by Jayne Blue
“You want a refill? Can I get you something to eat?”
I shook my head. “No. I’m running late actually.”
“Everything okay with Mrs. May? You didn’t bring her by yesterday.”
Rising, I put a hand on D’Angelo’s arm. His kind eyes warmed me. “She’s okay. She was just feeling a little shaky yesterday morning. The doctor said her iron was low but we’re taking care of that.”
D’Angelo smiled and walked over to the counter. He handed me a brown paper bag. “Well, I don’t know how much they’ve got in the way of iron, but Sadie made banana nut bread. The kind your ma likes. Take her a couple on the house. Then tell her to quit loafing around and get back here.”
I touched D’Angelo’s cheek and took the bag from him. His eyes held a knowing sadness that tore at me a little. He knew Nash. I couldn’t help but feel there was something else he wanted to tell me. But I didn’t feel like I’d be able to put one foot in front of the other right then if he forced me to talk about it. I thanked him again, waved goodbye, and headed out to my car.
It was past seven when I pulled into the condo parking lot and headed inside. Wyatt came running around the corner and slid into me, wrapping his arms around my legs.
“Take it easy, turbo. You’re gonna knock me over!”
“You said six zero zero. It’s seven one three.”
He held his iPod up and pointed to the clock. My heart sank as he leveled an accusatory look straight at me. God, it was the exact same look Nash gave me less than an hour ago. I gave Wyatt a light pinch on the end of his nose then leaned down and kissed him again.
“I’m sorry. You can stay up and watch one extra show after dinner.”
“We already ate. Gam made a pot pie.”
“Mmm. Sounds delicious. Is she in bed already?”
Wyatt shook his head. “She’s taking a bath.”
I screwed up my face and smoothed an unruly lock of hair away from Wyatt’s forehead. I didn’t like it when Mom tried to get in and out of the tub when I wasn’t home.
“All right. I’m gonna check on her. You go find the book you want to read tonight. You want superheroes or wizards, my man?”
“Superheroes!” he shouted and thrust his fist into the air. I bit my lip and regretted riling him up. For the past six months, I couldn’t get the boy to wear anything that didn’t have Batman or Marvel heroes on it. A few weeks ago, he got on a pro football kick and we were all about the Jacksonville Jaguars. He darted around my legs and ran down the hallway toward his bedroom. The whole apartment shook as he pounded his bare feet against the floor.
Sighing, I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of white wine. It would take Wyatt a good twenty minutes to pick a book and he’d make a tower out of the castoffs before he settled on something.
I walked into the living room at the same time my mother came out of the bathroom. She had a pink towel wrapped around her head and wore her green robe. She took slow, steady steps while pushing her walker out in front of her. I bit my lip and resisted the urge to go to her. This last flare-up happened overnight six months ago. It was worse in the morning. This time of day, she was looser and could manage a few steps without the chair.
She smiled when she saw me and made her way to the kitchen. When I went toward her, she put up a hand and slowly sank to one of the kitchen chairs, sighing as she finally took the weight off her feet.
“You were supposed to wait for me before you attempted the bath, Mom.”
She screwed up her face and shot me a raspberry. I laughed and leaned over to hug her around the shoulders. She’d never been a large woman, but now, her bones felt brittle and her skin hung looser. In her prime, she’d been a runner, logging at least seven miles a day. Most of that she did circling the campus of the small community college in southeast Michigan where she’d taught English composition for twenty years. Professor Emily Bean Mays was and is a force to be reckoned with. When the going got too rough and my dad lit out, it had just been the two of us and she made less than twenty thousand dollars a year. Dad paid support for a while, then he didn’t. But somehow, we managed by the sheer force of my mother’s will. From the time I was fourteen on, I’d contributed to our basic household bills. Now, finally, I made enough to take care of all of us and she could just focus on staying healthy and enjoying her grandson in the sunshine.
