by Harper Sloan
Chicken salad sandwiches, my favorite.
The rest of our early afternoon time is spent with her curled up on the couch in my studio, watching me get lost in the heartbreaking canvas I had started the day before. I was so tuned in to what I was doing that I had completely forgotten she was still there until her soft voice broke through my tunnel vision.
“Okay, sweetie, give me a hug. It makes me feel good to see that dark cloud hanging over your head starting to clear away. Promise me that the next time you need me, you’ll pick up the phone?”
I don’t hesitate to wrap my arms around her and agree.
“I love you, Mama.”
“I love you, my sweet Ember.”
MY PHONE HAS BEEN GOING off for the last few hours, annoying, but easily something I can tune out when I’ve hit that sweet spot in my painting. I hit that magic spot while my mom was still here, and I haven’t stopped since, even with the lingering hangover that still haunts my body.
More often than not, when I’ve hit that spot, not a single thing can tear my focus away. Everything is falling together like magic and the once blank canvas is now beginning to look exactly how I envisioned.
I was right yesterday when I thought this might be my best piece yet.
So much haunting beauty in this large glory.
Heartbreakingly sad, but alight with a hopefulness for something ‘more’ swirling between the brushstrokes.
Today, I had concentrated on the two outstretched arms meeting in the center of the canvas as the focus. Each finger on the opposing hand extended, trying desperately to reach the other, but never getting close enough. Being as close as I am to the piece now, I can see the outline of the man and woman starting to take shape beyond those two hands.
When I’m finished, the abstract piece will be more blur and fade around the edges, the two bodies becoming clearer the closer you get to those two perfectly painted and in focus hands.
This is me.
This is Nate.
It’s us.
So much beauty and pain in one huge piece that I can’t help but think it is eventually my soul stripped bare and splattered against the canvas.
“A Beautiful War,” I declare to myself with a smile, knowing instantly that the title for my piece has been born.
Bam bumps my leg, and I look down, smile still in place. “What’s wrong, handsome man?”
He whines before moving to the door of my house. With a laugh, I clean off my brush and close the tops of my paint before moving around my easel.
“Come on, beast.” I snicker when he starts to wag his tail in excitement.
When I push open the door that leads into my kitchen from my studio, he rushes through the house and I hear him barking at the front.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I complain, almost tripping over the chew toys that he had strewn all over the kitchen floor. “You’re worse than a child, Bam,” I chide with a chuckle, picking up the few toys on my way to the living room.
I can hear him whining as I turn the corner into the living room from the small hallway and come to an abrupt halt when I see the imposing figure sitting in the middle of my couch. His arms are over the back in a relaxed manner, but his face betrays him. I can tell by the tick in his jaw that the calm he is portraying is a mask, but why he’s looking at me with eyes cold and calculating is beyond me.
“Ember,” he drawls, his deep voice thick, the way it always is when he’s angry.
“Levi, hey … I thought you were going to call me later tonight?”
He doesn’t speak, but I watch his jaw clench now as his lips thin. The unease that I had felt when walking in the room grows to a burning ball of anxiety in my gut.
“How was work?” I hedge nervously.
“Fine.”
“Would you like something to drink?” I continue, moving to settle in on the loveseat opposite from him.
He leans forward, dropping his arms from the back of the couch and placing his elbows on his knees, never dropping his eyes from mine. “No.”
“Okay.” I gulp, not understanding his mood today. Hell, I haven’t seen him since the other night, and even though we didn’t leave on good terms, the brief texts that we’ve had since haven’t given me a clue to why this is happening now.
Unless he knows you’re about to break it off.
I ignore the inner voice and will my hands not to start fidgeting as I shift in my seat.
“How was your party?” he questions, deadly calm as he continues to leer at me.
“Good,” I respond. “Well, good until I figured out that the hangovers are never worth the buzz,” I clarify in an attempt to lighten the mood.
“That’s nice. I didn’t hear from you after you told me you would be going to that new club in town,” he accuses.
Losing the battle with my nervous fidgeting, I twist my fingers together in my lap. His eyes cast a quick glance at them before they flit back to my face. “Yeah, sorry about that. After the girls got here, things just kind of went crazy. They had me busy from the second they opened the pizza boxes until I got home last night.”
“Hmm,” he remarks.
“Anyway, how was your night?”
“Interesting,” he discloses ominously.
“Did you have a lot of call outs?” I ask, trying to ease the alarm I feel over his calm anger.
“Not really. Just one.”
“Are you okay?”
He studies me for the longest breath before leaning back with one side of his mouth tipped up. Instead of looking like a smile, it only makes his face look like an evil sneer.
“Levi?” I coax when he doesn’t speak.
“Tell me, Ember,” he starts. “Would you think for one second that I would be okay with my fucking woman dressed like a slut while some man had his hands on her?”
“What?” I gasp in shock. I don’t take my eyes off him, but I have a bad feeling things are about to get ugly.
“Did you fuck him?”
