Black Wings

by Megan Hart

“If you’re worried—” he began, but she shushed him with another kiss.

  “It’s not that,” Marian admitted and tucked her head into the curve of his neck. “I’m jealous.”

  Dean pushed her away to look at her face. He frowned before a slow, teasing smile tipped one corner of his lips. “Of that jackass?”

  “She was so excited to go with her dad. And she’s been acting so different lately.…” Marian swatted him. “Stop looking at me like that.”

  Dean gathered her close again to nuzzle her mouth, then the line of her jaw. The sensitive places on her neck. When he nibbled her there, Marian shivered, her body responding the way it always had – and, if they were lucky, the way it always would.

  “Briella loves you, baby. If she’s excited about going with her dad, it’s because she doesn’t get to see him a lot. And he’s usually taking her to fun places and doing fun things. He gets to be the good guy, and that’s automatically going to make him more popular.”

  “He’s not the good guy,” Marian said with a frown, biting out the words before she could stop herself.

  She’d promised herself she wouldn’t keep holding Tommy to account for his mistakes for the rest of his life. She’d vowed to give him the chance to prove he could… Well, if he couldn’t make up for the shit he’d pulled in the past, at the very least she could give him the chance to prove he wasn’t going to keep making the same mistakes. He’d asked her for that much, and even if she didn’t believe she owed him anything, what did it cost her to be kind?

  “You’re the good guy,” she said anyway, because that was the damned truth. “You’re the one who’s been there for her. Not him. I guess it makes me mad and jealous that he gets to swing in here with a handful of balloons and make her life a party.”

  Dean didn’t answer that. Not with words. He rested his forehead against hers, his breath softly puffing over her face, until Marian closed her eyes and breathed him in again. This time with long, slow breaths, until she felt like he’d filled her up.

  “She deserves a little bit of a party, though. Doesn’t she?” Dean kissed her temple again. “The kid’s had a bunch of shit going on lately. Big changes. The new school, new kids, all of that. She’s been working herself hard. Let her have the party. She’s going to have to buckle down and deal with reality soon enough.”

  Marian wanted to be the one to give Briella that freedom. She wanted it to be Dean, not Tommy, who made the girl’s eyes light up. She frowned, trying hard to be a better person.

  “You’re my everything, Dean. You know that? I love you so much.”

  Dean’s hands slipped down her back to her ass, nudging her closer to him. “I love you, too. You okay?”

  She wasn’t, but she didn’t want to waste their first night alone in so long by dwelling on stuff she couldn’t change. Marian nodded. She kissed him again, pressing closer to him. Heat grew in her lower belly as the kisses deepened. Her breath caught, rasping in her throat.

  “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  “I know something that will make you feel better.” Taking her hand, Dean led her from the living room into the kitchen.

  Marian gasped. He’d set the table with a real cloth and those disposable plastic plates that looked like real china, with matching plasticware that looked like silver. He’d even added wineglasses. Candles flickered, and on the stove a pot of something smelled good.

  She faced him. “What…? How did you…? Oh my God, Dean, what did you do?”

  “Made you dinner,” he said as though it were the most natural thing in the world for her to come home to something fancier than pizza or reheated turkey leftovers. “I figured you deserved it. You spent all day cooking yesterday. And I don’t get to do nice things for you too often.”

  “You do nice things for me every day,” Marian protested. Instead of arguing further, she kissed him again. “But thank you, this looks awesome.”

  “Sit.” He pulled out the chair for her, then poured them each a glass of wine as he took the seat across from her. “Toast.”

  “You go first,” she said, feeling shy. Not sure what to say that would be meaningful enough to compete with this effort he’d made.

  Dean lifted his glass. “To me and you.”

  “To us.” Marian laughed, relieved he hadn’t come out with some kind of fancy toast. Cloth napkins were a big enough change. But Dean was looking at her expectantly, and she had to say something. “Umm…let’s hope we’re always as happy as we are right now.”

