by Nikki Winter
She cleared her throat. “Are we finished here?”
The impassive Mackenzie was back. The one he hated. The one that he would never forgive for not warning him that he’d have the rug snatched up from under him.
“What is it, plums?” he tried again, taunting her. “Does it feel too much like cheating when you have him there?”
“Maybe it feels too right. Maybe I enjoy it too much.”
“Bullshit. Try again.”
“Ashleigh—”
“He can’t have you, Mac.” The warning vibrated down the line, hanging between them. “Because you can’t give away something what’s already been claimed. You tell Frost to pack up his essentials, collect what meager things he’s comfortably sat down on my land. My flag is there. It won’t be moved. And any attempts to do so will be met with war.”
“I don’t know who it is I’m talking to right now. I don’t know this person.”
One side of his mouth curved and Ashleigh responded with, “Oh, you don’t remember, baby?” Leaning forward in his chair, he placed a palm to his desk and pushed upwards into standing. “Allow me to remind you.” Ashleigh moved out of his office and down the hall, saying, “I’m the barbarian.”
***
“I’m the barbarian.”
Ashleigh had gone insane. That was the only plausible explanation. The only thing that remotely made any sense. The stretched, taut band of time that had sat between them didn’t consist of mere weeks or months but literal years. Somehow, he’d pressed one inordinately large foot to that and shoved it out of the way. Using all the arrogance he’d exhibited the first time he’d almost run her down with those battering rams that he called shoulders.
Where was the logic? The linear, rational thinking? Where was the affable, cool-headed Ashleigh who’d done his damndest to let her know she wasn’t needed anymore? Apparently he was now touched. He was touched deeply. And Mackenzie…Mackenzie was lost. Their conversation had ended after that particular line and she’d tried to bait him with several consecutive text messages that told him exactly where he could go with his barbarianism, but he hadn’t bit. Shaken up, Mackenzie had turned off her phone and decided to shut out the rest of the world until her head turned itself right side up again.
“Do you ever miss Daddy?”
The question was lobbed from the proverbial left field and Mackenzie halted all activity for the moment; afraid that if she kept cutting vegetables for a salad, she’d mistake her finger for a carrot and wind up a partial amputee by her own hands.
Sitting the chef’s knife down, she brushed her palms against the t-shirt that had seen better days and looked up to find Arista had stopped her task of mixing dressing in a bowl that the field greens would be tossed in. Only one coherent word came out… “Huh?”
Her daughter pursed her bow shaped lips together and batted those envy inducing lashes in a look that was distinctly her father’s before she repeated, “Do you ever miss Daddy?”
Mackenzie swiped her hands again. “What would make you ask a thing like that?”
Arista shrugged, the small studded gold balls in her little ears catching the light as she moved. “Dunno. Heard a boy talking today at camp about his Mommy and Daddy. They’re separated, he said.”
Nodding, she leaned against the counter. “Unh-huh.”
“He also said that sometimes he catches her wearing some of the stuff his Daddy left behind in their closet.” Arista paused and looked down, twisting her pink polished fingers. “I know you still have one of Papa Bear’s jerseys in yours.”
“And how, pray tell, do you know that?” Mackenzie questioned, finding her footing as Arista’s eyes slid further to the floor. “Playing in my closet again, Ari?”
“No,” her daughter quickly answered, lifting her head. She shook it and her currently loose hair swayed slightly. “When you sent me in for my rain boots last week, I saw it then,” she finished on a whisper. “It was in that big box by the shoe rack.”
Ah. The box. The one that Mackenzie had found herself digging through because she’d been looking for one picture in particular of father and daughter covered in chocolate cake batter and grinning mischievously. Her mother had phoned to tell her that she’d been nostalgically going through family albums and found a copy of the four-year-old photo. It sent Mackenzie tearing through her own closet space in search of it. And she’d found it, in the box where she kept all her memories of Ashleigh now. That foreign cardboard structure that had been safely tucked away without much thought. The jersey he’d won his first Super bowl in had been there, jokingly signed to “Plums.” In her scramble to eradicate herself of him, she’d never ridden herself of that jersey. Or the photos. Or the DVDs. Any of it. She told herself that it could be because each included important keepsakes of Arista’s first moments, but that lie hadn’t curled all the way over.