“Levi! No, of course not. You know I’m not that type of girl.” Except, I’m not really sure what would have happened if rational thought hadn’t returned after the touch of Nate’s lips to mine last night. If I’m honest with myself, we were, in fact, seconds away from becoming a tangle of naked flesh.
“I’m not sure I believe you, Ember. Imagine my shock when we get a call to come check on that new fucking club because of the crowd size, and I walk in to see my girlfriend in the middle of some weird bar lap dance. I have two goddamn eyes, and I would be a fool not to believe what was right in front of my face.”
Shit.
Damn.
Well, this wasn’t exactly how I had pictured this going, but I might as well get it over with. Rip off the Band-Aid and finally make the long overdue move to end things between us.
“Nothing like that happened, Levi. I’m sure that Nate was just putting on a show because he knows the girls would think it was hilarious to embarrass me.”
His eyes flare at the mention of Nate’s name, and I feel my heart pick up speed and my skin flush cold with chills.
“Nate?” he bursts out, the sound like a deep rumble of thunder, making Bam bark. Levi’s head swivels toward where Bam is sitting, and I hear my poor baby whine, which is so unlike my sweet-natured pup. He loves everyone.
My mind goes back to the other morning when I found out he had been tied to the fence, and I know, somehow, deep in my gut, that Levi was responsible.
“Look, Lev. I had hoped that we would be able to go out to dinner tonight to have this talk, but clearly, this just needs to happen now. I’ve felt this way for a while now, but we’re just not working. I think it would be best if we broke things off.”
There. I said it and the world is still spinning away.
His head twists from Bam, and he studies me with his stoic and quite frankly terrifyingly calm mask still in place. I wait with bated breath as he continues his silence. The clock on the wall behind me ticks away. Bam’s panting e
choes against the walls. My heart is in my stomach as trepidation climbs up my throat.
I watch as something dark dances across his face, briefly, before he gives me a nod and stands. I lean back in my seat at his sudden movement.
“If that’s what you want. I’m not going to stick around if you would rather whore yourself out around town and look like a fool.”
He stomps toward the door before stopping when his body is in front of the small entryway table I have next to it. His hand comes up from where he had been clenching his fist at his sides, and I watch as he picks up one of the many frames that decorate the surface. I try to visualize the order of my framed memories but can’t seem to recall what could have possibly drawn his attention.
The muscles in his back ripple with tension, pulsing through the tight fabric of his dark tee shirt, before he turns to lock his evil gaze on me. I don’t have time to comprehend his movement before the picture is sailing through the air and crashing into the wall, just barely missing my head.
“Family friend, my fucking ass. Have a nice life, bitch,” he seethes before opening the door so hard that the doorknob sticks in the drywall.
My breaths come in rushed gasps as I stare in fear at the open doorway. Bam rushes to my side and lays his head in my lap with a gentle whine meant to soothe me. I hear the sound of Levi’s truck start up, but it isn’t until the sound of his engine had long since faded away that I rushed from my spot and muscled the door out of the wall before slamming it and throwing back the locks.
I scramble around my vacated seat and bend to grab the broken and shattered photo from the ground, gasping when I see which one it was.
I don’t even remember who took the picture, but I had never been able to take it down and put it away. It’s been one of my favorite images and cherished memories for so long that I should have realized it was the one Levi had seen.
It was a few months after Nate had started tutoring me. Everyone had been enjoying a long day at the Reid’s. My skin was pink from being out in the sun for hours, but I didn’t mind a second of that sunburn later that night.
I had been standing at the edge of the lake; you could see the out-of-focus people peppered in and out of the water, but at that moment, the camera caught me laughing at something Nate had said to me. My head was thrown back, hair down my back; my bikini had been a new purchase that I got in so much trouble with from my dad. I looked beyond happy and carefree.
And Nate … he was standing next to me, his board shorts low on his hips in the most delicious way. But I loved his face the most about this picture. He wasn’t laughing with me. Instead, he was looking at me as if I was the most precious thing he had ever seen.
That look helped to convince me months later to take a chance and tell him how I felt. I was desperate to see that look again with my own eyes, but it wasn’t until last night that he ever gave me a chance to see it once more.
There is no doubt in my mind that Levi saw the same thing I had built all my hopes on when he saw Nate’s face, and as twisted as it is to feel this way, the only thing his outburst has done is given me the verification needed to see the direction my heart wants me to follow.
NIGHT AFTER NIGHT FOR THE last week, Dirty has been insane.
A good insane. The kind that solidifies the fact I knew in my bones for a long time coming that this place would be a success.
But it’s also been somewhat of a double-edged sword.
The madness kept me there for the past seven days while I’ve had to fight with myself every second of that time not to say fuck it and rush off to find Ember. I hadn’t even had time to jump over to CS until now to finish the cases I still had to close.
I spent the first day after my chat with my dad still struggling to get my cock under control. The day after that, I kept going over and over what he had said. Picturing my future without Ember in it. Visualizing her meeting someone, getting married, having his kids … and in the end, I felt like I would be sick. Hell, I almost was.