  “Amen.”

  They clinked glasses, and Marian sipped. He’d picked an earthy red. The first sip went down hard. Thick, almost. She wasn’t sure she liked it, but she wasn’t about to complain, not when Dean got up to bring plates of steaming pasta with a hearty meat sauce to the table.

  “Wow, you made your mom’s sauce,” she said.

  Dean grinned. “Just like our first date.”

  Marian didn’t mean to cry, but something about Dean’s smile had the tears coming. She swiped at them quickly, not wanting to worry him. “Our first date was at the bowling alley.”

  “Okay, so the first time I cooked for you,” Dean said with a shrug and another lift of his glass. He sipped, then frowned. “I guess one of the only times I ever cooked for you. I wanted to impress you.”

  “You did. You do.” It was not likely that the wine was already going to her head, but Marian felt a little wobbly. She took another sip. It went down better this time. She lifted the glass again. “To my awesome husband. You’re a better man than I ever thought I’d deserve.”

  It was Dean’s turn to blink rapidly. “Ah, baby. That’s…”

  “It’s the truth,” Marian repeated. “You have been nothing but good to me and Briella since the first time you took me out. I couldn’t ask for a better husband than you. I love you, Dean Blake.”

  Dean’s chair clattered on the worn linoleum as he pushed back from the table. She was in his arms in the next second, wine sloshing as the glass tipped over. Marian didn’t care. Their mouths were hungrier than her belly in that moment. The heat that had begun with his earlier kisses flared, roaring the way a campfire does with the push of wind against it.

  “Bedroom,” she said. “Now.”

  They were naked before they got through the door. The bedroom was so small it took only a few steps to get them to the bed, where they tumbled in a tangle of arms and legs. Mouths open, tongues stroking, Dean rolled them both so Marian was on top, straddling his thighs.

  She reached between them to tease him fully erect, her breath catching at the feeling of him in her fist. “God, you feel so good.”

  Marian slowed, leaning forward to kiss him. Her hair fell down around them, tickling and shadowing his face. She let her mouth brush over his mouth, cheeks, forehead. She nuzzled his ear. Maybe Tommy wanting to spend more time with Briella wasn’t going to be so bad, after all.

  Marian wanted to slow down, but she hadn’t been this turned on in…well, she couldn’t remember how long ago it had been. She stroked him a few more times until she lifted up to fit him inside her. They both groaned as she took his length all the way, her knees gripping his hips.

  “Yeah, that’s it.” Dean moved beneath her, a hand sliding between them so he could give her the sweet pressure of his knuckles right where she needed it.

  She was going to get there fast. Hard. Marian rode him, oblivious to anything but how good it felt. She closed her eyes. Her mind, heart, body, all focused on this. Being with the man she loved. This pleasure.

  This life.

  Marian threw back her head as her breath came in short, panting gasps. A flicker of motion from the hallway caught the corner of her gaze. Shadows.

  Too caught up in what was going on, she couldn’t pay attention at first. She was tipping over, over the edge into mindlessness, more than ready to give up to it. Another flicker of moveme
nt, the shadows stretching.

  Briella, in the doorway.

  “Oh, shit.” Marian clipped her tongue with the tips of her teeth. The pain didn’t stop the pleasure coursing through her. If anything, it forced her climax to its peak. She shook with it, keeping her cry locked behind her teeth, even as she desperately tried without success to pull up the sheet to cover them.

  Dean couldn’t see the doorway unless he twisted, and her writhing had sent him over, too. He finished inside her with a grunt. His fingers gripped, too hard.

  Right behind Briella, Tommy.

  Marian didn’t care as much about her ex seeing her with Dean – she wasn’t much of an exhibitionist, but Tommy was an adult. And she hadn’t given birth to him. And now, bless him, he was shuffling Briella away down the hall toward the kitchen while Marian finally managed to wrestle a sheet over at least her hips.

  “What?” Dean asked, confused.

