Choices

by Mia Malone

  While Matthias was in surgery, I had paced the waiting room, not sure what to do, and unable to relax even though they'd told me it was a standard procedure. Then Len returned from taking Peggy and her surprisingly harmless injury home. He promptly told me I should sit my ass down, which I promptly did because he did not look like a happy camper, and I just couldn't deal with what might be pretty loud anger right then. Shortly thereafter, a doctor showed up and told us Matthias would be fine. She casually added that it was good we'd gone to the hospital since the appendix apparently would have burst within hours, which potentially could have killed him.

  That’s when two things happened.

  I started crying.

  And Simon walked through the doors.

  Seeing me wailing uncontrollably on the shoulder of a doctor made Matthias’ son start running toward us, but Len managed to calm him down with a few reassuring words.

  “Matty is such a stubborn fool,” I said with a sniffle once I’d regained some composure.

  “You’ve been dating my father for months. This can’t be news to you,” Simon said with a grin.

  “We’re not dating,” I shared. “We’re friends.”

  “Nina...” Len said with a smile. “Seriously?”

  “Yes,” I said, but turned to the doctor. “He got sick really fast. Could something have made it, you know... worse?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I glanced at Simon and leaned in closer to the woman.

  “Vigorous physical activity,” I whispered.

  It had occurred to me that sex against the wall might not have been a good thing if he had appendicitis.

  “Ah,” the doctor said with a small lip-twitch. “No, Ms. Petrie. Physical activity, however vigorous, would not have caused complications.”

  Len burst out laughing, and I wished she’d lowered her voice.

  “You were drunk,” I said to him in an effort to change the subject.

  “That we were,” Len said with great satisfaction. “As skunks.”

  “Dad was drunk?” Simon cut in. “As a...”

  He looked astonished, but Len just grinned.

  “Skunk,” he finished the sentence. “Haven’t been in years, and it was fun.”

  Simon was still chuckling when Jacob arrived, and when we were allowed in to see a drowsy Matthias, he started laughing again.

  After that, things were supposed to be easy.

  Peggy had a few stitches in her arm but went back to work a couple of days later.

  Matthias had stitches on his stomach and was told to take it easy for a while.

  Then the pretty grumpy CEO was informed by the owner of the company, who also was his father, that he would be on sick leave to heal.

  The argument which ensued was loud and angry, but in the end, Matty agreed to go to the island with Jacob on the condition that I went with them. Since I anyway didn’t want to stay in the city alone, I faked meekness and murmured blandly that I would pack some clothes for us and pick up Pippin.

  During our first days on the island, Matthias mostly slept, and I got quite a lot of work done. Then he felt that he should get a lot of work done too, and that’s when the trouble started.

  It didn’t help that Jacob told him that Len had been appointed acting CEO and was handling things well and that he should go outside and sit in the sun for a while.

  “I have got to do something,” Matthias snarled. “I’m going crazy.”

  “I know,” I said, and tried to keep in mind that he’d been sick so I couldn’t yell at him. “We’ll figure something out.”

  “Like what?”

  Dear Lord, he both sounded and looked like a grumpy child, but I would also have been frustrated by the situation, so I tried to come up with something harmless and relaxing.

  Except we usually didn’t do a lot of harmless and relaxing activities, so my mind was blank.

  “What did you like to do when you were younger?” I asked.

  “Paint,” Jacob said, and I blinked furiously.

  This was news to me.

  “Dad.”

  “Well, you did. You painted and studied art in college.”

  “That was a long time ago, and I got an MBA too.”

  “I’ll get you what you need,” Jacob said. “There’s a lot of artsy people on the island, so the store has plenty of supplies.”

  “I don’t paint anymore.”

  “You will now,” Jacob said, and that was apparently that.

  ***

  To my surprise, Matthias used the acrylics Jacob got him, and he was good at it. Not amazingly so, and it showed that he hadn’t done it in a while, but he clearly had talent.

  And I recognized talent because I’d grown up around an abundance of it.

  I was about to share this with him when the door was thrown open, and Jacob walked in, followed by my parents. I had thought they were in Ecuador, or possibly Colombia, so I froze and stared at them.

  “Mom?” I wheezed out. “Are you here?”

  “Sweetie,” Mom said indulgently and pulled me into her arms.

  Dad hugged us both, and for a second, it felt a little like being a child again. We’d moved around a lot as I grew up, so home to me had always been the three of us, wherever we happened to be.

  “But –” Matthias said, and I pulled away from my parents.

  “Matthias,” I said. “This is –”

  “Your father is Cornelius Amadeus Miller,” he said, cutting me off rather rudely.

  Of course. A man who had studied art would know exactly who my father was, but then again, a lot of people did. Cornelius Amadeus Miller was known all over the world for his amazing paintings.

  “That’s a stage name,” Dad said and stretched out a hand. “I’m Cornelius Petrie.”

  Matthias made a visible effort to collect himself and shook dad’s hand, and then he got a kiss on his cheek from my mother.

  “I’m Josephine Petrie, but you can totally call me Josie,” she said.

