Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

  So that was where my dress and jacket had gone.

  And as mentioned, I’d never really been a teenage girl. I’d been a teen mother to a kid I didn’t get to have the fun of making beforehand.

  I still knew letting someone borrow their clothes was a big thing.

  So maybe he was right.

  “Babe,” he called when I fell silent.

  “Yeah?” I replied.

  “Greta,” he said and raised his head when I pulled mine from his shoulder to look in his eyes.

  “Right here, Hix.”

  He lifted his other hand and curved it around the side of my neck.

  “Sweetheart, you okay?”

  “About spending the day with your kids?” I asked.

  He blinked kind of slow and answered, “No.”

  “About Andy?”

  “No, baby.”

  Oh boy.

  “About us?” I asked hesitantly.

  His fingers slid down so his thumb could stroke the side of my neck and he noted gently, “Greta, sweetheart, you were attacked last night.”

  Oh.

  Right.

  “I . . . uh . . .”

  What did I say?

  I was attacked.

  I went to him.

  And he leaped down the stairs to get to me and then sprang into action, catching the guy (well, he didn’t but he went out to do that), getting me to the hospital (he didn’t do that either, but he arranged it), him and his kids looking after me, bringing me donuts.

  “Greta,” he prompted, again gentle.

  “You leaped down the stairs to get to me,” I whispered.

  His brows drew together. “What?”

  “I . . . I was . . . not okay when it happened,” I shared.

  “All right,” he said slowly when I spoke no more.

  “But then I came here and . . .” I pressed my lips together then unpressed them. “You made it all okay.”

  “Fuck,” he growled.

  “What?” I asked.

  He stared at my bandage and I felt him holding himself very still, even his thumb had quit moving.

  It was then I knew what.

  “I think you can kiss me,” I told him quietly.

  “Not the way I wanna kiss you.”

  My nipples in the bra under his daughter’s top started tingling.

  “Maybe we should go get donuts,” I suggested.

  “Yeah,” he grunted like donuts weren’t as awesome as they totally were.

  “Um, like now,” I pressed.

  It took him a second before he muttered, “Right,” bent in, touched his mouth to mine again then let me go and got off the bed, taking my hand to pull me up with him.

  He held it as he walked me to the door, but I tugged his when we got there so he stopped, turned and looked down at me.

  “Thank you for making it all okay,” I said on a really hard hand squeeze, hoping the squeeze would tell him just how much I meant those words.

  “That was my line,” he replied, squeezing my hand hard right back.

  I felt my chest constrict, collapsing in on itself to the point my next breath was a wheeze.

  Then I felt my eyes stinging.

  “Don’t make me cry, it might hurt,” I snapped.

  He grinned. “There’s no crying when there are two dozen donuts in the house.”

  Holy crap.

  “Two dozen?”

  “Right, maybe one dozen. Shaw’s had plenty of opportunity to dig in.”

  “Three kids, one dozen donuts, maybe ten minutes, Hixon, that’s a little crazy.”

  He reached out a hand and opened his bedroom door, declaring, “That’s Junk Sunday.”

  With that, he led me out and we barely made the mouth of the hall when Mamie announced, “Dad got you custard-filled, chocolate-buttercream-filled, jelly, and he bought a bunch of glazed and raised chocolate-covered just in case you didn’t do fancy.”

  “Sounds perfect,” I told her.

  And it did.

  But suddenly, everything was.

  A cramped apartment. A broken nose. Three kids who barely knew me, one not knowing what to make of me. A future that was complicated.

  With my hand in Hixon’s, it was all suddenly just that.

  Perfect.

  The Drake Family

  “Gonna get her in bed,” Hix murmured, and his kids watched as their dad didn’t scoot out from under Greta, who was totally out, stretched on their couch, her head resting on his thigh.

  Instead, he pulled her gently up into his arms before he got off the couch holding her to his chest.