“There are some things you don’t know how to give up, Ari-bear,” Mackenzie said affectionately, angling across the counter to tangle her finger with one of the little girl’s stray curls. She smiled when it sprang back into formation. “That jersey…it was important to Papa Bear.”
“So that makes it important to you?” she asked, playing with the pendant of Mackenzie’s necklace.
For lack of anything better to say, Mackenzie told her, “In a way. It’s not easy to understand and it’s even harder to explain, but when Papa Bear gave that to me, I knew I’d never want to let it go. It’s simply a part of our history. Like the beanie they gave me for you at West Boca. And the tiny pair of booties. I could never throw those out. They still smell like eight pound, ten ounce you. The one with the fairly demanding appetite and the aversion to bottled formula.” She ran her index finger down the bridge of Arista’s nose. “The one who’s teeth came in like a hyena pup’s and made me wish I had insisted on bottled formula because—and you won’t understand this until you’re older—you chewed on me like I was a well aged, well brined beef jerky, darlin’.”
Arista giggled. “Does Daddy’s jersey still smell like him?”
Mackenzie closed her eyes and murmured, “No. Not anymore, baby. Your things are plastic protected by your baby book so the scent is still there. But Daddy’s jersey…I have to imagine that. I have to remember how he smelled.”
And she could, vividly. Ashleigh occasionally liked the heady, expensive colognes that he’d endorsed over the years but his signature was something he’d had custom made by a company out of Madrid. It was riddled with spice and the potent undertone of bourbon with a lingering touch of citrus. It had been absorbed into all his jackets, his shirts and their sheets, mixing perfectly with Mackenzie’s own perfume choices; gifts given by him, trademarked aromas he’d ordered for the special occasions that he did consider important. It had been hard to firmly box the memory of it away the same way she’d done those keepsakes. Up until she’d had to sift through them again, she’d done—what she considered to be—an excellent job of that. However, she could box it up a thousand times over and never misplace the sensory recall of that scent.
“I like the way Papa Bear smells too,” Arista admitted, breaking Mackenzie’s reverie. “And the way he cuddles.” She suddenly grinned. “Don’t worry, Mommy. I won’t tell.”
Mackenzie’s brows arched. “What are you going on about, child?”
Her daughter’s head tilted just a tad to the left. “That you do miss Daddy,”—her tone lowered conspiratorially—“I won’t tell.”
The lie rushed to the edge of her tongue, ready to barrel its way out and into the air, but she didn’t have the heart to voice it. She didn’t have the heart to stand and watch that broad, Ashleigh-like grin melt away. So instead, Mackenzie moved until she could brush her lips across Arista’s cheek in a kiss that turned into a raspberry. The sweet sound of laughter followed as she simply said, “Thank you.”
Seven
“Mackenzie is going to skin you alive and wear you like a suit. Hope you showered today so she doesn’t have to trouble hers
elf too much with cleaning you properly beforehand.”
Those were the laughing words of a man he considered his best friend. Spoken to him as he sat quietly on the outskirts of a nearly empty terminal at an ungodly hour this morning, waiting for a flight into Charlotte. It wad a flight that he was taking almost a week and a half earlier than scheduled because anxiety had driven him from the comfort of his own bed. Another night, another dream of Mackenzie.
He couldn’t happily tolerate the torment anymore. Not after their last conversation. Not after she’d told him all he needed to know about where she stood with Frost. There was hope there. A link in the chain that hadn’t been broken. He intended to use that for his own purposes. Three years was more than long enough. His pride had ran headlong into a grave of its own making.
“My wife is going to miss making fun of the breadth of your neck,” Noel had added. “I hope you know how selfish of an act it is to take that bit of joy from her.”