  “Josie,” Matthias said, swallowed and turned to me. “Your father is –”

  He stopped speaking and looked so confused that I had to smile.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But you work in finance.”

  “Yes,” I repeated.

  Before Matthias got another word out, Dad tilted his head to the side and looked at Matthias’ hand and the paint around the nails.

  “You’re painting,” he said.

  “No,” Matthias said quickly.

  “Let me take a look.”

  “No fucking way.” Matthias looked utterly horrified. “You’re Cornelius Amadeus Miller.”

  “So?” Dad asked, but Matthias turned back to me.

  “I own his paintings,” he said accusingly. “They’re in my office.” He narrowed his eyes and muttered, “You could have given me a heads up.”

  I could have, but I didn’t talk much about my famous father with anyone.

  “Perhaps there are things in my life I just don’t want to fucking talk about,” I said sweetly, throwing his words about his ex-wife in his face.

  He didn’t look happy about it, but I hadn’t been happy either, so I figured it was justified.

  “Aha!” a voice called out before we could say anything else.

  My goddamned dad had opened the door to Jake’s room which was where Matthias had been painting.

  “Dad,” I said and moved over to drag him out of there.

  “Not bad,” Dad said and kept moving even though I was pulling at his arm. “Couldn’t make a living of it, but you’re not bad.”

  “I couldn’t make a living –”

  Matthias cut himself off and scowled.

  “Fuck, no,” Dad said jovially. “Not from selling these, anyway. Your perspective isn’t off too badly, so you could probably do illustrations or commercial art, though. That shit is more lucrative than acrylics anyway.”

  I thought about the chunk of cash he’d made from his last exhibition
and sighed.

  “You should try ink,” Dad went on. “Nina isn’t bad at it.”

  Oh, no.

  “You paint,” Matthias concluded.

  “No.”

  I really didn’t.

  “You used to.”

  “Not really,” I said, although I had when I was young.

  “We’ll buy some ink,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Jake is coming later this week. He can bring it if they don’t have it in the store here.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  We were glaring at each other for a while, but then Jacob suddenly cleared his throat.

  “This is excellent,” he said happily. “Cornelius, Josie, let’s get dinner organized while they squabble.”

  Squabble? Who the hell used a word like that?

  “Perfect,” my goddamned mother said just as happily. “Come, Cornelius. Leave the poor boy alone.”

  Then they walked out the door and the man who hadn’t been poor for a single day of his life, and also not a boy in the past thirty-five years suddenly started laughing.

  “That was unexpected,” he said.

  Chapter Twelve

  Painting

  Matthias

  He woke up slowly and frowned when he noticed that Nina hadn’t curled into his side like she usually did. He didn’t like how she was on the other side of the bed and stretched out a hand to caress her shoulder.

  “Come here,” he said quietly.

  “Can’t, stitches,” she mumbled and didn’t move.

  “They made three small holes, and I have one stitch in each,” he said and rolled carefully to his side. “It was a week ago, and I feel fine.”

  “Okay,” Nina said and moved to her side to look at him.

  She looked tired, but he remembered how she had raised her chin when she repeated his stupid words about things he didn’t want to talk about. She’d pretended it was a joke, but he’d seen the brief flash of pain in her eyes.

  “I didn’t want to talk about Jackie because I feel foolish, baby,” he said quietly. “I don’t do foolish very well.”

  “Who does?” she asked with a small smile.

  “I was an ass, and I’m sorry. Please don’t make it into a joke.”

  “I shouldn’t have asked,” she said with a sigh. “It’s not as if you’ve asked me about Dave.”

  “Of course, you should ask,” he said. “I just didn’t know what to answer, but I could have told you that instead of snapping at you.”

  “Okay.”

  He slowly raised a hand and pushed some of her hair away from her cheek.

  “When we met on the island, I just pretended that the whole situation didn’t exist. For months, I didn’t talk to anyone about it because talking about it would make it real,” he murmured. “Len tried, but I told him to back off.”

  “Matty...”

  “And there you were, Nina. It was such a nice weekend, and I let myself forget about shit.”

  He hoped that didn’t sound as foolish as he felt, but it probably did.

  “Okay.”

  “She’d moved out seven months earlier, and I knew that we should have sorted it out, but... I don’t fucking know why I didn’t just tell her to go to hell and call a lawyer.”

  “I’m divorced, remember,” she said and added quietly. “I know how it feels.”

  “Like failure,” he said with a sigh.

  “Yes, it does,” she agreed. “I was pretty messed up about it. We’d agreed it was the right thing to do, but I still wondered, and it still felt like a failure.”

  The way her eyes softened went straight to his gut, and finally, he was ready to say the words out loud.

  “I don’t think I’ve loved her in a long time.” It felt good to get that off his chest, so he went on, “Somehow, the years just moved along, so I didn’t realize that what we had wasn’t what it should be. Not even five years ago when the kids left for college and she started sleeping in the guest room.”

  “You had separate bedrooms?”

  “She’s a light sleeper, and I snore.”

  “Okay.” She frowned a little and asked, “When did you have surgery?”

