by Kara Hart
“You’ll survive,” she says. She kisses me one last time and sends me on my way.
Another day, but what to do? I drive home, get to my apartment, and I’m soon back inside that grey building, lifeless and cold. “Dammit,” I sigh.
I look at the bottle of Scotch on the counter. “Well, you’ll never leave me.” I smile to myself and grab a glass, pouring it to the top. I place two ice cubes inside and sip the dry contents. It burns just right.
My phone rings hours later when I’m much more drunk than I thought I’d be. Lazily, I answer it without looking at the screen. “Hello?” I cough, adjusting my eyes.
“We’ll find you,” a voice says into the receiver. It’s not Hawk. It’s not anyone I know. The voice is younger than Edward’s even, but it’s muffled and creepy. “We’ll find you and we’ll kill you. You and your kid.”
“Who is this?!” I scream, but the phone clicks and I know he’s gone.
I throw my glass against the wall and it shatters. “Shit,” I mutter. I have no patience left for this. None whatsoever. Hawk will find me. I always assumed that. I just didn’t think he’d find me so damn fast. I shouldn’t have answered the call.
I groan and place my palm against my forehead. “Oh, God,” I sigh. How in the hell am I going to tell Erica about any of this? I thought I could keep it under wraps. I thought I could handle it without her knowing. But of course, she’s going to find out. Hawk doesn’t play by the rules. He’s old school about things and he’s as dirty as they come. If you cross him, he’ll find out what you hold dear and he’ll exploit it as much as he can.
They’re in danger. My son is in danger.
Now, more than ever, it’s apparent what I have to do. Erica doesn’t think I’ll stick around, but I’m in this for the long haul. Now, I need to move in with her and it’s not just because I want to. If I’m not close to them, I’ll have no way of making sure they’re safe. I told her I’d protect her and Aidan and I intend to do that in any way that I can.
Losing them would be like losing myself. I can’t do that. I can’t be without them. My boy. The woman of my dreams. Nothing would destroy me more. Hawk can take my wealth. He can take away my freedom. But if he even lays one finger on the people I love, he’s in a world of pain. I’ll unleash a storm on him.
I’ll take him down. That’s a fucking promise.
24
Erica
“You look happy.” Jake, my boss, enters my office, right as I’m packing my things.
“It was a really good presentation,” I say. “I can’t believe we got the Chicago Burger account.”
“You got the Chicago account. Not anybody else,” he says.
“Thank you, Jake,” I mutter.
“It’s good to see you smiling again. For a while there, I thought we might lose you,” he says. Lose me? “But now, you seem fully invested. It’s really great. Thanks for being a team player, Erica.”
He walks out of my office before I can get a word in. So, I guess those days of being sick really hurt my reputation around here. Jake being nice wasn’t Jake actually being nice. It was him holding something over my head. Great.
Despite that little interaction, I feel pretty good. I mean, on the one hand, I shouldn’t jump into this thing with Walker again. I need to hold him at a distance, until he really proves himself. On the other hand, I finally have some life in me again. I feel real, not like I’m just Aidan’s mother.
Renata is much more skeptical. “Do not. I repeat, do not do this,” she says. “You want your heart smashed into a million pieces again?”
“No,” I sigh. “Of course I don’t. But what the hell am I supposed to do? Aidan has his father back.”
“Aidan does not need to know,” she says. “Imagine if he found out he was his dad and then he just mysteriously left again. Imagine what that would do to him?”
“Yeah.” I lower my eyes. “I know. I guess I shouldn’t be hopeful.”
“Just be wary and keep your eyes peeled for signs,” she says. “Because once he starts feeling weird about the whole daddy role, he’s going to dip. Trust me, men are like children.”
Her boyfriend just broke up with her, so I have to take some of what she says with a grain of salt. Still, she does have a point. I need to be extremely cautious. Aidan is my baby. I need to think of him above all. “You’re right,” I tell her. “I’ll be careful.”
