Out of the Ashes (Marked as His Book 1)

by Rossi, Monica

  She let a bubble of satisfaction carry her across the room and into the kitchen where she prepared the cheap coffee pot to make her the smallest pot of coffee ever.

  She couldn’t drink too much, she had to get up in the morning with Katy, and Katy was no late sleeper. But she just wasn’t ready to give into sleep yet. She was still high on the afterglow of Dax.

  Fern let him run rampant through her brain, remembering all the things they’d done that night with relish. It was brazen the way he’d touched her in public, and she’d loved it.

  Tim would have been appalled at such behavior.

  Her mood instantly soured at the thought of him. She pushed him away. Who cared what Tim thought anyway? He was over on the other side of town, which might as well be a different planet.

  She wasn’t going to think about him. One day she wouldn’t even have to remind herself of that, she silently promised herself, it wouldn’t even be an issue. He’d be so far removed from her life that he couldn’t even intrude on her thoughts.

  She added sugar to her coffee and stirred, determined to recall the warm glow she’d felt before Tim had intruded.

  She walked over to the couch, the pleasant soreness in her legs reminding her of all that she had to be thankful for, and she straightened the strewn pillows and cushions before plopping down and finding the perfect position to sip her coffee and think about Dax.

  Soon she was comfy and back in her hazily romantic mood. Maybe she could find a late night love story to watch a little of before she went to bed.

  She reached for the remote on the small and used, but good quality, dark wood coffee table she’d found at an estate sell. That was when she noticed Dax’s phone laying on the table on top of Katy’s Highlights magazine.

  She smiled. Tomorrow was Monday, and she’d be off. That meant she now had an excuse to stop by and see him. Or he had an excuse to come by and see her. Either way, she’d get to see him again the next day without looking desperate and clingy. Things were definitely going her way tonight, she thought, clicking on the tv and she leaned back in the cushions.

  A knock sounded at her door, and she smiled. He must have noticed his missing phone on the way home. Oh well, there went her excuse to see him tomorrow.

  She shook off the blanket and picked his phone up off the table before heading to the door.

  She unlocked the door and opened it, “I was wondering when you’d notice your phone was…”

  “Hello Felicity,” the cold voice sent shivers down her spine and instinct told her to run. She couldn’t run, Katy was asleep in her bedroom. The cell phone fell out of her hand and she tried to slam the door shut but Timothy’s hand was holding it firmly open. “Now is that any way to greet your husband after not seeing him for more than a year? I expected better manners from you Felicity. But what can one expect from a whore who lets white trash molest her in public.”

  Tim pushed himself into the apartment, putting his hand on the back of Fern’s neck and moving her with him, shutting and locking the door behind him.

  “Now, it seems we have some catching up to do,” a terrifying smile spread across Timothy’s cruel handsome face and terror like she’d never felt spread through Fern’s body.

  ***

  The night air was cool in a comfortable relaxing kind of way. It was his favorite kind of night. The moon was full, the streets were quiet, and he’d just been thoroughly exhausted by a beautiful woman.

  He smiled to himself thinking about Fern. She was beautiful but she was also so much more. She was everything. She was also hiding something, but that was ok. She’d tell him in time, or maybe she’d never tell him, but he understood that too. There were things in his past that he’d never tell anyone else so he could give someone else that same courtesy. When people had lived like he and his family had, there were always ghosts that wanted to haunt you that you hoped no one else could see. Sometimes you could hide them, and sometimes people saw that haunted look in your eyes. He saw Fern’s but he wasn’t going to ask. If she felt like talking about it she would. If not, he’d take whatever she had to offer.

  And that was a lot.

  He’d never really thought he’d fall in love. Being safe, providing for his family, making a life for them that wasn’t always on the edge of disaster, that’s all he’d ever hoped for.

  But when he looked at Fern, he wanted more. He saw her and Katy and he saw what could be. A precious thing he’d never thought to call his.

  Katy was precious and precocious and he was having a hard time keeping his distance from her. She just wanted to worm her way into his heart and despite the fact that Fern had stressed that she didn’t want Katy to be affected by what he and Fern were doing, Dax was having a hard time not being affected by her.

  She wanted to crawl in his lap, asked him to read to her, asked if he could come over and watch Frozen with her, wanted to have tea parties with him. It was all he could do to keep himself from falling under her spell.

  She must come by it naturally because he’d already fallen head over heels for her mother. It was only a matter of telling her and letting her realize that she’d fallen for him too.

  And she had. He saw it in the way she looked at him, in the way she touched him, in the way she leaned into him when he held her. She might not have admitted it to herself yet, but she was right there with him. All he had to do was show her.

  He couldn’t wait to take her to a Sunday dinner with the family. She’d met everyone except Dex, but somehow Sunday dinner made it official. And it wouldn’t be long before Sandy moved and everything was different. He wanted to take her while things were still the same. The whole family crowded around the dinner table, bickering over this or that, passing food back and forth as they shared their meal. He wanted her to see who he was and what he was a part of. What he wanted her to be a part of too.

  He wanted her and Katy to be his family.