  “What?”

  “To stop snoring,” she said, looking surprised.

  “I didn’t.”

  “But, you don’t snore.”

  She must sleep like the dead if she hadn’t heard him, which was pretty horrific, according to his ex-wife.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “I sleep with you all the time, and sometimes I like to...”

  “Like to do what?” he asked.

  “It’s embarrassing,” she mumbled. “You’re asleep, and I, you know?”

  “Babe. I don’t know.”

  “I like falling asleep next to you, listening to your breaths. You’re warm and strong, and I like being close to you. You fall asleep quickly, but I drift off slowly. I’ve also let Pip out at night sometimes. And you do not snore.”

  The implications of what Nina told him should have made him furious, but to his surprise, he felt nothing.

  “Jesus,” he sighed. “I guess she wasn’t in love with me either.”

  “Maybe she didn’t realize it. You were married for a long time.”

  “She liked the money, Nina,” he admitted. “I paid my way out of our marriage, and it cost me a lot, but it’s not like I don’t have a lot, so I went way above the prenup to get through the divorce quicker.” He winced because it sounded really pathetic and added, “We weren’t always like that.”

  “I know. Dave and I, we were in love when we married, and somehow it all just... faded away. I guess there were too many Tuesday night dinners and homework, and dance-classes and giving up who we used to be until it was all gone.”

  “Too much work.”

  “That too,” she agreed. “Some manage to hold on to what they had, though. Maybe not being able to do that is why it feels like failure?”

  Her hand moved over his cheek, and something loosened in his chest. She’d just put words on his own feelings.

  “I thought a lot about that, baby,” he said. “Dad told me some things. Len said some shit. And to look at what you have and make a choice to not settle for something that isn’t good enough, that’s not a failure.”

  “Jacob is wise.”

  “Annoyingly often,” Matthias muttered, which made her laugh. The mood lightened, and he grinned at her. “Let’s go running today, and I’ll show you what failure is.”

  “In your dreams, baby,” she said with a chuckle.

  “Winner decides what we’ll do later.”

  He saw the look in her eyes and couldn’t hold a small smirk back.

  “You had surgery less than a week ago,” she said weakly.

  “Then I guess you should plan our activities during the short and pathetic run we’ll go on,” he conceded.

  “We’ll stroll around the block, and I don’t need to plan because whatever we do will be slow and gentle and with me on top,” she said primly.

  “Works for me.”

  “You’re fabulously easy, Matthias. Anything works for you,” she said with a laugh.

  It did, and what they had was pretty fucking amazing, but he still wondered why a woman who had said she wanted to try out various things seemed to be pretty traditional.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “You can,” she said, but raised her chin a little and added, “I might not answer.”

  “Fair enough, and I really am sorry,” he said, feeling like a moron for not handling her question better. Now they’d had the conversation they should have had that evening, and it hadn’t been awkward or stilted. “I won’t behave like that again.”

  “You might.”

  Her lips twitched a little, and humor had lit up her eyes, so he didn’t think she was still pissed off at him.

  “I’ll try not to,” he said because she had a point.

  “So, what did you want
to ask?”

  “It’s about sex.”

  “Sex?” she asked back in an adorable yelp.

  She was still a little embarrassed about it, which was ridiculous considering how they were together. And how many times they’d been naked together.

  “Nina...” he said and waited until their eyes met. “I’ve really enjoyed how you bring up what you want to try out, but I’m going to add some of my stuff.”

  “Your stuff?”

  Her voice had changed slightly, and he hoped she didn’t think he wasn’t satisfied with what they had.

  “Don’t get me wrong, baby. I am in no way complaining,” he said.

  “It’s been good,” she said slowly.

  “Amazing,” he agreed.

  She was silent for a little while, and since he knew this was her way to collect her thoughts, he waited and used that time to move his hand over her hip and around to push her closer to him.

  “I won’t mind, Matty. I’ve... it’s just that I’m not sure what I want to try,” she confessed. “I guess I’m not exactly a dominatrix.”

  Thank fuck for that. He hadn’t minded letting Nina take the lead, but if she started talking about wrapping him up in plastic or shoving things up his butt, then he would have given her a very firm no.

  “Well, I have some ideas,” he said.

  Her eyes widened, and he saw surprise, but there was no apprehension, only curiosity.

  “Like... what?”

  “Like... you’ll find out when the stupid stitches are removed,” he said with a grin.

  “Okay.”

  “So, babe,” he said into her hair and shifted his hips slightly until his cock pressed into her belly. “Did you bring your vibrator?”

  “Vib –”

  She tried to move away, so he tightened his arm and smiled at her attempt at looking calm and collected.

  “Yeah, I saw it, babe.” He laughed and added, “So, is it here, or on the mainland?” A blush crept up her cheeks, and he laughed again. “You have it here.”

  “Maybe,” she hedged but added. “The girls might stop by the house, and they won’t snoop deliberately, but it still felt –” She laughed weakly and said, “Yes, it’s here.”

  Excellent.

  “Go get it,” he said and felt his cock twitch. “I want to watch you use it.”