  “It’s Briella,” Marian said. “She’s back.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It had taken Marian about forty minutes to get Briella into bed and asleep. By the time she got downstairs, every nerve felt raw. Her hands were shaking. She went into the kitchen, ready to tear Tommy apart, but stopped at the sight of him and Dean tipping back bottles of beer. When they both turned to look at her with almost identical expressions, all the fight went out of her.

  “Give me one of those,” she said, pointing at the cluster of beer bottles in the Styrofoam cooler, and grabbed a jumbo bag of chips from the cupboard.

  They were seconds-quality in a plain white bag. Dean brought them home from work by the case. Marian had lost her taste for them years ago, but right now she was dying for something greasy. She tore open the bag and dumped half the contents into a mixing bowl and put it on the table. She took a seat between them.

  Tommy plucked a dewy, glistening bottle from the cooler at his feet and twisted off the top for her. “Is she okay?”

  Marian looked at the cooler. “Where did that come from?”

  “I ran out and got it,” Tommy said.

  “And you came back here with it? Not what I expected, to be honest. I thought you’d be long gone.” She didn’t know if she should be pissed off or impressed. She tipped her head back to let some cool, golden liquid bite its way down the back of her throat.

  “I figured you might need backup,” Tommy said. “The kid was out of control.”

  Marian set the bottle on the table hard enough to make beer splash out of the narrow top. “What the hell, Tommy? What happened? I give you permission to take her for the first time in, like, forever, and you’re not even gone three hours before you bring her home without so much as a phone call to warn us? What the hell?”

  Dean put a comforting hand on her shoulder, squeezing it, but Marian pulled away. There’d been too much of a conspiratorial expression on both their faces when she’d come into the kitchen, and she didn’t like it. Dean and Tommy weren’t friends, but they sure as hell looked like they were both up to something.

  “It was my mom,” Tommy said, but stopped to drink some beer.

  The slow rotation of the world seemed to stop right then, abruptly. Marian scowled, already furious. Already guilty. She never ought to have let him take Briella to his parents’ house. “What about your mother?”

  Tommy didn’t answer at first. He shook his head as though in defeat. He drank more beer. Shook his head again, mouth opening and closing as he fought for words that wouldn’t release themselves.

  Marian had plenty of words for him, but she too was having a hard time giving them a voice. To give herself time, she dug into the bowl of chips and settled a handful in her palm. She plucked out the darkest, burned ones and pushed them toward Dean. He loved them. She nibbled at a chip, savoring the salt and crunch, but couldn’t force herself to eat the entire handful. Her stomach still churned. She thought she heard a thump from upstairs and froze, listening hard, but it didn’t happen again.

  “You’d better come out with it, Tommy. No matter what it was. Did she call Briella a retard?” Marian asked flatly when it became clear that Tommy wasn’t going to answer her. “Because she has in the past.”

  Dean looked sick and wiped a hand over his mouth. “Jesus. She didn’t.”

  “She never said that to Briella,” Tommy protested.

  “She didn’t have to. She said it about her,” Marian said.

  “She never said it to me,” Tommy shot back.

  Marian guessed it was hard not to defend your own mother, even if she was a total bitch, but that didn’t make it okay. “She said it to me. I should never have let you take Briella. I knew what kind of person your mother is. What she thinks about Briella, what she’s always thought about her. My God, Tommy. That’s your daughter!”

  Tommy’s guilt-stricken face told her enough. Marian got up and dumped her handful of crushed chips into the garbage, then dusted her hands into the sink and washed them. She focused on that so she didn’t turn around and punch the shit out of Tommy’s face.

  “This was the last time. The very last. You hear me?” she said without turning.

  “My mom is sick.”

  “Yeah. She’s sick. And I don’t mean the cancer,” Marian said bitterly.

  Tommy’s chair scraped back. “She wants a chance to get to know her grandchild. She didn’t say anything like that to Briella, and if she did, that was a long time ago. And honestly, didn’t she have reason to? I mean—”

  “Fuck you, Tommy. Get out of my house.” Marian’s voice was colder than the beer had been.