There was no doubt about it; the thought of her with someone other than me was unfathomable. At that moment, I knew that my old man was right. I had to work my ass off to make up for the shit I had done that not only hurt her and pushed her away, but also get to the bottom of that night at my sister’s wedding.
My memories still start and end with the dream that had haunted me for months, but until I hear it from Ember, I’m not sure how to make up for that.
The only thing I know for sure is that I’m going to fucking do it.
I hear the door open but don’t look away from the monitor in front of me. I had neglected my responsibilities here at CS for a week now, and regardless of my responsibility to be at Dirty, I can’t let my dad down.
“What’s wrong with your face?”
I look up from my computer at the sound of Maddox entering the room.
“Shit,” I mumble under my breath.
“I can hear you,” he says, walking around to drop down on the chair at his desk. I look up in time to see him scowl at the picture of his girls, the same picture that I had turned slightly so I could see Ember better earlier, and wince when he grumbles low in his throat before shifting it back—only this time so I can’t see shit.
“You want a picture on your desk of my girl, you need to earn the right to have it there.”
“Yes, sir,” I smart.
“Nate,” he calls, and I pause my typing to focus on him. There’s no way in hell I’m going to do anything that could piss him off when he knows I’m after making his baby girl mine, so I wisely give him one hundred percent of my attention. “Did you fix things with her?”
A lesser man would have looked away when Maddox Locke turned his penetrating black eyes on them. He’s a hard man; rarely smiling unless it’s at one of the three women in his life, but that silent dominating hold his very presence commands hits hard. He has a dark side; a side you don’t ever want focused on you.
“Working on it,” I respond, my voice strong and true.
“Work harder. I don’t like seeing her upset, Nate.”
My brow furrows. “I wasn’t aware that she was upset,” I add.
This time, his expression darkens, and I know I fucked up, even if I didn’t mean it in the way it sounded.
He opens his mouth to speak, but I stop him with a sigh and one hand in the air. “Don’t. I understand that you mean well right now, and I respect the hell out of that, but from now on, what happens between Ember and me will stay that way—between us. Before you assume that I didn’t know she was upset because I had been avoiding her, let me set that straight. I’ve been working at Dirty from noon until almost four in the morning for seven days straight, and I finally pulled myself away from that to give up some much-needed sleep in order to close these cases out. I already told Shane, my manager, that I wouldn’t be in tonight because I needed to take care of something. Now, it isn’t any of your business, but I had planned to go see her tonight. I’ll also share that I’ve talked to her briefly during the week, and she understands that I couldn’t get away until tonight. So if she is upset still, respect me enough to know I’m working on it.”
“You done?” he probes when I stop talking, an odd look crossing his features.
“I think so.”
He nods, looking down at the frame before reaching out with one tan finger and pushing the corner of it until it is—once again—facing in a way that I can see Ember’s beautiful face.
I take a deep breath, slowly, so he doesn’t see I might have been seconds away from shitting my pants.
We continue to work on our respective cases in silence, the hours passing quickly. I look down at my work, making sure to finish my notes up in as much detail as possible before hitting the enter key with so much force that it echoes around us.
I lean back with a satisfying smile when I think about the hell storm that is about to rain down on the CFO I had been investigating. Now, with that strike against the keyboard, not only will our client
know the depths of his employee’s deceit, but the FBI will as well.
Now that my work is done, the rest is up to them.
And that officially ended my work at CS for the foreseeable future.
I look back at the turned frame and let myself relax knowing that even if she puts up a fight, now that I’m finished here, I can go there and then, I’m one step closer to getting my girl.
“Nathaniel.”
I look up at Maddox and pray he isn’t about to kick my ass now. I would rather not have to explain to Ember that her father tried to kill me before I even had a chance to win her.
“Sir?”
“I’m proud of you,” he declares, causing me to pause cleaning up my files. “I’m not an easy person to stand up to and the fact that you had no problem putting me in my place shows me just what kind of man you’ve become. You might play the part of the carefree clown, but you have a strength about you that shows me if my baby girl decides to give you her heart, you’re worth holding on to it.”
I almost lose control of my body and drop dead in shock at his words. Fuck me, but I never thought I would get his blessing. I figured winning Ember would be the easy part—winning her father’s approval being the fight.
“Thank you, Maddox,” I reply, pretty damn proud that I’m able to keep myself from pumping my fist up in victory.
“That being said,” he continues, his voice taking on a threatening tone. “If you hurt her in any way, remember that I know how to kill you and make it look like an accident. Don’t make me have to kill one of my best friends’ boys, Nate.”
“Uh,” I hesitate, my eyes widening.
“Nothing to say. I know where you stand and you know where I stand. You have my blessing to make her happy, but with that comes the promise of what I’ll do if you fuck that up.”
I nod, swallowing the pool of saliva that had gathered in my mouth.
I place the last folder of my closed cases in the tray on the side of my desk and grab my phone off the charging dock before turning to leave, only to stop in my tracks when Maddox calls my name.