sleeping with Hope. I don’t know why she never has—maybe she’s like me and just didn’t want to presume it was okay. Hope and I don’t talk a lot when it comes to our relationship and that needs to change. We’re going to make this work long term, I’m not losing her.
Most of my clothes are now in the small closet in the room I share with Hope, but I still have a few things in the closet here. On the top shelf above the area where I hang the clothes I find the gold and diamond ring I was wearing when I came home from the hospital. It felt weird on my hand, I didn’t like it. I didn’t understand why, but it felt like I was hurting Hope by wearing it, so I took it off and stored it in a small box. I put it in the front pocket of my jeans and then sigh when I remember… I don’t drive.
I can’t ask Hope to take me into town. She’ll ask why, and then she might get her hopes up. If this doesn’t work…then I don’t want her to be disappointed. I haven’t really met anyone in Clancy. We’re located on the far end of the town and we stay so busy, very seldom do we drive into town and when we do it has more to do with grocery shopping than making friends.