She leans back on the couch and looks at me weird, for a good few seconds. “What?” I laugh. “Why are you doing that?”
“Because I want to know,” she says. “Was the sex incredible?”
“Ren,” I laugh. “I thought you said I shouldn’t engage with him anymore. Now, you’re asking me if I thought the sex was incredible?”
“Well, I need to know! I haven’t had sex in a week. Greg dumped me and I’ve been a wreck. Let me live through your excitement, dammit!” she exclaims. “Or not. What do I care?”
“It was amazing.” I smile and think back on it. “It was passionate and sweet. Heavy and…” I can’t think of the word I want to use.
“Deep?” Renata asks.
I cover my mouth and blush, nodding. “Very deep,” I admit.
“Ugh,” she sighs. “Well, he is really hot. I get you on that. I just worry about you, baby girl. I don’t want to see you hurt again. These last six years have been rough.”
“Oh, come on,” I smile awkwardly. “I haven’t been that bad. Have I?”
She looks at me like I’ve had a blindfold over my eyes for the last six years. “Are you serious right now? You’ve been a fucking wreck,” she says. The truth hurts. “Not trying to be a bitch, but the only times I’ve seen you get cheerful is when you’re playing with Aidan. I’ve missed seeing you this excited.”
“Yeah, well. I’ll probably all crash and burn soon enough,” I say. “It seems to be a reoccurring pattern for me.”
“Stop that,” she says. “Who knows? Maybe we were actually right this time. Maybe your luck is turning around for you. Maybe this time he’ll stay.”
“Do I even want that?” I ask, more to myself than anyone else.
“I don’t know. I can’t answer that one for you, babe,” she says. I look outside the window and see Aidan running around by himself. He’s got a huge imagination, but he’s lacking in friends and role models. Not that he doesn’t look up to me in a lot of ways, but he wants his father. It’s the one thing he brings up nowadays, more than anything.
“I hate that he’s good with him,” I say. “He’s trying hard.”
“It would be damn cute to see Aidan with his dad,” she nods.
“I just get the sense that he’s not telling me the full truth,” I say. “Like, maybe he’ll stay, but he’s hiding something from me. I don’t even know what it is, but there’s something.”
“Another woman? Women? He did do that service. You sure he’s done?” she asks.
“Ugh,” I sigh. “I don’t think it’s that. He seems to want to be around me all of the time. If he was working, I’d know it. I can’t put my finger on what it is. It’s just that something is off and if my intuition is right, all hell is going to break loose.”
“Leave it to me,” she says. “I’ll get to the bottom of it.”
“Ren, don’t. Seriously, I’ll figure it out on my own,” I say.
“Okay.” She side-eyes me. “I’m curious though.”
“Please don’t. I don’t need any more trouble.” I tell her.
“We’ll see,” she says. “We’ll see.”
25
Walker
She invited me over again, so I’ve made myself look as good as possible. To make up for the dinner that I ruined, I bring over dinner from one of the best Vietnamese restaurants in town. When I ring the doorbell, I hear running footsteps and a funny little yell coming toward the door.
“Who is it?” Aidan asks me.
“It’s me,” I say.
“Who’s me? What’s the password?” he bellows,
sounding mighty.
“The password?” I ask aloud. “Girls drool.”
He inches open the door and peaks out. “That’s not the password,” he says. “But I’ll let it slide because I like it.”
He swings open the door and I see Erica standing behind him, arms crossed. Aidan turns around and jumps. “Girls drool, huh?” Erica smiles. “I’ve seen you drool plenty of times, mister.”
“Uh oh.” He smiles.
“Wrong move to let me in, buddy. Turns out, I was a spy for your mom all along!” I reach over, pretending like I’m going to tickle him. Erica follows my lead.
“No!” he screams. “Mom, help!”
She grabs and picks him up in his arms. The tickling ensues, and he wiggles endlessly. “Kisses for you!” Erica kisses his stomach, until finally we set him down and he falls onto the carpet, laughing and kicking us away.
