Lyla dried her hands and hung the towel over the long handle of the oven. The kitchen was at the back of her parents’ house. She walked past the breakfast table, under the large arch, and into the living room where her aunt was sitting on the couch.
“Go on up to bed, Auntie Ann,” she said, watching how the woman struggled to keep her eyes open.
“No, it’s fine. I have to read these,” Ann said.
It was almost impossible to believe that there was so much paperwork involved after someone passed away. But it wasn’t right that her aunt was trying to be so strong when this had to be difficult for her.
A knock on the front door made Lyla exhale.
Damn.
It was late.
She didn’t want the kids to be woken up. Ann turned to look over the back of the couch, probably thinking the same thing, but Lyla smiled. “It’s ok, I’ve got it.”
People had been coming all day, yesterday too. Her father had been a popular guy in the neighborhood because he was always helping someone out. Now the family had so much food that there was nowhere left to store it. The freezer was full. They’d never have to make another dinner again. If there was just one more casserole—
Lyla opened the front door and her thoughts halted when she saw Trick there, on her parents’ porch. Her hand shot to the left to immediately turned off the porch light that was above him.
“Sadie told me.”
Her heart sank. “Oh,” she sighed. “You weren’t supposed to find out.” Trying to see around him, she wondered how he’d got here. “Thank you for coming, but the cameras—my mom—”
“It’s just me, baby,” he said, taking her hand. “Just me. For real.”
How she’d needed him. How she’d missed him. But she’d deliberately done her best to hold her tears inside, and couldn’t let them come now. “Like I said, thank you for coming.” His tender smile fell. As soon as she said it, she’d wanted to take it back. “That was cold,” she whispered and sagged. Her eyes dropped. “Oh, God, Nairn, I don’t know what I’m doing… what am I doing?”
“You’re doing what you always do. You’re putting everyone else first and trying to keep it together,” he said.
When his hand moved onto her face, she closed her eyes and turned her cheek against it. “God, I’ve needed you so much.”
“You’ll never be without me again,” he said.
When her eyes opened a tear fell, but he smiled, a small but real expression of his devotion to her. “Promise me something. Promise me anything,” she said, in need of an anchor, or at least a glimmer of hope. “You said you never make promises that you won’t keep. Make me a promise, Nairn. Right now, make me a promise that you’ll never ever break.”
“I promise that I love you,” he said and opened her hand to press it against his chest. “And I promise that this will always belong to you.”
She wanted to believe him, wanted to fall into his arms and let him hold her because in his arms, her world would make sense again. But Lyla shook her head and took a backward step. “No, you have to be at your party. Your birthday. Your friends… the studio and Bunyan—”
“I belong to you, Lyla. And I don’t care if I have to camp on this damn porch to prove it to you. I’m not going anywhere. I’m your husband.” Holding up his hand, he showed her his wedding ring. “If this family faces tragedy, I face it too. I’m not interested in being around part-time. I don’t want all the good times and none of the bad. I want all of you, Lyla. I want you at your highest and at your lowest. Your father gave you to me, Lyla.” Her eyes blurred. “He put your hand in mine and he told me to look after you… and I fell in love with you, baby. All the way, over the top, forever love that I’ll give everything up for if I have to. I love you and you either understand that and want it or you question me and doubt me every day. Either way, I’m here. I’ll always be right here… with you. All I want you to do is use me. Take advantage. Lean on me, baby. You need someone. I want that someone to be me. I want to be special to you. Remember, just like you said? I’m just asking for the same thing. Let me be special to you. Lean on me, baby, and know it will always be ok. Just lean.”
“Trick,” she whispered, her voice cracking at the end of the word. “Nairn.”
“I’m here, baby,” he murmured and moved in to take her hand again.
“He… he died… right there and I… I couldn’t do anything,” she sobbed and sucked in a long breath. “I couldn’t do anything.”
“Shh,” he said and pulled her forward into his arms.
