by Abby Jimenez
I smiled and channeled my inner Kristen. “It’s purely sexual.”
Jason snorted and David howled. “Whooooaa, I like this girl!” He put an arm around his brother and knuckled his chest.
Jason beamed. “Where are the kids?”
“The kids are sick. Karen stayed with them. Colds or ear infections or something. I don’t know. They get every damn thing in that school they’re in.”
David opened the trunk and grabbed my suitcase and Jason’s backpack. Jason picked up his brother’s firewood and nodded for me to follow them to the house. Tucker seemed to know where he was. He ran right to the front door and started to whine and scratch.
“Mom’s pissed at you,” David said ahead of us, wrangling my heavy luggage like it weighed less than a gallon of milk. “You were supposed to be here hours ago.”
“We stopped in Duluth,” Jason said.
Duluth had been amazing. We’d walked along Lake Superior. It was so cool. I hadn’t realized our sightseeing came at the expense of time with his family, however. He hadn’t told me we’d been expected earlier.
David pushed open the front door and Tucker ran inside.
“Mom, they’re here!” David called out, pulling off his boots by stepping on the backs of them with his feet. Jason did the same, not putting down his firewood.
I closed the door behind us and began taking off my shoes.
A woman came around the corner. She wore an apron and a red baking mitt on her hand. Tucker followed her and danced at her feet. She had brown hair pulled into a loose bun and soft hazel eyes. She gave Jason a sweet-looking scowl. “Jason! Why didn’t you call me and tell me how late you were going to be?” she asked, looking more worried than pissed, as David had put it.
The entry of the house was a small room with coat hooks on the walls and a single step up into the hallway. Jason’s mom stood on the step with her hands on her hips, still looking up at Jason despite the elevation. She put the hand with the mitt on his shoulder as he kissed her hello. Her eyes met mine over his back and she beamed at me.
“Mom, I said we were landing at one. I told you I’d make it by dinner. And you know I never get a signal on Highway One.”
“Never mind,” she said, waving him off. “I want to meet Sloan now. I’ll deal with you later.”
Jason turned to me, amusement on his face. “Mom, this is Sloan. Sloan, this is my mom, Patricia.”
Having done his duty as far as introductions, Jason edged past his mother with his bundle of wood, leaving us to each other.
Patricia came down the step to greet me, her eyes alight. “Oh, you’re beautiful,” she said, giving me a hug. “Thank God I have another woman here this weekend. We’re outnumbered.” She held me out by the arms and smiled at me warmly. “Can you believe I never had a daughter? Just me and all these men.”
“I bet they can eat,” I said.
“Feeding them is a full-time job.” She laughed. “Come on, let’s go in. I was so excited when Jason said you were coming. I felt like I was getting a visitor just for me. The boys will be doing their own thing for most of the weekend, they always do.” She led me into the house.
The home was thoughtfully decorated, with soft area rugs over the wood floors. The living room we passed was comfortable and rustic. A fire crackled in the fireplace and a deer head was mounted above the mantel. A huge bay window overlooked a lake.
Jason and David were already in the kitchen when we got there.
A man stood over the sink doing dishes. When he looked up, I knew exactly who he was. He looked like an older version of Jason. His beard and hair were salt and pepper, but his eyes were the same clear blue as his son’s.
“Dad, this is Sloan,” Jason said. “Sloan, this is my dad, Paul.”
I was expecting a hand, but I got a hug and a kiss on the cheek instead. It took me by surprise. Jason grinned at me over Paul’s shoulder.
Paul smiled at me. “We’ve heard so much about you, Sloan. The Huntsman’s Wife! Very impressive. We’ve eaten a lot of your food over the years.”
“I’ve heard a lot about you too,” I replied, flustered by the familiar welcome. What was up with Larsen men and flustering?
“And what do you think of our state?” Paul asked.
“It’s beautiful. I see why Jason sings about it.”
