by Falon Gold
Anna and I exited the room hand in hand. I didn’t think I’d ever have the simple pleasure of twining my fingers with hers. When I woke up today, I was still wondering how to reach out to her. What a difference a day makes.
Bo, Hayden, and Kay stood in the living area, talking quietly over the boxes and furniture that had been moved off the truck but had to be parked in here because Anna and I had sequestered ourselves in the bedroom. I felt no guilt or shame.
Kay gave us a sheepish look. “Sorry, the haters wouldn’t stop knocking at the door. I tried to get you guys as much privacy as I could, but the one hater would distract me while the other hater knocked on the door.”
“Haters?!” Bo and Hayden yelped together.
Leaning on the handles of the hand truck with another one of Anna’s massive nightstands strapped to it, Bo followed up with, “Hey, y’all might not have to work tomorrow, but I do, and I’d like to catch the Braves’ games and go to sleep at a decent time tonight in my recliner with a beer in my hand.”
I took it as he lived alone too. Hopefully, I didn’t live alone for much longer, completely ready for my life to begin with Anna.
She peeped down at her phone. “It’s only two o’clock, Bo.”
“Your point?” he tossed back, making her laugh.
“And I have two more yards to cut and I don’t expect any help since you have a new girl now, Roland,” Hayden inputted. “So yeah, I’d like to get done over here then finish at home before it rains thank you very much.”
And yeah, I’d like to spend some time like all day and all night with my girl, but I wouldn’t be that dirty to a friend. “You don’t have to throw hints, Hayden. Of course, I’ll help you cut yours and Kay’s grass.” Then, I looked at Kay standing beside her man. “Everyone else has listed their duties. What do you have to do?”
“Supervise the lawn care and Anna’s move,” Kay supplied with a cheesy grin.
“In other words, she’s going to get on everyone’s nerves with issuing orders and opinions a safe distance away from the actual work,” Anna quipped.
Kay pointed at Anna, “Yes, what she said.”
Kay’s honesty got her a round of laughter. Bo made the first move of finishing up with everything we had to do today by rolling the other nightstand to the bedroom. Kay announced that she’d be right back to Anna before walking out the front door with Hayden.
I turned to peck Anna on the mouth. “See you tonight, sweetheart. Remember to call me if you need anything.”
She palmed my chest. “Damn right you’ll see me tonight. I certainly will call you if I need anything, and you don’t have to move your truck if you don’t want to,” she stated with a whole lot of aggression in her tone. I liked that shit in a woman, especially this woman. She wasn’t afraid to go for what she wanted, and I hated to leave her, but Hayden would be back knocking on something if I didn’t go now.
I had to tear myself away from her. Jogging across the yards, I liked having my truck at Anna’s house. It was a lot like marking my territory. On my way home, I bypassed Kay. She got a laugh from me when she wagged her eyebrows suggestively at me on her way back to my girl’s house.
When I reached the side of my home, an idea popped in my head. Anna needed to be around what she was so afraid of handling; a kid. To get my hands and hers on one, I knew just the person to call, and I wasn’t above laying a guilt trip down to get what I wanted.
Arriving at my back deck, I walked under the canopy top extending from the double back doors. Hayden was already on the riding lawn mower, working on the two acres that stopped at a heavily wooded area. I had to be careful not to walk off in the huge hole in the yard at the front of the deck. It would be filled in with an inground pool in a few days.
Scrolling through my phone contacts, I found the person’s number I wanted but hadn’t dialed in a year and a half. Before now, it had been too painful to call my brother a year younger than me. While I was defending this country, he was taking my fiancée in his bed. Lara McBride wasn’t the greatest love of my life, but there was a bro code amongst men concerning women, and Cade Flynn had desecrated it.
His line rung once before he picked up. “Roland?”
“Yep, it’s me, Cade. I need to borrow my nephew.”
“Well, hello to you too. I thought somebody would have to die for you to call… What! Borrow your nephew? Are you nuts?” He shrieked like a six-year-old girl that just found a critter in her bed.