  She might have been out but she turned her face into the side of his neck and slid her arm around the other side to hold on.

  “Be back in a minute,” he kept murmuring.

  His kids watched him round the coffee table and head down the hall.

  When they heard their dad’s bedroom door latch, Shaw, lounged in his beanbag from his room, whispered, “She’s freakin’ awesome.”

  And she was.

  Even Corinne thought she fit right into Junk Sundays.

  Mom would have a hemorrhage and get all mad or pout all day if they tried a Junk Sunday when Dad was with her. She did that when she wasn’t even there.

  But Greta got in the swing of it and didn’t once complain when Mamie did an arabesque or a chassé along the area in front of the television (something she did a lot).

  In fact, she watched her every time with a smile on her pretty face and she’d say things like, “Wow, Mamie, you’re really good at that.”

  And it wasn’t fake.

  Not at all.

  She totally meant it.

  “She’s real nice and she’s super-pretty,” Mamie whispered, coming up from lazing on the floor in front of the TV to sit cross-legged and look between her siblings. “Always thought that when we’d go see Miss Lou. She looks perfect with Daddy.”

  “Mom looks perfect with Dad,” Corinne snapped quietly from her spot draped over the armchair.

  “Mom isn’t with Dad anymore, Cor,” Shaw pointed out quiet and careful, like he always talked when he talked to Corinne about this stuff, which Corinne thought, especially these days, was way too much.

  “And if she wanted to stay perfect, she shouldn’t have made Daddy leave,” Mamie stated resentfully, but still quietly.

  This resentment was new from Mamie.

  Then again, a lot of new things were coming from Mamie recently.

  “There are things you don’t know,” Corinne told her little sister.

  “Yeah, and there’s things you don’t know,” Mamie shot back. “Like how I heard him talking to Mom and askin’ her would she please just tell him where she was at so he could get there with her and sort everything out.”

  “You heard that?” Shaw asked.

  “Yeah,” Mamie answered. “And he was, like, bein’ real serious about it. Mom barely said anything, and I could tell even though I couldn’t see him it hurt him, like, a lot.”

  That made Corinne feel funny but she admonished, “You shouldn’t have listened to that.”

  “Why?” Mamie asked.

  “Because it’s none of your business,” she answered.

  Mamie’s eyes got big and mad. “My mom and dad aren’t my business?”

  “That isn’t. And anyway, that’s not all there is to it. There’s stuff you don’t know. There’s stuff Dad doesn’t know.”

  “Well, you think, maybe the person who should know is Dad?” Mamie asked sarcastically.

  “Hey, we should talk about this later,” Shaw told them. “He’s gonna be back any second.”

  “Yeah, like when?” Corinne asked her brother. “We barely see you anymore.”

  Shaw’s face got soft when he reminded her, “I still pick you up for school, Cor, and take you home after we get done with our practices. I see you every day.”

  She looked to the TV. “Whatever.”

  “I like Greta,” Mamie declared stubbornly. “He
hasn’t been . . . he hasn’t been, well, Dad. Not since Mom made him leave. And today, with her around, he was Dad.”

  “I know what you mean,” Shaw murmured.

  Corinne did too.

  There was a lot of talk about girls who weren’t good if they didn’t have a guy around.

  But apparently there were guys who were better when they had a girl around.

  And their dad was one of them.

  Especially after what happened last night.

  He was always at his best when something was going wrong. Like when Corinne hurt her face or when Shaw broke his arm or when Mamie had that competition and she had a cold so she got second place, and she was devastated.

  That was why Mom always said he was in the only job he could ever do.

  He was at his best when he had people he could take care of.

  And Greta had been all awkward at first when he’d touch her or pull her close or kiss her on the forehead in front of them, but then she’d settled in.

  But Dad was always settled in, like she’d been there for years, not just that day.

  And the way she sometimes looked at him.

  Like he was . . .

  Like she couldn’t believe he was real.