Paul smiled at his son approvingly.
David sat in a chair at the table and Jason hovered over a pot, holding the lid.
“What are we having?” he asked, picking up a spoon and tasting the contents.
“Swedish meatballs.” Patricia hit him with her baking mitt. “Get out of there,” she said, running him off.
I smiled.
“Something to drink?” Jason asked me.
“No, thank you. You want help?” I asked Patricia, joining her by the stove. Jason smiled at me and grabbed a beer from the fridge and went to sit with his brother.
“Would you mind chopping some parsley?” she asked, pointing to a cutting board. “It’s in the crisper drawer.”
I dove right in, tying up my hair and washing my hands. I searched the fridge for the parsley and dug around for a knife and began to chop. Patricia looked on approvingly. I faced the brothers as I worked, while Patricia moved around behind me, dropping meatballs into a frying pan.
“Dad wants help putting the dock out tomorrow,” David said to Jason.
“Already?” Jason asked, opening his beer.
Paul spoke over his dishes. “Ice is gone. Been warm this year.”
“How’s the dock?” Jason asked.
David looked over at his parents, whose backs were turned, and mouthed, “Fucked up.”
“The dock is fine. Just needs patching,” Paul said, not turning away from his dishes.
“Hey,” David said, “Jason and I both offered to get you guys a new dock. One with wheels. That you can roll. That doesn’t splinter.”
Jason tossed his bottle cap at his brother. It hit David on the chest and he produced a stoic middle finger. I laughed to myself.
“You know your dad,” Patricia said, not turning around. “He doesn’t like to get new things if what he has can be repaired. And that’s what he’s got two sons for.”
“It’s fine, Mom. We’ll get her out. We always do,” Jason said. “What else needs to be done around here?”
Paul rattled off a list of projects. I saw what Patricia meant about the boys doing their own thing. They were here to work. That was fine by me. I wanted to get to know Patricia better anyway. I wanted naked baby pictures of Jason before this weekend was out.
Patricia and I served dinner like we’d been doing it together for years, plating things and chatting the whole time. I took a seat next to her at the table so we could keep talking. The meatballs were amazing.
When Paul discussed the long to-do list for tomorrow, nobody complained. Nobody cussed in front of Paul and Patricia, and Jason and David refrained from their ribbing of each other in their presence. I liked David. He worked in IT and lived in St. Paul. He didn’t come up very often, mostly holidays. He had three small kids at home and his wife, Karen, worked full-time too.
All during dinner, Paul treated his wife with a reverence that made me smile to myself. He held her hand on top of the table during dessert and kissed her on the cheek both times he got up. It was adorable. It actually reminded me a lot of the way Jason was with me. Always touching me. Always turned to me somehow.
After dinner, the men cleared the table and did the dishes while they went on about walleye fishing and some new lure Paul had.
Patricia and I had a cup of coffee in the living room while we waited for the guys to finish up. Tucker curled up between us on the sofa like he couldn’t pick who he liked better. We were both sitting with a hand on his back, talking, as the men rejoined us in the living room. David threw another log on the fire and I smiled at Jason as he plopped next to me.
“Is that yours?” I asked him, nodding at a guitar propped against
the side of the fireplace.
“No. My dad’s. He plays too. He taught me.”
“And your voice?” I asked. “Who gave you that?” Jason had an impressive vocal range.
“That’s all his,” Patricia said, looking at her son proudly. “No idea where it came from. Just a God-given gift. And Jason tells us that you’re a talented artist,” she said, putting her coffee cup to her lips.
“Oh, he did, did he?” I asked, giving him a raised eyebrow. “You lied to your mother?”
He smiled at me. “I’ve never actually seen one of Sloan’s original pieces. But I’ve very much enjoyed the commissioned art I’ve seen her do.”
“So you liked the astronaut cat?” I teased.
“Of course. Who wouldn’t like an astronaut cat?”
