by Julia London
“Yes,” she said adamantly. “I don’t want to leave you,” she whispered. But she knew, even as the words came out of her mouth, that she couldn’t any more plan for a future than she could predict what would happen with Ruby. She couldn’t even say what would happen tomorrow—there were just too many what-ifs.
“And yet you’re thinking about it,” he said dubiously.
“Because I have no choice.”
Dax shook his head. “You have a choice. We had planned to get married Friday, remember? There’s your other choice.”
“A shotgun wedding that we’d be rushing into for the sake of your insurance,” she said. “Which is so incredibly generous of you, Dax. But it’s not the best thing for us, is it? We could get married Friday and hope—hope—that it works out between us and that our relationship develops, because if it doesn’t, I will have a daughter who may be facing radiation and is in love with you. And then what?”
He looked over her, to the lake.
“None of this changes my feelings about you. I still love you,” she said. “But . . . but is this what you really want to do now that her father has stepped up? I’m just thinking of what’s best for Ruby and for you and me.” She wanted to assure him, but when she looked into his stormy blue eyes, she saw the same uncertainties in him she had been feeling. She saw hurt and confusion. “You have to admit, a marriage right now is not ideal.”
He sighed and rubbed his nape. “Of course it’s not ideal,” he said bitterly and glanced at his hand. “So where does this leave us? We can’t exactly date if you’re in Indianapolis.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know. All I can do is focus on Ruby right now. All I can do is get through this crisis.”
Dax held her gaze for a long moment. She thought he would argue, but at last he put his hands on top of hers and said, “Yeah, I get it.”
“Do you?” she asked and turned her hands palms up under his, squeezing her fingers around his. “Do you really understand?”
“I’m doing the best I can, Kyra. I’m trying.” He put his beer aside and stood up. Kyra’s hands floated away from him. “Ruby’s had her supper,” he said and started down the porch steps.
“Wait . . . where are you going?” Kyra exclaimed.
“To get a drink,” he called over his shoulder and kept walking.
With every step he took, Kyra felt her heart shatter a little more, her breath grow a little shallower. She was overwhelmed with the despair of uncertainty. How could she know she was doing the right thing? How could anyone know what the right thing was in a situation like this?
Kyra felt sick with fear that she’d ruined everything. She fretted how to tell Ruby that they were going to a new city and—the thing she hadn’t yet told her—that she had to have an operation on her head. She fretted how to tell Ruby that Dax and Otto weren’t going with them. Her belly churned with such anxiety that she couldn’t touch the sandwich she made herself for supper.
There had been no sign of Dax since he’d walked off her porch—his truck was gone, and there were no lights in his house. A gloom had settled in over the lake that seemed to seep through the cracks into their cottage. Even Ruby seemed distant tonight. Kyra didn’t want it to end this way—she didn’t want it to end. Had she not been clear enough about that?
She put Ruby to bed but dragged her feet at turning in herself, hoping that by some miracle Dax would appear and tell her yes, he would move to Indianapolis.
She was kidding herself with that kind of fantasy. He would never leave Jonathan, any more than she would leave Ruby.
Kyra robotically went about picking up the house and the endless stream of clothes and shoes and toys. She made the kitchen sparkle. She cleaned Ruby’s new sneakers.
And still Dax didn’t come back.
At last she gave in to fatigue. She brushed her teeth and washed her face, then piled her hair in a knot on her head. She was on her way to bed when she heard the rumble of his truck. Her heart instantly began to race with anxious hope and a little bit of fear. She hurried to her front door and opened it, peering into the dark through her screen door. But she couldn’t see anything and stepped out onto the porch, moving to the steps, searching in the near dark for him.
She spotted him then—he was standing on the lawn between their houses, his legs braced apart, staring at her. They stood frozen in that moment, each staring at the other through the inky light of night. Then Dax began to stride toward her. Kyra came down the steps tentatively, still unsure of his mood. But then Dax began to jog, and so did she, running to him, launching herself at him, wrapping her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck.
He hoisted her up and somehow managed to carry her up the porch steps and to her room, kissing her the entire way. It was feverish between them, as if they were in a race against time. Maybe they were racing against their own thoughts, because certainly Kyra’s brain was filled with confusion and love and desire to the point she couldn’t think clearly. She could only feel—it was pure sentience between them, it was urgent, and it was blind.
He moved like a wild man, his hands and his mouth everywhere and frantic. He kissed her cheeks, her brow, her breasts, her mouth. It was the first time she’d felt him out of control, and it ignited her. She wanted him to lose control, to take her and fill her up, to pound against the inescapable need she had for him.
Her hands skirted over every plane and bulge, every angle and curve of his body. She wanted this moment seared into her consciousness so that she’d never forget it. She didn’t know how she could leave him, she didn’t know how she would function without him. She didn’t know if it was the end, or a postponement, or maybe, please God, a beginning, but she would knit it into her soul and her memory.
He abruptly lifted his head and looked at her. His gaze was probing, seeking something from her. There was so much sadness and despair in his gaze that Kyra felt it at her core.
Not the beginning, then.