Letting out her emotion, Lyla sobbed and wailed, burying the sound in his solid chest that gave her comfort and security. He made it ok to be broken. Made it ok to hurt and to show how she felt. Trick held her so tight that she could believe he was capable of fending off every hurt.
Even as her knees buckled and she screamed into him, he held her up. Squeezing her body to his, he picked her up and carried her inside. Lyla didn’t know how he found the basement or how he got her into bed. All she remembered was lying in his arms, crying and listening to his words of comfort for the rest of the night.
Lyla woke up with a killer headache.
She was in her white nightdress and she was alone.
It took her a minute to remember that she was in her bedroom in her parents’ basement.
After her good for nothing Uncle Earl cut out on Ann and the kids, the trio had moved in here. The three bedrooms upstairs in the house were taken up by Ann, and her thirteen-year-old twins, Avril and Todd.
Lyla’s mom and dad had converted the basement so it had two bedrooms and a bathroom. Even after she’d moved out they wanted Lyla to know that she had somewhere to come home to, so one of the bedrooms was dubbed hers.
Stretching, she blinked up to the blinds that covered the narrow windows that ran along the wall up at the ceiling above the head of the bed.
Trick.
Sitting up, she looked around the room and was so disappointed to find that he wasn’t there. But she shouldn’t be surprised. He had to carry the show single-handedly while she was hiding here. He must have gone back to the city to appease the studio.
Lyla hadn’t slept this late all week and so kept her shower fast and dressed even faster. Her mom would need her to make breakfast and keep answering the door to the well-meaning neighbors; she shouldn’t be loitering in bed.
But as she ascended the stairs a sound stalled her. What was that? Was that…? Laughing?
Hurrying upward, Lyla rushed through the kitchen and stopped dead in the archway that led to the living room. There was Trick, in front of the fireplace juggling what looked to be four balls while balancing a skittle on his head. All around him were kids. Pre-teen through teen. They were all transfixed, cheering and clapping for the man who was showing off like an endearing idiot.
Lyla grinned. She had no idea that he could do that. Turning her back to the frame of the archway, she folded her hands and leaned against them to watch him move with such impressive skill.
“Someone ask me a question,” he said, confident in his rhythm and from what she could see, he had every reason to be.
“Why?” one of the kids laughed as everyone kept cheering him on.
“The point is to put me off,” Trick said. “Come on, ask me something, anything…”
Lyla would put good money on him learning to do this while drunk, so doing it sober would be a breeze. “What’s two plus two?” someone called out.
“Oh, come on, challenge me,” Trick said, but quickly followed up. “But not with math… don’t challenge my math, I’ll only make you feel inferior.”
“Have you ever broken a bone?” one of the younger ones called out.
“Most of ‘em,” he said.
“Have you met Gisele?”
“Yep,” he said. “She’s overrated. No sense of humor.”
“How many women have you kissed?” a girl asked.
“Until I’ve kissed a girl as beautiful as you, not enough,” he said.
It was a skill that he could juggle, another that he could balance that thing on his head, now he was listening and being witty. “What year did they hold the first Olympics in Ancient Greece?” she called out and everyone turned around.
Trick ducked to thrust the skittle in the air and caught it under his arm after each of the balls fell back into his hands. He smiled right at her. “776,” he said. “B.C. of course… though there’s evidence they may have started before then.” Taking the skittle from under his arm, he dropped it and the balls to the coffee table and began to saunter toward her. “They were held in honor of Zeus… contestants were male…”
“And?” she asked as he came up close and rested his forearm on the frame above her.
“Nudity was common,” he said. While the youngsters giggled and whooped, he ducked to kiss her. “How did you sleep?”
“Better than I have since we were last together,” she said, resting her hands on his chest. “Where is everyone? How did you end up with—”
“Your mom is upstairs in a special Strickland bubble bath.”
Grinning, she almost laughed. “You drew my mom a bath?”
Pride made him boast. “Not just any bubble bath, the king bubble bath of all bubble baths,” he said.