“Yes, I’m nuts for a certain woman, and I need you to come here and bring Nathan. I need to take him next door for a play date with a grown woman.”
Hayden stopped the lawn mower and got off it, walking toward me. He probably was about to complain about me not having started up the weed eater yet.
Something shattered on Cade’s side of the phone. “Did you say take him next door for a play date with a grown woman ? What the fuck have you been smoking, Roland? Do you realize that you’re literally asking me to give you my first born to take him to a stranger’s house to do God knows what with him?”
“Yes, but she’s not a stranger to me, and you want me to forgive you for stealing my ex-fiancée, don’t you?”
Although he couldn’t see me, I was grinning like a Cheshire cat, unremorseful about what I was doing to him or asking of him. Something else broke on his end. My request seemed to have given him butter fingers.
He swore. “Well, yeah, Roland, I want you to forgive me. But damn, I gotta give you my firstborn to get you to do it?”
“That’s the price, Cade.”
“You don’t ask for much, do you? Can I ask what you’re going to do with him exactly?”
“Well, I would hope you would ask and demand I tell you since he’s your son and you’re responsible for his safety. I planned to show him off pretty much, show a good woman that she won’t hurt children, and that she’ll take care of them like she takes care of herself. She thinks her rough childhood makes her a detriment to anything breathing like her mother is, so she doesn’t want to be in a real relationship or have babies. I need to show her that she’s nothing like her mother.”
Cade waited a beat before responding, “Her childhood couldn’t have been any rougher than ours.”
The silence reigned as I flashed back to my own hellish childhood. I cupped my jaw and looked up at the clouds drifting in front of the sun. Our childhood was damn near a taboo subject between Cade and me. We didn’t discuss our mother’s death that led to our father’s constant drunkenness, which usually led to one of us being hit until I was old enough to hit back and protect Cade. Why discuss that when we had lived it?
When he was old enough to go to college, I joined the Marines then Hayden’s special ops unit that I traveled the world with though my job had been performed best under solitary conditions only certain types of people shined in; the introverted. That was me by nature, Anna by necessity.
Some days, I missed linking up with the mishmash of elite soldiers from different branches of the military to make the world a better place, but I couldn’t go back to our merry band of warriors even if I wanted to. The unit was slowly being disbanded as we jumped ship one by one, and I had another world to save now; my own world with Anna. And I would save it, come hell, high water, or Anna’s deep-seated insecurities.
“Cade, I’m not so sure about our childhood being worse than hers. She had an addict for a mother who I suspect was not only neglectful but abusive. We had an abusive drunk for a father, but we had an aunt who looked out for us and you and I had each other.” Once upon a time anyway. “And comparing fucked up upbringings isn’t the point of me borrowing Nathan for a few hours. She needs to know that she’s not the monster her mother was. Giving her a live baby to handle is the key to making her see that, and you’re the only I know well enough to ask for their child.”
Hayden chuckled beside me. “You really don’t ask for much, do you, you ruthless bastard? I hope you know what the hell you’re doing. Anna is raw and uncut, and
she might just kick your ass for trying to fix her.” Was I being ruthless with Cade? Probably. Was I going to stop? Nope.
“I know what I’m doing, Hayden. Anna may be raw and uncut, but she’s not an abuser of kids, or she’d have some by now and be abusing them. What she is, is extremely afraid of having anything that she can damage. That fear is why she acts tough. It’s a defense mechanism. If she pushes you away, and if you don’t look beyond her behavior, you can’t won’t see the pain and worries she hide and think she’s weak, which draws predators. Luckily for her, not many people bother to look past the surface.”
“Wow,” Hayden said drily. “When did you take psychology classes?”
“I didn’t take them, smartass, but I do see a therapist who gives me a lot of input into human behavior.”