“Speaking of your wife,” Ashleigh drawled into his phone. “Did she actually release you from your leash long enough to call or did you chew through it?”
Obscene names had been tossed from one end to the other. They’d gone back and forth and back and forth until Noel had asked him a question that halted all amusement. “Planning to visit home?”
No, no he was not. He hadn’t been lying to Mackenzie days ago when he’d hesitantly informed her that his home had never been anywhere outside of her general vicinity. At eighteen, he’d learned the hard way that she would possibly always be what he clung to. His fate had been sealed the day he’d finally stood his ground with Matthew, determined that the bullying would only go but so far…
The rumble of tires on the graveled path leading up to Mackenzie’s family home could be heard before they’d even reached their intended destination. All laughter between Ashleigh and Mackenzie stopped immediately. They’d taken their dessert out on the screened in front porch, sitting close in a wide rocking chair and whispering over pie. Dinner had been…uneventful. But in the loveliest way. There was something so wholesome about being asked to pass the potatoes and not having to worry that a plate was going to whiz past your head seconds later if you didn’t do so quickly enough.
None of Ashleigh’s words or jokes were taken as a challenge to show who the real man of the house was. He’d felt comfortable…and safe. He’d felt safe. Something that he’d never actually had the pleasure of experiencing. His household wasn’t a safe one. It didn’t matter who you were or what you did, you were never truly safe from Matthew Thyne. So being here, lingering in this space, made something in his chest feel as though it were caving in on itself. He wanted this life. He wanted to sit next to Mackenzie every night at a wide, oak, darkly stained dining table and have her pinch his side because he teased her about any and everything that he could think of. Those bruises were welcome. They were given lovingly.
A full belly and a sore side came from bursting into laughter at Maurice’s stories about his days as a county sheriff before he’d retired to run a local gun range where he also taught self-defense classes. The mention of the drunk, naked, and needy had left Ashleigh with tears in his eyes. The tale of a man stripping on the side of the road and giving a demonstration of his flexibility had been the one that set them all off on a round of snorting that just wouldn’t stop. Afterwards, Miss Carla had shooed them out with pie slices and a small carton of milk, telling them that she was perfectly capable of putting away the few dishes left behind. From the glances Maurice had been giving her, Ashleigh would argue that her reasons for wanting to do manual labor were hardly noble or—as far as he was concerned—holy.
He’d always wondered what that was like. The existence of actual love under one’s roof. Not tolerance or lust. But the desire to be in someone’s presence because there was such a light emanating from them that you had to rest there, had feel the brightness on your skin and pretend it could fully chase away your own shadows.
He’d looked at Mackenzie then, those wide accepting eyes and that pretty mouth curled into a grin that was as infectious as it was sweet, and he’d suddenly realized that he did have that; that he did know what that felt like. She ran off the shadows. Without question or the slightest bit of fear, she stepped on the grasping hands of hell and forced him to see himself as more than someone else’s consequence for a lack of birth control.
But that was being intruded upon now. The truck coming to a slow stop, he recognized it. Saw it just about everyday when his father was around long enough. He’d had moments where he’d hoped to never see again. Where he’d hoped that it would be found on the side of a dark, curving road, mangled and destroyed along with its passenger. The second the driver’s side door opened, that prayer renewed.
Matthew’s heavy boots hit the ground and the figure attached stumbled. Ashleigh’s stomach sank.
“Boy,” his father barked, coming to sway slightly on the manicured lawn. “Let’s go. You’ve played house for long enough.”
He went to stand but Mackenzie’s hand on his forearm stopped him. “Absolutely not,” she said. “You are going nowhere with him.”
“Mac—”
“Boy!” Matthew slurred again, louder this time. “Did you not hear me? You suddenly deaf? I said bring your little red ass!”
Mackenzie shot up.
Ashleigh scrambled to grab her. “Mackenzie no!”