“Hmm,” she said, overwhelmed and in love, she linked her fingers at the back of his neck. “I might be jealous.”
Bumping his head down to hers, Trick murmured, “All your bubble baths come with me in them from now on.”
An addition her mother wouldn’t have appreciated. Straightening her arms, Lyla arched up. “And my Auntie Ann?”
“At the store with a neighborhood posse, they’re buying up the place so we can have a cookout this afternoon. Getting everyone over all at once is the best way to stop the door a-knocking every minute.”
How did he know this stuff? It made such good sense. “The funeral is on Monday,” she said, returning to reality. “We couldn’t do it at the weekend.”
“I know, Ann told me… and you need pallbearers.”
Reality sucked. She exhaled and found the worry that she’d been without for the last few minutes. “I know, I don’t even know who to—”
“Hey,” he said, smoothing his hand down her cheek. “I’ve got it. Don’t even worry about it for another second.”
Pulling her body closer to his, she wanted to climb inside him where it was safe. “When are you leaving?”
Lyla didn’t want to face the idea of being without him, but she didn’t want to be blind-sided by his departure.
“I’m not,” he said. “Josie is on her way over with stuff from my place, and from yours. We’ll have clothes, whatever we need, and Sadie is taking care of Risk.”
This was like some kind of parallel universe; Trick was taking care of her. Calm, rational, organized, this was the real Trick. No joking, no being unreliable, he was a rock. “But the show—”
“I told Bunyan where he could stick the show,” Trick said. “I told him he’s got two weeks of footage, if he wants to run it, he can and we’ll see where we are after. If—and that’s a big if—we decide to carry on we should talk about last Wednesday’s show, I don’t know if you saw it, but—”
Smiling, Lyla shook her head and pulled him down for a kiss. “Please don’t insult me by suggesting I might think you did anything to hurt me,” she whispered. “I don’t care what the world thinks. I care what we think. I care that I love you. I care that you’re here. I care that…”
Her voice wobbled and she had to suck in a breath to catch her tears.
“Baby,” he murmured. “You go back downstairs and I’ll—”
“No, they’re not sad tears, I… I’m just overwhelmed. You’re being so incredible and I… I was really struggling, I couldn’t admit it, but… I lost you and then losing my dad so soon after… I thought I was being punished.”
“All the way?” she asked. “This is us, all the way?”
He nodded, but someone behind them laughed. “Lyla asked Trick to go all the way.”
Trick turned his back on her and she let her face fall against his spine as he addressed the kid who was probably the same age as the twins. “We’re married, dork-weed, all the way is in the contract,” Trick said and she smacked his hip.
“You can’t call kids that,” she whispered.
“You’re lucky I didn’t swear,” Trick tossed over his shoulder.
“You better not,” she said, wrapping her hands around him to hook her thumbs into his front belt loops. It felt so good to be able to press her body into his like this, to take his strength and lean, just like he’d said.
Another kid guffawed. “Her hands are right there at your junk.”
Trick laughed too. Geez, teenage boys were really something, and her husband was apparently at their level. “Maybe, hubby, you should remember how vulnerable your junk is when my fingernails are this sharp,” she said and when he stopped laughing, she smiled.
She was playing, and he knew that, but this was what she needed, to just be herself with the man she loved. “If my wife is threatening our fun times, we’re all in trouble,” Trick said. “You kids, out back, all of you, we’ve got setting up to do.” Trick moved back a step, pressing her to the wall of the archway again, though she kept her place nuzzled against his back. “No one crosses the property line! Everyone stay in the yard and if you see a stranger scream fire.”
Laughing, Lyla waited until the herd was gone before she asked, “Fire?”
He shrugged. “No one comes when you shout rape… I tried it.”
“You tried shouting rape?” she asked. He unhooked her thumbs and turned around. “I can actually believe that you did.”
“Alone?” she asked. “I don’t get to help out back?”