“I’m having a good day,” she said, beaming at me with her big brown eyes. She’d gone to the hairdresser this morning with one of our neighbors. She liked a new, shorter style that curled in around her ears and framed her face. It looked stunning on her. My mother was one of the fortunate few who’d gone gleaming white instead of gray.
“I’m glad one of us is.”
My mother sat back in her chair, cocked her head to the side, and smiled at me. I took a breath. I knew that look. She was about to hit me with her version of a truth bomb.
“You worry too much.”
I jutted my chin forward, expecting to hear something worse than that. “I think I worry just the right amount.”
“You’re young. You’re smart. You’ve got a great kid. Oh, and a fantastic mother. We’re living in paradise where the sun shines year round and I can smell the beach from here. Now you’ve got a good job. When exactly are you going to wipe that gloom-and-doom look of your face, my darling?”
I finished the last of my wine and slid the glass away from me. “You want some?” I asked, hoping to push her to a different topic. She shook her head. I shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’m glad you’re having a good day. Truly. And thanks for covering for me with Wyatt. I won’t be late like this again.”
“I’m not here to scold you or tell you your business.”
I laughed. “Since when?” I reached across the table and squeezed her hand.
“Did something happen at work?” she asked.
I looked out the window. I couldn’t lie to this woman. Not ever. She saw right through me. For now, I just wanted to draw my own bath and escape under a cascade of warm bubbles. How could I possibly explain the predicament I found myself in? She didn’t know about Nash. No one did. I’d been stupid to think I could just meet with him and pretend everything was normal. It seemed he was another person I couldn’t lie to. And God, the way his lips felt against mine. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Seeing him one last time was the thing that was just supposed to get him out of my system.
“Harper?” My mother leaned in, making it impossible for me not to meet her gaze. Her warm brown eyes sparkled as they crinkled at the corners.
“Sorry. It’s nothing. It’s just been a long week.”
“Hmm. You sure it’s just work?”
“What do you mean?”
My mother folded her hands on the table. She sat back and leveled a hard stare at me. “Honey, I’ve danced around the elephant in the room with you for months now. Ever since you asked me to move down here.”
I got up abruptly, nearly knocking my chair over. Heading back into the kitchen, I poured myself another glass of wine. “Wyatt wants a story,” I said. “I’ve kept him waiting long enough.”
My mother’s soft laughter reached me at about the same time as the wine. I took another sip, set it on the counter, and headed into Wyatt’s room. We weren’t finished decorating it yet because he couldn’t decide on a theme. For now, he had a loft bed with book shelves built beneath it and two giant plastic toy boxes for all his plastic guys. He sat in the middle of a mountain of books trying to pick one.
“Did a tornado just run through here?” I said, putting my hands on my hips.
He shot me a crooked-toothed smile and waved his picture book selection over his head. Shaking my head, I sank into the chair we kept in the corner. Wyatt wasted no time scrambling over his book mountain and crawling into my lap. His blond head brushed my chin and I inhaled his sweet baby scent. He had an eight o’clock bedtime and even though I’d promised he could stay up a little later, I knew he wouldn’t make it. I was lucky with him. The kid was lik
e a machine, asleep by eight, up by six, no matter what. In a few months when he started kindergarten, I’d hoped for smooth sailing.
My heart lurched when I flipped the book over and read the cover. It wasn’t a storybook at all but one of a series he’d gotten for his birthday last year about how different things worked. He had one about trucks, airplanes, rocket ships and this one … all about motorcycles.
“This one’s not really a story, pal.”
“I like it!” he whined as he flipped open the page. I knew the drill. Wyatt would point to a picture he liked and try to sound out the words. Then I’d read the longer description beneath it. He pointed to the throttle, the engine, the brakes, one by one. By the time we got to the muffler, his little body grew heavy as he sank into me, half asleep.
I kissed him again and squeezed him, cherishing these moments. I knew some day my little man might not want me near him. Today was not that day. I shifted in the chair and held Wyatt so I could see his face. His long lashes fell across his chubby cheeks. I brushed a strand of blond hair away from his face.