“Can’t we just pull up a couch and compare fucked up childhoods with her instead of handing her my child?” Cade grumbled. “I feel her pain, but I don’t know her. Nathan is too little to be alone with a stranger. He can’t talk or walk and defend himself. What the hell is wrong with you for asking me that in the first place?”
It wasn’t so much what was wrong with me but what was right; I was in love with a woman who was so stingy with her loyalty that I wouldn’t question it once she granted it to me. Plus, he owed me. Anna could work on conquering her fears.
“It’s all for the greater good, Cade, and Nathan won’t be alone with her. Do I look like an idiot who’d leave my nephew with someone you and Lara don’t know?”
I was just an idiot who left my fiancée in my brother’s care and expected him not to sleep with her, knock her up, then marry her. But, I wasn’t stupid enough to leave a baby with a stranger who won’t even know I have the baby with me until I was in her house and it was too late to turn me away.
A familiar female voice emitted in the background on Cade’s end. “Hold on, Roland,” he ordered.
An unclear conversation began to take place on his side of the phone. I waited for him to stop discussing my ultimatum with Lara. It had to be her that he was talking to… unless he was cheating on her already, but I highly doubted that. They seemed to be really in love when I saw them half a year ago at a cousin’s wedding, and for Nathan’s sake, I hoped they stayed in love.
“Roland,” Cade spoke into the line.
“Yeah?”
“Lara wants to talk to you. Are you… up for that?” The hesitancy in his grown man’s voice was almost laughable.
“Yep,” I said quickly, but I wasn’t really up for it.
Normally, it stung to hear his voice and think of what they had done behind my back. They were supposed to love me not hurt me, but I wasn’t feeling the sting of betrayal now. I wondered why that was and guessed that I had moved on from their betrayal finally, forgiven them. About damn time.
“Roland?” Lara said timidly, normally a self-confident woman in all she did.
“Yeah?” I answered cautiously, gauging my own feelings. Nope, no sting anymore.
“We’ll bring the baby for you, but first, what’s her name?”
“Anna Harp. She grew up in Dalton, just moved next to me, and I want her to see that she’d be good with our children.”
Our children? No doubt, I was moving too fast. Anna was nowhere near ready for a relationship let alone marriage and kids. Marriage was the only way I’d give her children though, well, if she ever wanted them.
“You love her, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do,” I said without hesitating.
“Of course, you do. You were always a standup guy with a good heart, and I’m so happy for you. Okay, I’m all in for you helping her by using my son. I know you’ll take care of him, but I have a few rules.” Lara was a stickler for the rules until it came to my brother.
“Okay.”
“If she’s never held a baby before, you don’t let her hold Nathan alone. But, I don’t care if she has a degree in early childhood development, you don’t leave her alone with him not even for a minute, and you have to spend some one on one time with Cade. Your girl isn’t the only one who has to get over something, but I’m worried about you getting over Cade and I getting together for yours and Cade’s sake, not mine. You can hate me and ignore me all you want, but Cade misses the hell out of you. He knows he hurt you, and so did I.”
Lara sighed. “We don’t deny we hurt you, Roland, but we never meant to hurt you. I never meant to come in between you two. I know that doesn’t make up for me falling in love with him while I was with you, but if you guys would just patch things up. All I’m asking is for you to help me give you two back to each other, not ease my conscience. You never have to see my face again… Oh, and you have to spend time with Nathan. He needs his uncle and another good man in his life, you know? You can never have too many of them.”
Those weren’t rules she laid down, those were demands. I was supposed to be the one delivering the ultimatums here, and she was laying it on thick about me and Cade becoming brothers in every sense of the word again. Apparently, what they had done to me was really eating at her. As much as I might feel some vindication in that, her messed up conscience wasn’t good for Nathan. He was innocent in all this mess and needed happy, guilt-free parents who could concentrate solely on him if they weren’t thinking about their regrets.
I exhaled before saying what really needed to be said during this call, “You’re both forgiven, Lara.”
Her breath whooshed through the line. “Thank you, but what about spending time with my guys?” Jeez, she was greedy!