Stretching an arm above her head, he leaned over her and scowled an apology. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m just worried that you might be a bad influence on these kids. They’re at a very impressionable age and with your questionable reputation—”
“I’m not wearing panties right now.”
He immediately grinned and exhaled a laugh. “See, stuff like that,” he said, but his glittering interest betrayed he wasn’t going to take the risk she was only playing. “Really? Are you really not?”
Scooping a hand under her skirt, he fondled her ass and she laughed when he felt the cotton and grumbled in disappointment. “I had you.”
“You always have me,” he said and bowed to kiss her.
Taking her hand, Trick led her through the kitchen and down the stairs to the back porch. “What would you have done if I wasn’t?” she asked.
“Walked around with a boner for the rest of the day,” he said. “The kids would’ve been traumatized.”
“Traumatized?” she asked. “Your penis isn’t that scary.”
“Well, thank you, but I would’ve kept it in my pants,” he said, stopping at the edge of the yard to pull her against him. Wrapping her in his arms from behind, Trick propped his chin on her head, and settled against the rail at the outer edge of their deck. “Most of these boys are getting to the age where they’re terrified of the dreaded spontaneous boner. How bad would it be for them if they saw me, a grown guy, unable to contain his? They’d think it happens forever, that they never get over it.”
That was kind of a contradiction. “But if you can’t control it? Doesn’t that mean they never will get over it?”
“I got over it for a decade and a half… and then you came into my life.”
“Are you trying to flatter me?” she asked, wriggling deeper into the vee of his thighs.
“Why would I do that? Because if you like me, there’s the prospect of me getting laid? No, why would I do that…?” Lowering his mouth to her hair, he breathed in. “Why? Is it working?”
“Wait until I take my panties off later and we’ll find out,” she said, pulling his arms further around her body. “Shouldn’t we help them?”
The kids were running around trying to open folding tables and crates of utensils. “Nah,” he said. “What’s the point of having minions if we don’t take advantage of them?” She tutted at her husband and moved forward, but he tensed his arms and she bounced back. “I’m thinking about my mom.”
She didn’t get it, until she remembered what he’d said on the bus once upon a time and she arched her back to push her ass into his groin. “I thought you didn’t have a boner.”
“I lied,” he said, “we’ll just wait here a minute until it goes away.”
It had been a couple of weeks since they’d had sex, he probably had some pent up frustration lingering in his system. “Ok,” she said and exhaled to lean on him again. “I used to think you thought of me as a sister.”
“Yeah,” he said, with a scowl in his tone. “Where did that come from by the way? What the hell did I ever do to make you think Caligula and me were bros?”
It was funny, but so attractive, when he referenced anything she’d told him about history. “You didn’t want to sleep with me, not back at the start.”
“Who said that?”
Sheesh, he had a short memory. “You did,” she said. “You said at the wedding that you weren’t attracted to me.”
“Ha,” he said in a single laugh. “No, I didn’t. I said you weren’t my type and you’re not. The women I went for before you were easy, blonde, bimbos… You’re none of those things, love.”
Maybe not all of them. “I’m pretty easy,” she said.
They both thought about it for a second. “Yeah, ok, you are pretty easy.”
“And I could go blonde.”
“Nope,” he said. “I love your hair. Don’t touch it.”
“I could pretend to—”
“I love your mind more than I love your hair,” he said, anticipating what she was going to say. “And what was it you said to Kira? If you were the same as every girl who came before, this wouldn’t be what it is, would it? I never loved any of the other girls. I love you. And I don’t want you to change a damn thing about yourself.”
“Mr. Strickland!” one of the girls called out.
“Shit,” he said with a smile in his voice. “She makes me sound like a damn hockey coach.”
Trick kissed the back of her head and eased her forward so he could go over to help the girl who was struggling with the table.
That was him, her husband. He was nowhere close to resembling any hockey coach, but he was hers, and he was here, taking care of business. Lyla had never been more in love or certain of her future than she was right now.