  Dean held up a hand. “Babe, wait. Just listen to him. You need to hear.”

  “I don’t need to hear shit,” Marian spat. “I don’t care if his mother decided that all of a sudden she’s interested in getting to know my daughter. She used a toddler’s misbehavior to label my child and refuse to have any kind of relationship with her until now when it suits her? As far as I’m concerned, she can fuck right off.”

  “She’s dying,” Tommy said in a low voice. “She’d told me the cancer was only stage one, but it turns out it’s much farther along.”

  “Oh, your mother lied to you? Imagine that. It’s not like she’s ever had a mouth full of bullshit before.” The words tasted like poison. Dean and Tommy exchanged another look that infuriated her.

  Tommy scratched at his head. “Look, I know my mom’s been mean in the past—”

  “I should never have let you take Briella there,” Marian said again, her voice shaking and rough. “I should never have let you take her anywhere even close to someone who would say such a thing. I tried to tell myself I’d heard her wrong, because who the hell says something like that about a child, one of their own blood? About anyone?”

  “I’m sorry!” Tommy shouted. “Jesus Christ, Marian, I didn’t know. Okay? She never said anything like that to me, and if she had, I wouldn’t have allowed her to get away with it. You have to know that.”

  “She knows better than to say anything to you,” Marian said after a moment.

  Tommy ran a hand through his thinning hair. His shoulders slumped. “You don’t have to like my mom. You don’t even have to forgive her, okay? But this isn’t about anything she did to the kid. It’s about what Briella did to my mother.”

  Marian wished she hadn’t poured her beer away. Something told her she was going to want a drink after she heard what Tommy had to say. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared him down without saying anything. Waiting.

  “We got to the house, it was fine. We had something to eat. She asked me if she could take the leftovers to the bird.” Tommy paused. “How the hell did that fucking thing know she was at my parents’ house?”

  Marian just shook her head.

  “So we put out some leftover stuffing and rolls, and sure enough, it flew right onto the deck and ate it. And it talked. Did you k
now it could talk, really talk?”

  “What did it say?” Dean interjected when Marian didn’t answer.

  Tommy looked incredulous. “It said, ‘We’ll be fine. We’ll all be just fine.’”

  Marian sat at the table again and plucked a fresh beer from the cooler. She took a long, slow swig, giving herself time to think about what she wanted to say before she answered. Her father’s words, she thought. Echoed now by that goddamned raven.

  “That hardly sounds like a reason to bring her home,” Marian said.

  Tommy didn’t speak. His mouth worked, but only silence escaped. He gulped the last of his beer and cracked open another before finally managing to get the words out.

  “After we finished feeding the bird, the kid went up to my mother and sniffed her, and then she said, ‘How does it feel to know you’re dying?’”

  “Jesus,” Dean muttered.

  Marian felt her mouth twist. “She must have overheard you talking about it. Or something.”

  “Even if she did, that’s pretty fucking rude to say,” Tommy said.

  Marian frowned. “Kids are more honest than adults. Anyway, that still doesn’t explain why you brought her home.”

  Tommy shifted, looking at Dean, who didn’t dare raise his gaze to Marian’s. Tommy finished the rest of his beer and set the empty bottle on the table. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “She asked my mom if it hurt, and my mom said yes. She said, ‘Dying hurts like a bitch and a half.’ And then Briella said…” Tommy trailed off. He gave Dean a pleading look, but Dean was studying his beer bottle like it held the secrets of the universe.

  Marian looked back and forth between the two men. “What? She said what? Fucks’ sakes, Tommy. Spit it out.”

  “She asked my mom if she wanted help to go faster, or if she’d like to suffer a long time. My mom said she didn’t want to suffer, that nobody would want that. So then Briella said my mom should just kill herself and get it over with, because at least that way, nobody else would have to do it for her.” Tommy shook his head.