“How did this happen?” he asked. She could hear the scrape of raw emotion in his voice and felt the same scrape across her heart. She didn’t know if he was asking how they’d come together or how they were being rent apart. She had no answers. So she responded by taking his head in her hands and kissing him softly. A lover’s kiss.
He growled as he slid into her. He began to move, his body pressing home inside her, gently at first, then harder and faster, almost as if his frustration had spilled into their lovemaking and was driving them both to an end.
A shattering end.
They lay spent by their emotions and the volatile sex, their limbs wound around each other, neither of them willing to let go just yet.
But eventually Dax stroked her arm and said low, “Otto and I are going to spend a couple of days down on the shore.”
Kyra stilled. The warmth began to seep out of her. “When?”
“We’ll go tomorrow. After I talk to Ruby.”
The burn of tears began to build behind Kyra’s eyes, but she refused to give in to them. She rose up on her elbow.
“Why tomorrow?”
“Is there a better time? Or would you rather I stick around and help you move?”
That remark pricked her heart. “No, of course not,” she murmured. She understood him—he was hurt by her leaving, and he couldn’t bear to watch her leave any more than she could bear to leave him. “I don’t even know when we’ll go,” she said.
“Yes, you do,” he said low. “You have to go now. Every day you spend second-guessing yourself is a day that tumor could be out of her head.”
She didn’t need the reminder—the thought of that thing in Ruby’s head never left her. “I do love you, Dax. Do you know it? I love you so much.”
He sighed into her neck.
The tears clouded her vision as she put her arms around his neck and held him close. “I’m so sorry we ended up here. I’m so very sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, Kyra. But I don’t have to watch the t
wo of you go.”
There it was, then—the best sex of her life had just turned into the worst sex of her life. It was breakup sex.
Well, it worked—she felt truly and utterly broken.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Dax couldn’t sleep. As loath as he was to leave Kyra, he couldn’t just lie there beside her with the splinter of his heart cracking in his head.
As painful as it was for him, he really did understand Kyra’s decision—what parent wouldn’t? But it hurt in a way he’d not expected. There was a moment, a very brief and panic-inducing moment, when he’d almost blurted that he wanted to marry her no matter what. But he caught himself, and he didn’t say it, because it wasn’t exactly true. There was a part of him that was relieved that he wasn’t swearing to honor and cherish until his dying day a woman he’d known a little more than a month. He wasn’t certain about anything about the two of them, other than he believed he did love her, and he loved Ruby, and he was devastated by this sudden turn of events.
He returned to Number Three early the next morning. He was leaving, but not without speaking to Ruby.
The coconut was eating cereal, her feet swinging beneath her chair. Kyra was cleaning up the kitchen and tried to smile, but her expression was full of painful chagrin.
“Mind if I have a word with the coconut?” he asked.
Kyra pressed her lips together and glanced at Ruby. “I haven’t—”
“I know,” he said quietly. Ruby didn’t know about her surgery. She didn’t know anything other than she hated going to doctors’ offices and she liked Barbies and dragonflies and Otto. “I’ll be careful,” he said.
Ruby looked up at that.
“Come on, Coconut,” he said and held out his hand. “Otto and I want to throw some rocks in the lake.”
“You do? You never want to throw rocks in the lake,” she said, wide-eyed.
He couldn’t imagine not seeing those big blue eyes every day, and looked away. “Well, I do today.”
“Awesome!” Ruby said. “Can I, Mommy?”
Kyra’s lips were pressed together again, as if she was trying to hold back words. Or a scream. Dax wouldn’t have been surprised by either. She nodded.
At the lake, they threw some rocks, and Ruby howled with laughter each time Otto dived into the lake to try to catch one before it sank, then paddled back with eager anticipation of the next one. “He doesn’t know they sink,” she said, her voice full of incredulity.
“He’s no genius,” Dax agreed.
Ruby waited for Otto to reach the shore, then squealed when he shook his coat off next to her. She threw another rock.
There was no way to make this easier, so Dax blurted, “So listen, Coconut . . . I want to tell you something.”
“What?” She threw another rock.
“I’m going away for a while.”
Ruby stopped throwing rocks and turned around to him, her legs braced apart, her long braid hanging over her shoulder. She peered at him through the rims of her blue glasses. “Where?”
“Vacation.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been working hard and I need a break.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I need time off from working.” What he really needed was time off from life.
“Why can’t you not work here? You can play with me. That’s not working.”
He smiled and tugged on her braid. “I need to go away, Coconut.”
She studied him with a shrewdness that belied her youth. “Are you mad at Mommy?”
He arched a brow in surprise. “No. Not at all.”
“Then . . . don’t you like us anymore?”
Dax didn’t know how it had moved so quickly from his taking some time off to questions about his feelings for her and her mother, but he was suddenly asea, swimming for any hold. “Like you? Listen, Coconut, I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told another little girl. I love you. Do you understand? I love you. So don’t ever let me hear you say I don’t like you, okay?”
“Then why are you going away?” she asked, and her bottom lip began to tremble.