“You look just like him,” I whispered. I still felt Nash’s kiss on my lips. Guilt speared through me. Was I wrong for keeping this secret from him? Is it what he’d want me to do?
Years ago, it had been simple. As I pressed my head against the chair back, I closed my eyes. Those years melted away and I was back in the parking lot of the old Wolf Den. Nash held me in his arms as he sat on his bike.
“You’re bad for me,” I said as he tilted my chin so he could kiss me again.
“Probably.” He said other things that sent heat spearing through me. His rough stubble scratched my neck as he worked his way down. I hadn’t left his side since that first night on the beach. He’d driven me back to my apartment. Louis had worked fast. All of my belongings were stacked on the curb and a scrapper had just pulled up to pick through it. He'd left Lisa’s things intact. With Nash’s warnings to Louis about leaving her alone, I knew she could fend for herself for now. Plus, from the texts she’d sent, it sounded like she’d found her own wild weekend with her frat boy.
Nash chased the scrapper off and called his crew. Within a few minutes, five members of the GWMC, just as fierce as Nash, showed up, one of them driving a pick-up. They put my things in the back of that truck, no questions asked, and Nash drove me back to The Den. He said we’d come up with a plan in the morning, but just then, he’d take care of everything. It had been so easy … too easy to just let him take charge. He held me spellbound. My mother taught me never to rely on a man for things I could handle myself. I didn’t then, but Nash felt so good and for once, just to be able to do something impulsive felt intoxicatingly good.
So I let him take care of me. For three nights and three days, I lived in Nash’s world. He made my body his and told me all of his dreams. I told him mine. I could almost believe he could do it … turn everything around for the club. He showed me blueprints and drove me up the coast to where he wanted to build. We made love under the stars again and swam naked in the surf where no one could see. Until those magical three days came to an end. As I stood in the parking lot with him on that last morning, everything melted away.
Nash sensed it before I did. He stiffened in my arms. Then we were surrounded by more than a dozen bikers wearing the Red Brigands patch. Nash tucked me behind him and told me to go inside and stay away from the windows. It all happened so fast sometimes I almost think I dreamed it. How could everything go from perfect to shit in the span of a few seconds? I got halfway across the parking lot before someone threw the first punch. Nash ran toward me, shielding me with his body. Two seconds later, someone fired a shot. They shot out the windows of the club and Nash’s father came flying out and grabbed me. We hid under a bar stool together until it was over. I’ll never forget what he told me as we waited for the world to end.
“Do yourself a favor: get the hell out of here and don’t look back. You don’t belong here.”
Through tears I looked at Nash’s father. He had the same emerald green eyes and square jaw as his son. I didn’t know what to say to him and he knew it.
“If you think I’m trying to scare you, I am,” he continued. “Women like you end up dead around clubs like this.”
Before I could even process his words, Nash staggered into the bar and my world fell apart. Everyone was so worried about bullets flying, no one expected the knife. They got him just under the ribs and blood flowed all the way down to his jeans.
“Go home, baby,” he’d told me later after King and the others patched him up. “Don’t look back.”
“I need to know you’ll be all right.”
He smiled but the light had gone out of his eyes. “You’ve got a real future. This shit isn’t for you. And I can’t have you around it.”
“Nash, you’re hurt.” I don’t know what I wanted. Even after all of it, part of me didn’t want to leave his side. I think Nash saw that in my eyes. What he said next seared me to my core. He found the strength to grab me by the shoulders and shake me once.
“Get the fuck out of here. I’m not going to have you end up like my mother. Bystanders get killed. You don’t belong here.”
I wiped my tears. “Your father tried to tell me the same thing.”
“Yeah? He knows from experience. Go home, Harper. Go to college. I don’t want you around this or me anymore. I’ll end up dead or in prison by the time I’m thirty. You were a nice diversion for the weekend but you don’t deserve to get hurt cuz of this shit.”
His words stung as if I were the one stabbed. But I left and tried not to look back. The last time I saw him, they were loading him into an ambulance and the club was surrounded by cops.