“You’re torturing me!” he jokes. When he catches his breath, he runs toward the kitchen.
“I brought pho,” I smile and hold up the container filled with soup, and bags of onions and jalapeños. “I’m sorry about the other night.”
“Oh, I love pho!” she says. She nearly hugs me, or at least it seems like she’s about to, before she corrects herself and heads toward the kitchen after Aidan. “Come on. Let’s eat.”
I want to talk to her about things, but I know it’s too early for any of that. Instead, we drink a little beer, eat a little soup, and I talk to Aidan as much as possible. The idea that I have a son hasn’t sunken in completely yet.
Right now, it almost feels like a dream, as if none of this is quite real. Then again, ever since I met Erica, everything has been quite dreamlike. I always thought something like this would be more planned out. Sometimes, however, that’s not the way things go. When I look at Aidan, I see myself. I see how I used to be when I was his age. He’s so lucky. He has a nice neighborhood, a perfect mother, and a bright future ahead of him. What he doesn’t have is a real father to be there for him.
“Aidan,” I say, “do you like sports?”
“I like basketball,” he says, while playing with his soup.
“We should play sometime,” I wink. “You in?”
He looks over at his mother who seems surprised by my gesture. “Can I, Mom? I’ll finish my homework. I promise!”
“You run a tight ship around here,” I tell his mom.
“I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t,” she says, glaring at me. There’s a slight distrust of me in her eyes, but she’s doing her best to be okay with things. That’s as much as you can hope for, sometimes.
My mother once told me, “You can do one hundred things right, but one thing can ruin everything forever.” It was one of the many cryptic sentences she was obsessed with telling me. I took it with a grain of salt. I met Hawk not too long after, and I thought that maybe that might have been the mistake that would ruin everything. But it wasn’t. I ran away instead of fighting. I left the woman I could have been giving love to, and the son that had been born. I was selfish and stupid. But I know that it’s going to be extremely hard to come back from. It could have ruined everything forever.
Aidan is excited beyond belief and for a second there, I think that it might even be possible to mend things completely. I feel like a father, for once in my life. I look at Aidan and I feel a genuine excitement and urge to pursue a better way of life. It’s fucking strange, to be honest, because before I met Erica, none of these feelings existed. I was on a path towards nowhere, headed down, down, down.
The dinner is great. We laugh. We bathe in the warmth of each other. We feel good, and that’s all we’ve ever wanted out of life. When Aidan goes off to bed, I’m not even relieved. I want more time with him. There’s so much I want to teach and tell him. I need to say how sorry I am.
“That was nice,” she says, washing the utensils.
I walk up behind her and wrap my hands around her soft waist. I kiss down on her neck and smell her scent. I get hard and I make sure she feels it on the side of her luscious ass. “It was nice,” I say. My right hand moves up toward her tits and I do everything that I can not to stuff my face in them, but I do run my hand under her shirt.
She moans for a brief second, enjoying me. Ultimately, she ends with a long sigh. She pushes out from my grasp and walks to an opposite cabinet. “Where are you going?” I ask her, awkwardly adjusting my pants and clearing my throat of embarrassment. I keep standing and watch as she frantically reaches in the cabinet.
“I need a dry towel,” she says, finding nothing. I laugh and reach into a drawer right where she was standing originally, and pull out a few freshly dried dishtowels.
“You mean one of these?” I laugh. “Here. Take two.”
I toss a few towels over to her and she catches them. “You know where everything is around here now,” she says, looking away from me. Her face is red and I’m sure it’s hot. Is it from desire or anger? Or both?
I walk up to her and begin massaging her shoulders. She moans and tilts her head to the side. “We can’t do this,” she eventually says, for like the hundredth time now.
“Do you want me?” I ask her.
“What does that even mean?” she whispers. The only sound that can be heard is the sink continually running. I turn it off and the house is completely silent.