  “It’s cool you were cool with her, Cor,” Shaw told his sister.

  “Whatever. She’s got great hair,” Corinne muttered. And great a lot of things, she didn’t say.

  “Yeah, she does,” Shaw muttered back.

  Mamie giggled.

  Corinne rolled her eyes.

  “It’s all gonna get better,” Shaw assured them. “Next weekend, Dad and me and Toast and Tommy and Larry and Donna and Herb are gonna move us into that place on Lavender Lane and then you guys will be back with me and Dad, and we’re finally gonna settle into a new normal.”

  And Shaw couldn’t wait because he got the basement room and it had a bathroom down there so he didn’t have to see to stuff with girl crap all around, as well as a family room just outside the bedroom so it was like he had his own apartment.

  Mamie also loved that house on Lavender Lane. It was sweet! And the family room downstairs was huge and Dad said he’d install a barre down there.

  Corinne didn’t want a new normal. She wanted the old one back.

  But she still liked that house and not just because it was better than that apartment (because anything was better than that apartment). But because, it sucked to admit it, it was pretty awesome.

  And as mad as she was at her dad, she knew he needed a decent place to live, and this was absolutely not that and it hurt a little more every time she saw him there.

  Shaw picked up the remote and turned the volume down a little on the TV.

  None of them complained.

  Greta had been through a lot.

  She needed her sleep.

  Journey of Discovery

  Hixon

  HIX OPENED HIS eyes to a dark room and laid still.

  Then he felt his lips curving up in a smile.

  Christ, he totally wrapped himself around Greta.

  Then again, she hadn’t shared she wrapped herself around him too, front to front, arms around each other, legs tangled, her face tucked in his throat, his face in her hair.

  He drew her in with a deep breath.

  After that, he gave her a gentle squeeze and called, “Greta.”

  She shifted a little, pressed close, her arm over him flexed, and she murmured, “Mm?”

  “Gotta get up and get the kids going. You can sleep but it’s pandemonium and bathroom space is at a premium. For the next hour and a half, you won’t have your shot if you don’t take it now.”

  “Thans, bubby, bu’ ’m goo’,” she mumbled, ran her hand up his back but it dropped, and he knew she had slipped back to sleep.

  Still smiling, he kissed her hair, carefully extricated his limbs from hers and slid out from under the covers, making sure they were over her before he moved out of the room.

  She was in his bed again because last night, when it became obvious to all of them the pain wasn’t being overcome by Tylenol, he’d urged her to take a pain pill and she’d passed out on the couch with her head on his thigh.

  The kids hadn’t blinked when he’d carried her to his bed, and Greta hadn’t moved when he’d joined her in it hours later.

  Even if that hadn’t happened, she’d be there not only because that was where he wanted her but that was where she needed to be until they could both go to her house and he could see where she was at being back in a place that was her place but it had been violated in the way it had.

  She seemed okay but she was also with him and his kids after they’d gotten back together at the same time she was those right after she got attacked in her kitchen. She had a lot going on.

  Today might be a different story.

  Hix did his thing in the bathroom, and on the way to the kitchen, he bent over his older girl and shook her gently awake.

  “Up, honey. Time to get ready for school.”

  “Guh,” she replied, turning her head away from him.

  “Up, Cor, hit the shower so I can get everyone moving,” he pressed, giving her shoulder a squeeze.

  “All right, Daddy,” she muttered, turning her head again then pushing up on a forearm and shoving aside the bedclothes.

  Corinne was always up first because she took more time getting ready.

  She was also always the one who rarely fought it.

  The other two, the battle would soon commence. So even when he was with Hope, seeing as she worked for her dad and made her own hours, and he did not, he let her sleep in and it was him who got the kids moving in the morning.

  Therefore, even in the days before Corinne’s makeup and hair regime added forty-five minutes to her get-ready time, he always started with the easy one first.