Jesus. “Because sometimes things change, Coconut,” he said and reached for her hand. “I wish they didn’t have to change, but that’s life, kid.” He roughly pulled her into his embrace, unable to look into her face and see her disappointment. She smelled like lake water and honey and sunbeams. She smelled like summer and brightness and love.
“Are you going to take Otto and Jonathan with you?” she asked, her breath warm against his neck.
“Yeah. Someone has to feed them, right?”
“But . . . are you ever coming back?” she asked, her voice full of tears now.
Dax felt himself on the verge of breaking in two. “Yes, I’m coming back, Ruby—right here. I’ll be right here.” His voice was hoarse with emotion. God, but he loved this kid, and as tears began to cloud his vision, she began to squirm. “I can’t breathe,” she said very dramatically.
He reluctantly let her go. He let the coconut go.
Ruby seemed to accept the news and began to look for more rocks, chattering about how many of them there were. After she’d thrown a few more, he reluctantly returned her to her mother.
His good-bye to Kyra had been said last night for all intents and purposes, and neither of them seemed to want to rehash it. Dax tried to think of what else to say, but his heart was so full of many conflicting emotions that it seemed as if his brain was unable to function effectively. He could only gaze at her, imprinting her on his mind’s eye.
Kyra shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “I feel like someone died.”
Dax nodded. “Yeah,” he said. He felt worse than that. Like he was the one who’d died.
“How long will you be gone?”
He shrugged. “I’m going to spend some time with Jonathan. Then maybe do a little fishing.”
She nodded. She came down off the porch steps and walked right up to him and wrapped her hands around his. “I’ll call you and let you know what’s up.”
“That would be great,” he said. “I’m going to worry about her. And you.”
“Dax . . . I can’t thank you—”
“Don’t,” he said sharply. The last thing he wanted to hear from her was a thank-you for loving her daughter. For loving her. His heart was cleaving for a second time, and he didn’t want to be thanked for it. “Take care of yourself,” he said and kissed her forehead.
And then he retreated. His heart went back into its box and slammed the door shut. He untangled his fingers from hers. “See you,” he said and turned his back on Number Three.
The sixty feet back to Number Two were the hardest and longest walk of his life.
After a couple of days holed up in a hotel in Teaneck so that he could spend some time with Jonathan, Dax ended up in Montauk on Long Island, where he hired an old salt to take him out on Fresh Pond for three days in a row to fish. Dax didn’t really know much about fishing, and he sucked at it. Worse, Otto kept jumping out of the boat and disturbing the waters. Dax had to haul him back into the boat and leash him.
When the old man—Kirk was his name—figured out that Dax wasn’t going to carry his end of the conversation, he turned to philosophy. Each day, he launched into a new lecture: Politics. Obamacare. Russia. On the last day of Dax’s beach rental, old Kirk decided it was time to wax philosophical on affairs of the heart.
“Had more than one guest out here nursing a broken heart,” he said. “You know the best way to get over it, don’t you?”
Dax said nothing.
“You think I’m going to say fishing, but I’m not. I’m going to say a man’s broken heart is mended when he jumps back into the pond. Not this pond, of course, but the lady pond. The thing about guys is, we’re adaptable. Sure, we get attached, but I tell you what, when a good pair of tits and a fine ass come along, we can get over it. You know what I mean, there, Dax?”
Dax said nothing. As Kirk
appeared to be single, and by the look of things had no prospects, Dax didn’t think he was qualified to give advice. And besides, he wasn’t finished brooding yet.
“Now, I don’t know your problem, but I’m pretty sure that piece of advice would help you out. Lady pond, or, if you prefer, the boy pond. Whatever floats your boat—don’t make me no difference.”
Dax said nothing.
He was trying not to hate himself too much. His heart had untangled itself, and he realized he could be such a goddamn fool sometimes. There was a part of him that had felt a little out of control with his sudden marriage proposal, and once she’d ended it, he had scurried like a rat back to square one, where he felt safest. But nothing worth having was easy, was it?
After much reflection—too much reflection, maybe—it occurred to Dax that he might have done a little less we’ll develop our relationship over time talk and a little more I think I’m falling in love with you talk with Kyra. The problem with that, he’d figured out, was that it was hard to admit as much to himself. There was a part of him that felt insecure, and feared that if he put his heart on the line like that, it would be broken again.
Yeah, well, he hadn’t put his heart on the line, and look how broken it was now.
After a few days of Kirk’s never-ending stream of advice, Dax headed back to Lake Haven.
Number Three was empty, as he knew it would be. Kyra had texted him the day they left. I wish you were here to say good-bye. Ruby has been asking about you.
That got him worse than anything.
Now that Dax was back in East Beach, the place felt ridiculously empty and secluded without Ruby nosing into his business. Without her mother slamming doors and waving across the lawn. Even Otto seemed depressed. He would go from one door to the other and lie down with a heavy sigh, his gaze fixed on something outside.
Dax started working on the coffee tables for the resort, but in his spare time he was making something else: a Barbie mansion. The front came off, and inside there were built-ins, a model kitchen, and bathrooms. Five Barbies could live in this house at once. It was probably too big, but he figured that many Barbies needed their space.