She shoved out of his arms and barreled out of the screen door. He followed and tried to catch her hand but she deftly avoided his reaching again, getting down the stairs and just a few feet in front of the large, drunk, flushed white man standing in her yard.
“You need to leave,” Mackenzie told Matthew in a sotto voice. “You need to get in your truck and go far, far away.”
Ashleigh watched his father’s lip curl as he gazed down through glazed eyes at the girl. “Who the fuck do you happen to think you’re talking to?” He bent at the waist to bring them closer to eye level. “Whatever you’ve got between your legs works on the bastard behind ‘yah but not me, sweetheart. I don’t take commands from anyone, least of all my boy’s bi—”
“Hey!” Ashleigh barked, picking Mackenzie up to place her out of the way. He stood in Matthew’s line of fire now, his gut roiling as some unnamed emotion clawed its way out. “You don’t talk to her like that,” he told his father in a quiet warning. “You don’t ever talk to her like that.”
“Then tell her to mind her own,” Matthew chided. “And you bring your ass home.”
Mackenzie tried to get around Ashleigh again. “He’s not leaving. Do you hear me? He’s not leaving with you!”
“Oh the bitch has a bite too?” the older man taunted. “That’s real sweet. This scene you’ve got going here, boy. What’d you do to make her behave so well? Tell me so I can try it on your mama.”
Talons shredded at Ashleigh’s last bits of tolerance. “Listen to me,” he said softly. “Get in your truck and leave. I’ll follow.”
A small hand reached into the pocket of his jeans and snatched his keys. He spun to see Mackenzie dangling them from a finger. “Not without these.” She shook her head swiftly when he tried to take them. “I mean it, Ash. You’re not going home. Not when he’s like this.”
“Mac—”
Matthew’s low chuckle cut him off. “She’s brave. I like it. Gonna have to break that in her though. She’ll resist at first, maybe even fight back a few times since she’s so sturdy. Your mama was like that. She fought back. Lost every time but she tried.” He angled around Ashleigh. “Want me to show you how, boy? Show you how to break the cunt? Could have her on her hands and knees for you by the end of the week. Maybe if you’re feeling generous, you’ll let me borrow her.”
Mackenzie didn’t even bat a lash. There was no flinching, no tic in her jaw. It was as though Matthew Thyne didn’t even remotely exist to her. She was simply focused on Ashleigh and Ashleigh alone. Oh but he existed to Ashleigh. And that tolerance, those last dredges of patience,
simply seemed to break like dry stalks of straw.
His bent arm swung around and there was a crunch of cartilage and bone as his elbow connected with his father’s face. Blood sprayed and Matthew’s head jerked back, his nose broken. He didn’t have the opportunity to process the brutal action.
Ashleigh took the moment of realization out of his grasp and filled it with a blow to his jaw.
“Ashleigh, wait!”
He couldn’t process Mackenzie’s shout clearly past the garbled roaring in his ears. Snatching away from her, he followed that hit with another and another and another. His hands wouldn’t stop moving; his heart beat on spurts that left him breathless as he hovered over his father, his fists hammering in a blurring motion that couldn’t be halted.
“I told you not to talk to her like that!” Ashleigh thundered, unsatisfied with the blood on his hands already. He wanted more. He wanted much more. “Why didn’t you listen?! Huh? What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you ever listen? Why can’t you leave me alone?” He grasped Matthew’s head between the palms of his hands and moved one to his neck, squeezing until his father’s chest shuddered. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Why can’t you leave me alone?” Something was fighting to release itself, fighting to finish what had been started.
“Do it,” Matthew gurgled with a bloody grin, his face swelling. “Go ahead, boy. Kill me.”
Ashleigh’s fingers tightened and the widening of Matthew’s eyes gave him a bone deep gratification that he couldn’t displace. He wanted this. He wanted to end his father’s life; wanted to end the torment that had been attached to every mild stone of his life. Every day, every goddamn day, had been full of jeering and shoving. Full of words that told him how little value he had outside of the football field.