  Hix went to the kitchen to start coffee to fortify his upcoming efforts.

  Then he began the process by informing both Shaw and Mamie in two different ways they had to get up soon so they could hit the Dad Snooze and mostly ignore him until he had to threaten them to get them to move their asses.

  As usual, pandemonium struck when Mamie got up because she pushed it to the final moments, and then had to act like a crazy kid while getting ready to go to school. It didn’t help matters that Hix had to take orders for what his girls wanted to wear that day so he could get it from his room, and Mamie changed her mind three times.

  After she made her final decision, or more accurately Hix declared it was that, with Shaw horking down Cream of Wheat at the table and Corinne eating it between doing shit to her eyelids with some applicator, her makeup bag having exploded all over the dining room table, Corinne asked her mirror, “Is Greta coming to my volleyball game on Tuesday?”

  Hix stood in the kitchen with his coffee mug held up, his bowl of hot cereal on the counter beside him and looked at his girl who did not look at him. He glanced to his son who was staring at him. When Shaw got Hix’s attention, his son gave a slight shrug.

  Hix looked back to Corinne. “You okay with that?”

  She didn’t look from her mirror when she replied unfathomably, “It’s whatever.”

  Hix and Shaw exchanged glances again before he told his girl, “I think for Greta, and your mom, honey, that maybe we’ll wait on that.”

  “Yeah, like I said. Whatever,” Corinne returned, dropped her mirror in her makeup bag and started gathering her makeup and shoving it in.

  When she got up to return it to the bathroom, he called her name.

  She looked to him.

  “I really appreciate you being cool with Greta this weekend.”

  “Greta didn’t date some chick like, right after she divorced my mom,” she returned and immediately commenced storming off.

  Hix blew out a sigh.

  Shaw called after his sister, “Uncool, Cor.”

  “Whatever, Shaw,” she called back.

  Shaw looked to his dad. “I’ll talk to her again.”

&n
bsp; “Maybe we should let her get where she needs to go on her own, kid.”

  “And maybe I’ll give her the shot to do that, say, she’s got this week, and then I’ll talk some sense into her,” Shaw retorted.

  “Son, we’re all getting used to a lot of new things.”

  “And Dad, life is gonna throw a lot uglier things her way and she needs to learn to deal with it without bein’ a pain in the butt,” Shaw replied. “I mean, it isn’t like it’s lost on her that that woman’s husband got dead helpin’ some guy out and she was there right after Greta got attacked in her own kitchen. She needs to clue in. Stuff happens. You deal. Then you move on. The end.”

  “Gotta admit, it’s freakin’ me out how smart you are,” Hix murmured, and Shaw shot him a big grin.

  “Yeah. I’m like Yoda except taller, younger and hotter.”

  Hix started chuckling.

  Mamie made an appearance on a sideways skid that didn’t go too well on the carpet so Hix tensed to jump if she went down.

  She didn’t go down.

  She declared, “I left my backpack in your room, Dad,” like this was the end of the world.

  “Then I’ll go get it, baby,” he told her, sipping his coffee, putting it down then moving out to do that.

  His kids got themselves sorted out, and Hix stood outside at the top of the stairs watching them get into Shaw’s car so he could take them to school.

  Mamie waved at him through the back window.

  Shaw gave him a wrist flick before he folded into the driver’s seat.

  Corinne kept her head bent to fiddling with her backpack in her lap, and she did this meticulously.

  Hix watched them back out and take off and then he went inside.

  To give Greta more time to sleep, he got his own shower in, got dressed and only then did he wake Greta.

  Sitting in the bend of her hips, he watched her turn to her back, stretch and open her eyes to look up at him.

  How she could look cute with that big bandage on her nose, he didn’t know, but thank Christ she did or seeing it would remind him he’d very much like to murder somebody.

  He had the light on in the hall but he switched the one on beside the bed, watching her blink against it even as he bent into her to block some of it out.