“It means…” I stop myself. She’s an adult, dammit. She knows exactly what I’m talking about. I’m not going to stay weak forever. I’m going to tell her exactly what it is that I want, and that I know she dreams of it every single night.
“It means, sit on my fucking face. Now,” I demand of her.
“Excuse me?” her eyes widen and her throat closes. I place my hand on her collarbone and I can feel her pulse resonate throughout her chest. It beats firmly, speeding up with each passing second. She tries to swallow, but she can’t. Her mouth is too dry, so she licks her lips quickly. It’s in these moments that she tries to cover herself with excuses. She doesn’t want me to see her weaknesses.
But I can see everything she does because I need her that badly.
“You know what I mean,” I whisper in her ear.
“I’m really tired,” she says, all too quickly. Her muscles tighten up and she feels rigid. She can barely get a breath in. She won’t allow it.
“Sit on my face,” I say again. “I want to feel you cum.”
My hand slowly trails down along the inside of her thigh and I can see as she closes her eyes that she wants this. There’s no question she wants this. My cock pushes out from my pants as I unzip and rip the belt away. Her trembling hand moves toward it. She stretches her fingers and touches the tight skin. She breathes out hard and makes a small noise, betraying the secret promise she made to herself.
I’ve come to ruin that promise. I’ve come to make her mine forever. “Yes,” I moan. “Touch it like a good girl.”
“I can’t let you in that easy. This will happen every single time,” she says, pulling her hand back. I grab her wrist and she instinctively holds my hand in hers.
“I want this every single day of my life. Don’t you understand? I fucked up one time,” I say in a hushed tone. “I didn’t know I got you pregnant. I had no fucking idea. So now, I’m here to make things right. I’m going to make you my woman, whether you fight me or not.”
“I hate you,” she says, suddenly spitting on my face.
I rip my shirt off and pin her against the kitchen pantry door. “Good,” I whisper. “I hate me too. Let it all out.”
“You piece of shit,” she says, growing angrier. “I want you to leave. I want you to never come back.”
“Good!” I smile and grab her cunt. “Yet, you’re wet. You’re clearly turned on by me.”
“Fuck you,” she says, breathing quickly now. She grabs my hair and I let her push me down underneath her.
I don’t say a fucking word. I roll her panties down to her ankles and slide my tongue against her wetness. She nearly screams, before placing her h
ands around her mouth.
“Don’t wake our son,” I say, ripping her panties off her ankles.
“Or what?” she talks back, though there’s a slight smile forming behind that scowl on her face.
I fold her panties in half, so that they’re nice and tight, and quickly tie them around her mouth. I grab her wrists and use my shirt to tie them together. She moans through the fabric, but makes no attempt to kick me.
“Good. Now, you can’t fight it.” I smile. “I know who you really are, deep down. You might be a mother, but inside that sexy body of yours is a whore waiting to be brought out.”
She moans something inaudible, growing wetter now. “I’m not going to leave you, Erica,” I say, “And I’m never going to let you go.”
Her panties gag her as I carry her to the couch. I grab her legs and push them apart. She makes no attempt at fighting me, and even pushes her ass out when I touch her juicy skin. “Close your eyes,” I tell her. “I want you to enjoy this.”
My tongue falls flat and heavy against her sopping pussy. Those sweet folds are the only thing I’ve been living for lately. When I taste her, I make sure my tongue pushes deep inside her. I lick from left to right, sliding up and down her ass. I’m not a man who is timid. I enjoy all of her, every single part of her sex.
She is a mystery waiting to be found out. The only way I can get through to her is by making her cum. Tonight, it’s all about her.
I first slide two fingers inside her and move the tips up and down. “Promise not to be a bad girl?” I ask her. I remove her gag, so she can speak.
“I, uh, don’t promise anything,” she moans.
I slide my fingers out. I place them against her mouth and she opens wide for me. She tastes herself and closes her eyes, tongue wrapping around the knuckles, lips drawing tight. I slide my fingers back in her pussy and repeat the necessary motions.