“I paint for a few companies that outsource commissioned artwork,” I explained. “I do some freelance stuff on Etsy too. Quick pieces. Birch trees, animal art. That kind of thing. Although, Jason, you have seen one of my original pieces. You did like it very much, actually. You just didn’t know it was mine,” I said, looking at him.
“When?” he asked, his brows drawing down.
“The self-portrait that you like at my house,” I said carefully, looking at him, willing him to know what I was talking about without my having to say, The one of me naked? In my bedroom, over my bed? His family didn’t need that visual.
When shock spread across his face, I knew he understood what I was talking about. “That’s a painting?” he asked, his mouth open. “That’s not a photograph?”
His reaction gave me a swell of pride. I’d forgotten that feeling, the satisfaction that my work brought me when I saw the way it affected others.
“No,” I said, loving the surprise on his face. “I paint hyperrealistic art.”
He sat up, staring at me. “Sloan, that’s—that’s incredible. I’ve looked at that dozens of times, up close. I had no idea that was a painting.”
“Dozens of times? Up close?” I asked with a sideways smile.
Then I turned to his family, not wanting to leave them out of the conversation. “Here’s one of my paintings that sold a few years ago,” I said, swiping through the photo gallery on my cell phone. When I found the painting that I’d titled Girl in Poppies, I handed the phone around the room.
“I don’t paint these anymore,” I said. “They’re very labor intensive. I have to take up to a hundred photos of my subject to work off of, and each one takes me up to two months. But this is what I used to do.”
I didn’t show my art off like this very often, but I sensed Jason wanted to impress his family, and I wasn’t very proud of my current job, if I was being honest.
“Sloan, this is wonderful. You have to keep painting,” Patricia said, genuine awe in her voice. “You have a gift. No wonder you two hit it off. You’re both so creative.”
She was right, I’d never thought of that. His voice was one thing, but his songwriting was something else. His lyrics were where he really shone. Beautiful and deep. They were what I loved the most about his music.
Jason looked at my painting photo last. When he handed my phone back, he stared at the side of my face. And he kept on staring.
Chapter 22
Jason
♪ Everywhere | Roosevelt
Where’s the bathroom?” Sloan asked.
“Second door down the hall,” Dad said.
“I’ll take you,” I offered, getting up from the couch. I wanted to get her alone anyway. As soon as we were out of view of the living room, I spun her and kissed her against the wall.
“Jason, your parents are going to catch us,” she whispered through a smile, looking back the way we’d come.
“I don’t care,” I breathed against her mouth. “Kiss me.”
They loved her. I’d known before I’d brought her that they would. She made me feel proud to know her, like having a woman like her care about me was its own sort of achievement. When she and Mom went to the living room after dinner, Dad had told me she was remarkable and David had asked me where the hell I found her.
When I pulled away, we were both out of breath.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the painting?” I asked.
God, how could she stop creating her own art when she had so much talent? She made me want to unravel her, take her by a corner and undo her.
“I wanted to see if you’d figure it out. Besides, you didn’t tell me you were Jaxon Waters, so now we’re even,” she said, biting her lip and glancing at my mouth. Then she looked back up. “Hey, what’s a meat raffle?” she whispered.
I chuckled. “It’s a raffle where you win meat as prizes.”
“Oh, I wondered why your parents ‘scored meat at a bar.’ That makes sense now.”
I loved seeing her experiencing my world. I wanted to show her everything. But it was more than that. I wanted to share everything with her. Like I didn’t want there to be anything that she wasn’t a part of. I wouldn’t have come this weekend if she hadn’t come with me. I would have stayed in California to be with her.
Distance from her was starting to feel like the tension on a bungee cord. The farther away I got, the stronger the urge to come back to her. And the cord felt like it was getting shorter. Like my threshold for not being with her was lowering.