  Dax’s heart felt like it was about to over flow. He did, he wanted her to be a part of his family, forever. He should have told her, he should have already said something.

  He patted his pockets looking for his phone. He was going to call and see if she was still awake, if so he was going to go right back over there and tell her how he felt.

  His phone wasn’t in any of his pockets. He thought back to where the last place he’d had it and remembered sitting it on the coffee table at Fern’s. He must have forgotten to pick it up before he left.

  He stood on the sidewalk under a low hanging tree branch for a moment, the night sounds chirping all around him, undecided.

  He could walk back, wake her and maybe Katy up, and profess his love to a half asleep, possibly annoyed woman; or he could wait and go over tomorrow with a bunch of flowers and maybe something sweet in hand, and tell her he’d never dreamed of feeling about a woman the way that he felt about her.

  His heart wanted him to turn right back around and go grab her tonight and never let her go again. He’d told her earlier that they had time, but he didn’t feel like it at that moment, he felt like he wanted to rush and tell her all the things he was feeling.

  But instead he listened to his head and began walking towards his apartment again.

  Tomorrow. Tomorrow was soon enough if it was the right thing to do. And some sleep probably wouldn’t hurt him anyway.

  His body felt used and abused, but in a good way. He grinned, a shower probably wouldn’t hurt anything either.

  Now that he’d decided his pace quickened, eager to get into bed and let sleep erase time. Because tomorrow he told the woman he loved that he couldn’t live without her.

  The knock at the door made her jump. It was amazing how fast she had gone from comfortable and feeling safe in her home to jumping at every noise. And she had good reason to jump. She knew a monster was right around the corner, but why was he knocking when he’d taken her keys?

  Carefully she crept to the door, he could be testing her.

  “Who is it?” she called, trying
to sound normal in case it was one of her neighbors.

  “It’s Dax,” his warm voice said through the door leaving nothing but a cold feeling of dread running through her.

  He had to leave.

  “Hey Dax,” she tried to say sweetly, “Now’s not a good time.” She bit her lip, knowing it wasn’t going to be that simple.

  There was a pause, “I left my phone here last night, can I just grab it before I go?”

  Crap, she’d forgotten about the phone. She ran over to the coffee table to get it, but the coffee table had been knocked over. Where could it have gone?

  She should have cleaned up, she berated herself, instead of wallowing in self-pity. She had to think about surviving, of finding another way to get her and her girl back out of this situation, and sitting around in a broken haze of sorrow wasn’t going to do it. She had to snap out of it. And she would. As soon as she found the phone and got rid of Dax she’d sit down and figure out how she could get away. Again.

  “Just a minute,” she called out loudly, hoping he could hear it through the door. God where was that stupid phone? She had to get him away from her door before Timothy returned.

  She fell down to the floor, as if she hadn’t been there enough, and looked under the furniture, finally seeing the phone under the couch.

  Now, if she could just hand it to him without him seeing her. She unbolted the door ready to hand it out to him and shut it quickly.

  “Here you go,” she opened the door only wide enough for her hand to fit through, but he didn’t take the phone.

  “Is everything ok?”

  “Yes, fine. Here,” she said annoyed, shaking the phone at him, why wouldn’t he just take the phone and leave? Before bad things happened?

  “Something is wrong Fern, let me in,” she felt him pushing on the door and fear almost suffocated her.

  “Please just go Dax, you can’t be here right now,” she again shook the phone at him.

  He didn’t answer, she could almost hear him trying to decide what to do on the other side of the door.

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me why you won’t let me see you.”

  Fern drew her arm back in and rested head against the door. This was not going to end well.

  She felt the tears welling in her eyes. She didn’t want him to see her right now. She didn’t want him to know her as this weak broken thing. She wanted him to remember her as she had been with him, happy.

  But she didn’t know what else to do. If he was still there when Timothy came back it was going to go badly, for everyone.

  She opened the door slowly and watched as his eyes traveled up and down her landing finally on her bruised face.

  She could almost feel each blow again as he looked at her.

  “What… I don’t. How?” Dax seemed to be at a loss for words. Trying to wrap his mind around the fact that he’d left her last night, sore but otherwise unharmed, only to come back less than twelve hours later to find her new bruises turning purple in front of him.

  But the answer was simple, “My husband found me.”

  And that was the long and short of it. He’d come in and threw her across the room, heedless of her, her things, or the fact that their daughter slept in the room beside them.

  She’d begged him to stop, told him that Katy had never seen this side of him and asked if that was the first thing he wanted her to see after having not seen him in a year.

  Fern didn’t know where she’d gotten the courage to talk to him like that, but he hadn’t liked it.

  “Oh I know how to be quiet, and you better too, unless you want the little one to get the same treatment.” And that had been when the real pain had begun.

  It’s strange how movies and tv always make things seem so loud. That’s not how reality is at all. A punch has almost no sound if it’s not accompanied by yelling or falling. No, a deliberate hit on a person that’s braced for impact has very little sound actually.

  Then of course he’d followed the punishment with some rape as she lain beneath him trying not to cry. It had been just like old times.