“It’s done.” I’d spend time with the Grinch for Anna. “Can you all come up tomorrow about eleven? I have an appointment in the morning at nine.” I had my own mental health to keep in check.
“All-all of us?” she stammered.
“Sure, why not? It’s not like Cade can steal you from me again, and I have no grudges with you two.” Anymore. “And I want to start helping Anna as soon as I can.” Make her fully mine as soon as I can. I was under no illusions that she wouldn’t find a reason to run from me again, so I needed her heart firmly in my hands.
“Cade said we can drive up to Dalton in the morning,” Lara spoke. “He can take off Monday, but I have to work that morning, so we’ll have to leave Sunday evening.”
“That works for me.”
“Okay then. Here’s Cade, and thank you again, Roland. You don’t know just how big your heart is to do this for me of all people, and it’s going to come back tenfold for you. I promise that.”
How in the hell did this become about me doing something for her? I think I’ve been suckered. Big time. Damn women!
“Oh, I have a pretty good idea how big my heart is, Lara.” And who owned it, and what all it would do for Anna. Anything.
********
Later that evening
~Anna~
“I’m so damn proud of you!” Kay cried, then squealed through the phone.
I pulled the device away from my ear until she was done. Damn, she was super excited about me suggesting therapy for myself. Sheesh! Finally, she quieted down.
“I’m just trying new things, Kay, not having a baby or getting married.”
“Not now you’re not, but you will. One step leads to a whole damn journey, and I want many journerys for you with Roland. You know he was more worried about you than me for the last month and he’d only known you for five minutes? I don’t know what you did to that man on my deck, but—”
“Let’s not go there please because it was more like what he did to me on your deck. Nothing has been the same since and I didn’t know how to deal with the changes he sparked inside me, which began with our conversation at the bar.” Kay definitely knew I’d slept with Roland on her deck, but if she didn’t bring it up directly, I wouldn’t either.
“Change is good sometimes, and whatever he did, it was the right thing because you’re talking about going to counseling. Do you know how long I wanted to mention counseling to you?”
“Probably since
you met me,” I remarked nonchalantly like we were discussing the weather and not something huge like changing my views on life that always felt like something to be endured not experienced. It was the other way around clearly, and it was a crying shame that it took a total stranger to help me work that out for myself.
“Yes, Anna, it’s been that long since I’ve had the idea of you going to counseling with me while I went for my issues of being bullied, and no, I didn’t say therapist to you because I didn’t want my throat slit. I like my vocal cords where they are, and I didn’t offer taking karate classes when we were kids either because Dalton wouldn’t have been the same if you had the ability to whoop even the cops’ asses. I could see you instilling fear in every citizen in Dalton now as you locked this city down.”
“Locked the city down?! I’m not that violent, Kay,” I protested, knowing that was a damn lie. I rather have someone fear me than the other way around. Fear wasn’t pleasant company either.
“Girl, please. Who do you think you’re talking to? I was there when you punched that second grader, knocked her flat on her back, and she didn’t get back up. I was there when you first started carrying a blade for protection while walking your neighborhood. I won’t mention the times I was there when you whipped that blade out on girls and guys alike when they pissed you off.”
I hung my head between my knees. “I thought you said you wouldn’t mention it.”
“Oh, I did say that, didn’t I?”
“Yes, and you can stop playing crazy. You knew what you were saying, and I am not proud of the shit I’ve done, or how angry I was back then… how angry I still am.”
“Being angry is okay, Anna. Who wouldn’t be angry with a parent like Shelly?”
“Shhhh. We’re not supposed to say her name, remember?” As kids, anytime we said her name, Shelly would show up no matter where we were. Liking my mother to the devil has been a running joke between us ever since.
“We’re not kids now, Anna. She doesn’t know where you live. If she shows up, I’m sure you’ll make her regret it, and I am going to let you go because it’s almost nine. I wish you a great night with Roland, and I’ll have that list of the best therapists in the surrounding counties for you in the morning.”