What would I do if I couldn’t see her when I was on tour? It would kill me. And how would I even explain to her why she couldn’t visit? I messed around with some unstable, violent woman that I’m being forced to tour with? She might hurt you and I can’t make you safe? Here’s a song she wrote about me having sex with her, sitting in the Top 10? God, the whole fucking thing made me cringe. I was waiting to see if Ernie could get Lola off the ticket before I sat down to discuss the situation with Sloan. I wasn’t coming at her with this until I had some sort of game plan.
“You better go,” she whispered. “They’re going to think something is going on between us.”
I grinned. “Isn’t there?”
She squeezed herself sideways and out from under me and continued on to the bathroom as I watched her walk down the hall. She stopped in the doorway and made a shooing motion at me before she went in, smiling and shaking her head.
I stared after her, long after she’d shut the door, and I wondered offhandedly if this was what Dad had felt like when he met Mom…
And somehow I knew that it was.
Chapter 23
Sloan
♪ Into Dust | Mazzy Star
Jason staggered into the kitchen at 7:00 a.m. with Tucker and found me not only awake and caffeinated but showered, dressed, and cooking with his mom.
Patricia and I had coordinated the start time for breakfast last night, and I took my cooking duties very seriously. Apparently we were expecting a large crowd.
“Good morning, ladies.” He slid open the back door and let Tucker out. He poured himself a black coffee, looking unbelievably adorable with his messy hair in his eyes.
His plaid pajama bottoms and gray T-shirt made me want to wrap my arms around his waist to see what his chest smelled like. My heart picked up a little thinking about it.
He held his mug in his hand and came around to the stove and gave Patricia a peck on the cheek. Then he turned to me where I stood cutting a melon by the sink. “Did you sleep well?” he asked. Before I could reply, he leaned in and gave me a swift kiss too, only he put mine on the lips. In front of his mom.
I knocked over a container of blueberries.
Nothing was inappropriate about the kiss. It was kind of sweet, actually. I’d just been under the impression we were going to be totally hands off in front of his parents. He’d kissed me good night last night, but only after walking me to my room, and the hallway had been empty.
Patricia smiled down at her frying pan.
In typical Jason fashion, he grinned at the victory of catching me off guard. He popped a blueberry into his smiling mouth and then seemed to decide he’d embarrassed me enough for one morn
ing and excused himself to take a shower.
“Sorry,” I said to Patricia, picking up blueberries from the counter, my face hot. “It’s like he has to fluster me once a day or a baby bunny dies somewhere or something. He’s very committed to it.”
She laughed heartily. “He learned it from his father. I think they like the color it puts in our cheeks.”
I smiled. Hanging out with Patricia was my idea of a good time. I loved her.
A half hour later, Jason came back in and helped with dishes and cleanup as Patricia and I cooked. He found any chance he could to put a hand on my back or to stand close to me. Patricia totally noticed it. She kept smiling at us.
People started to filter in for breakfast around 8:30. Two cousins of Jason’s, three of Jason’s friends, and a neighbor were joining the Larsen men to do some work around the property, and the deal for free labor included food.
After the men went to work, I kept finding excuses to go outside to see what Jason was doing. I found him on the roof pulling shingles.
He wasn’t wearing a shirt.
I was a lurker. His shirtless body had me creeping on him from the trees. I’d have used binoculars if I could have done it without being noticed. Broad, strong shoulders, six-pack abs, a defined chest that made me want to trace the contours with my fingers. I was my boyfriend’s stalker.
When the men pulled on their waders and started putting in the dock, it was almost lunchtime. I liked the dock project because I could see Jason from the sliding glass doors off the kitchen, though he had a shirt on now, so it was slightly less exciting.
When Patricia and I brought sandwiches down, we set them right on the wooden planks so the men could stand in the lake and use the dock as a table. They descended on the food. Jason grabbed two sandwiches and a beer and we moved to the end, away from everyone, and I sat down with my legs crossed under me so I could be by him as he ate. He stood up to his stomach in water.