  It felt like Dax could see all of those things as he looked at her, pity in his eyes.

  “You have to go, he’ll be back soon,” she said, it was almost a plea.

  The look of pity solidified into something hard and angry and she knew that Dax had no intention of going anywhere.

  She grabbed his hand and held it up to her chest, “You have to go Dax please,” she begged, “He’s got Katy and if he sees you here who knows what he’ll do. He might take her and not come back.”

  Her words broke on the last sentence and Dax pulled her into his arms, and she let him, knowing that she shouldn’t. This comfort was temporary, any moment now Tim would burst back into her world and snatch it from her. That didn’t change the fact that she needed it so desperately.

  He watched his daughter swing, her braids hanging down in front of her as she looked at the ground moving below her.

  Of course she didn’t look up at him and smile or laugh. That would have been too much for a father to expect after not seeing her for over a year. She was cold and distant just like her mother. He didn’t know if it was genetic or if Felicity had poisoned the well of their daughter’s mind against him. Either was possible where Felicity was concerned.

  And he really didn’t care so much as long as the child was well behaved. He wouldn’t have brought her to the park if he’d been able to stomach one more moment in that dingy little apartment they’d called home. Childcare was his wife’s job and he was happy to leave it to her, but in the future she was going to have to teach the little girl how to at least fake affection for the man who paid her bills.

  Sitting and watching Catherine attempt to play was nerve wracking. How could a child not even know how to play correctly? Instead of engaging with the other children she was just moping around by herself. He sighed and let his mind wonder to other problems. He could worry about the girl being weird after he had her established in a descent preschool among decent people. Perhaps she was just being discerning by not playing with these children, who wanted to associate with this trash anyway? That thought made him smile.

  But he was going to have to figure out how to transition them both back into his life. It wasn’t going to be too bad. He’d told everyone their marriage was on the rocks and she’d gone to stay with her family, so it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch to say he’d taken time off to work on their marriage and she’d decided to come back home.

  However, he was going to have to wait until she was presentable again and that meant staying in that damn hole of an apartment. He certainly couldn’t leave her alone and trust her not to run. No. It’d be a long time before she deserved any kind of trust again. So he was just stuck here.

  Yet another hardship he’d have to endure because of Felicity.

  “Excuse me, I think we might have a problem,” a voice to the side of him said, taking him off guard.

  His head turned quickly toward the person talking. It was the trashy tattoo artist that had been having an inappropriately intimate relationship with his wife.

  “Oh really? And what might that be? Other than the fact you’ve been fucking my wife,” Tim smirked. Let that sink in asshole. She’s mine, not yours.

  “Oh, I don’t see that as a problem, more of a pleasure really. I guess if you asked her she’d see it that way too. No, the problem is you don’t seem to know how to keep your hands to yourself. I stopped by to see Fern this morning, so I saw first-hand how happy your reunion made her.”

  “She’s my wife –“Tim was cut off by the sound of his daughter’s voice.

  “Mr. Dax! Mr. Dax!” The little girl came running up to the man in a way she’d never run to her father and wrapped her arms around his legs. “Mama was real sad this morning, you should go see her and cheer her up.”

  “That’s enough Catherine, go play while the adults talk,” he pulled his daughter away from the man and pushed
her back towards the playground equipment. Her lack of training also included not interrupting when grown-ups were talking obviously.

  Both men waited until the little girl was out of earshot.

  “What does being your wife have to do with leaving her black and blue?” Dax demanded

  “A man has a right to discipline his wife. What would you expect after finding your wayward wife living under an assumed name and having an extramarital affair in the same home as your child, the one she kidnapped.”

  “Are you even living in this century? You don’t have the right to hit anyone, most definitely not the woman you vowed to love and protect.”

  “I am protecting her, from herself. Without my firm hand to guide her who knows where she’d end up? She might even end up destitute and working in a tattoo parlor while surrounding herself with the scum of the earth. No, we couldn’t have that. So we have to have teachable moments.”

  “Teachable moments huh? Is that what you call it? I call it spousal abuse. She’s covered from head to toe with bruises. She’s lucky she doesn’t have any broken bones.”

  “Some lessons are harder than others and some pupils require a firmer hand.”

  “You make me sick. How can you hit your wife? It’s Fern for God’s sake!”

  “Oh, it’s not just hitting her. I’ve perfected her punishments over the years. I’ve gotten it down to an art really. We walk a fine line between my pleasure and her pain. Last night was particularly wonderful. She expected to find you at the door when I knocked, of course, and that look of fear that crossed her face when she realized it wasn’t you was almost worth waiting for. Then, her body still stinking of you, I showed her how a man uses an unfaithful woman. By the end of the night she was begging me to stop. Tears pouring out of the big green eyes. It was probably the best reunion I could have hoped for.”

  Tim could see the rage that was barely contained below the surface and it satisfied him to no end. He knew the man couldn’t do anything here in public. He’d had the PI do a background on him, of course, and while the man might not be on probation any more, people like him knew what side the law always came down on.