The memory dissolved and I looked down at my sleeping son. He was safe. He was mine. I kissed him again and heaved him across my shoulder as I climbed up the steps to his loft. Wyatt stirred and crawled the rest of the way, still sleeping. I pulled his covers up to his chin and kissed his foot before I climbed back down.
My mother was still waiting for me at the kitchen table when I came back out. She’d poured her own glass of wine and brought mine to the table.
“Sit,” she said.
“Mom, not now.”
“Now!”
I let out a hard breath and took my seat across from her. She brought her wine glass to her lips and took a slow sip with trembling fingers.
“What do you want from me?” I finally asked. There was no point pretending I didn’t know where she was headed with this.
“Harper, honey. You’re allowed to have secrets. You’re a grown woman and a mother. You’ve earned your right to them. But you and Wyatt are the only family I’ve got left too.”
“Mom …”
She put up her hand. “Now, I swore I wasn’t going to ask you this. I was just going to let you come to me when you were ready. I trust you. I always have. But two nights this week, you’ve disappeared. Again, you’re entitled to your secrets and your privacy. But I know you. Something’s happened. There’s only one thing that I think could put that look on your face. And you know I’m not an idiot. So now I’m going to ask. What are we doing here?”
I took another sip of wine, hoping it would steady my nerves. It didn’t. “You know why. The climate’s been good for you … my job is …”
“Dammit, Harper!” My heartbeat jumped. “Tell me the truth, is this where it happened?”
I twirled the stem of my glass and wouldn’t meet her eyes. I couldn’t lie to her. I knew she wouldn’t force the truth from me if I wasn’t ready to give it.
“Harper.” Her tone softened. “I may have been an English teacher, but I can do basic math, honey. You came back from this town pregnant when you were nineteen. You’ve stuck to the same story for years that it was someone from back home, but that wasn’t true. Was it?”
Tears clouded my vision. I wiped them away and looked at her. “Please, don’t.”
She reached across the table and touched my face. “Bab
y. You can’t run from it anymore. Have you seen him? Wyatt’s father? Did he hurt you? Is that why you look so sad lately?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know where to start because then I wouldn’t know how to stop. My mother had never judged me for what happened. Her illness changed her, made her stronger in ways that amazed me. She never panicked. She met challenges head on, even when they came from bad decisions her daughter should have known better to avoid. But I didn’t regret it. Not anymore. How could I? I couldn’t imagine my life without Wyatt. Neither could she.
“He didn’t hurt me. He would never hurt me.”
“Is he a good man?”
My shoulders shook as tears flowed more freely. “Mom, I don’t know. I mean, yes. He’s a good man. But he was involved in things that weren’t. Things that got people hurt.”
“And now?”
I shook my head and wiped my cheek. “It’s just complicated.”
“But you’ve seen him.”
I nodded. It felt so good to let some of this out. I couldn’t tell her everything. I couldn’t tell her who he was yet. I couldn’t tell her about what happened tonight and how it might impact my job. God, I’d made such a mess out of everything.
“Does he know?”
I folded my arms on the table and rested my head on them. My mother reached over and stroked the back of my head. “No,” I finally answered. “He doesn’t know. God. Mom, I didn’t even know I was pregnant the last time I saw him, when I left here, I mean. You know that. By the time I figured it out I was three months along and in school again. I was scared and confused. And his situation wasn’t … well … it wasn’t conducive to fatherhood.”
“Hmm. And yours was? Honey, this is a pattern with you. You think you can handle everything and never ask for help.”
“No. You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it. Did this man rape you? Is he a serial killer?”
“No!” I raised my head then lowered my voice back down to a whisper. “No.”
“Well, then it seems to me you’re not playing fair. You didn’t just pick Emerald Point at random. He was from here. You took one hell of a gamble with all of our lives coming back here. So you’ve seen him but haven’t bothered to tell him he’s got a son he knows nothing about. And both times, you’ve come home in tears. Whatever your plan is, baby, it’s not working. I love you, but Wyatt comes first for both of us now.”