CHAPTER FOURTEEN

STEELE

I’m not sure what happened, or if I knew that it was even happening until I found myself on the couch rocking a tearful Jay in my arms. Almost instantly, the meltdown joined her orgasm as though one would not happen without the other. I should’ve prepared for it. Should’ve taken it into consideration that she hasn’t had sex in years, not since the man she loved died, so other emotions, more than the normal ones, were bound to arise.

Fuck. All good stunts have more than one damn outcome. I should’ve seen this coming, but I didn’t. I cradle her trembling body closer to me.

I didn’t see it coming because she’s not a fucking stunt to me.

“It’s okay.” I stroke her hair, kissing her forehead. She means so much more to me than what I’m letting on. It’s fucking me up.

The shaking and the sniffling slows. Hands clinging tightly to my back start to loosen and retract. Afraid that once her head clears, she’s going to jump up and leave, I pull the fleece blanket draped on the sectional over her. I tuck it around her, selfishly trapping her against me.

“I’m sorry.” She sniffles against my chest.

“Now, there’s no need for that.” I kiss the top of her silky hair, wrapping my arms tighter around her.

“You must think I’m crazy,” she mumbles into the blanket.

“What? Don’t all girls cry after they come?”

Her head tilts back, and she looks at me. I wink. She smiles, and it eases my fears of her bolting. “I’m sorry if I was too rough,” I say, cringing inside for slapping her ass.

“No. It wasn’t you or what you did. You were, ah, it was a good rough.” She rests her head back on my chest. “And you were gentle and kind too. I didn’t mean to come here and … ah …” She pulls the blanket back up and burrows her chin into it.

“Don’t worry about it.” I finally break the silence. “I couldn’t sleep, was just lying on the couch, flipping through the channels. Hey,” I lay my hand on the fleece unsure what part of her body I touched. A leg maybe? “Did you know that there are whales alive who are older than the book Moby Dick?”

“No, I didn’t.” She laughs, sliding off me. At least, she isn’t looking for her clothes. Instead, she claims a cushion for herself beside me. Keeping the blanket up high around her naked body, she peers at me from over the fleece, deep in thought. It slithers under my skin. “Why do you think your mother doesn’t love you?”

“My mother loves me,” I say, totally taken off guard.

“I’m talking about”—she stops to pull the fallen blanket back up her shoulder—“your biological mother.”

“Oh, I get it.” A smirk yanks my lips, wondering who’s been talking to her. Must have been from the other night when we went to see Stone’s band, so it had to be Jaggs or Harley. “You think because I know why you’re broken inside, you need to know why I am? You need an explanation as to why you could never fall in love with me?”

Ignoring my revelation, she places the blanket under her arms, exposing her neck, shoulders, and long slender arms. “What did she do to you?”

Fuck it. I bore witness to her meltdown, so why not return with some of my own casualties? Besides, she’s easy to talk to, almost makes me want to bare my soul to her. “She tried to kill me.” I stand, walk over to the fridge, and grab a beer. I hold it up to her.

Eyes wide, she shakes her head. “She tried to kill you?” She follows my every move.

“Yes. Not once but twice.” I wave two fingers in the air.

“What? How?” Mouth partly opened, she watches as I lower myself back on the sectional.

“Well …” I tip the beer back for a quick sip. “The first time, I was five. She tried to put me, her, and Stone permanently asleep with the car exhaust in our garage.”

“Oh, my God,” she barely mouths the words.

“After that, my dad got custody of Stone and me. We moved in with him, Ma, Token, and Nix. We didn’t know it at the time, but Crash was in Ma’s belly, and Lulu, my little sister, she came a couple of years later. Stone and I adjusted well in our new normal family.”

“What’s wrong with her, your mother?”

“First off”—I lift a finger—“she’s not my mother. I don’t call her that, not anymore. But to answer your question, I don’t know. She was a junky. I remember the”—I point at my arm—“needle marks. I think she had some mental issues. Not always, though. Before Stone was born, things were good with us. She was kind. Kissed and hugged me all the time, I remember that and the stories.” I pause, reminiscing the woman who acted like she was my mom for the first few years of my life. “She’d read them to me at night. Then Dad was gone for months for his job. I vaguely remember fights about it, he was coming and going, and then Stone was born. She didn’t kiss and hug Stone like she did me. She didn’t read to him, either.”

She stares at me for a second, takes my beer, takes a sip, and hands it back to me. “That’s really sad,” she says with misty eyes.

“Yeah.” I tilt back the beer and drain the remainder of it. “I think her head wasn’t screwed on right, and she couldn’t deal with it.” I lift my beer again. “Sure you don’t want one?”

“Yeah.” She shakes her head again, registering what I told her. “Yes. Okay. I’ll take one.”

I grab two beers, pop them open, and plop back down next to her.

“But you saw her again after that?”

“Yeah, well, kind of. Our dad gained custody, and she was granted supervised visitation every month with a social worker. She stopped coming after the first visit.” I hand her a beer. “Stone, he forgot about her, but me, I spent a little more time with her, and it wasn’t that easy.”

“But wait, you said she tried to kill you twice?” Still holding the cold bottle in her hand, she sits up straight, waiting for an answer.

“Yes. I was seven and leaving school, heading toward the school bus. I heard Stone call my name. I remember thinking it was weird to hear his voice at school, so I looked around the parking lot and spotted him sitting in a strange car.” I stop to recollect the abandoned moment. “It was a light blue Nova. When I got close enough to the car, I saw her. Later, I found out she’d kidnapped him from his daycare. Anyway …” I scratch an itch that’s not really there on my head. “I … ah, I had to go with her. She threatened to hurt him. Well, she didn’t say as much, but I sensed it. I don’t know, I think I wanted to see her too. A sad, small part of me missed her.”

“That’s understandable.” She touches my thigh.

I stare down at her hand and what it represents—comfort. The kind gesture keeps me talking. “She took us to a dumpy apartment with padlocks on top of the inside doors. At first, she was nice, and in my young, naïve mind, I wanted to believe she had changed, but as the week went on, her bloodshot eyes resurfaced. The hair pulling, pacing, and swearing all started up again. At the end of week two, like every other night, she filled up the tub for our bath. She asked me to get some clean towels from the basket in her room, and when I came back, I could hear the water running into the tub, hear splashing, and when I came around to her side, I saw Stone thrashing beneath the water. She was holding his head down. All I saw was his little body fighting to survive. I dropped the towels and pushed her as hard as I could. She fell forward, hit her head on the edge of the tub, and slipped into the water. Stone jumped up and threw himself into my arms. I held him, and the entire time, she didn’t move.”

Eyebrows furrowed, face drawn tight, fingers tunneling into my thigh, she shakes her head. “Steele …” She glances down at her hand and pulls it back. “I’m sorry.” She touches my thigh and gently rubs it.

I grab her hand and kiss her fingers. “You have nothing to be sorry for, babe.”

“You don’t need to tell me any more. I get it. Remembering something you’d rather forget or keep forgotten.”

“It’s okay. I haven’t talked about it in years. At least, not since I’ve been an adult. It’s good to get it out.”

“You haven’t talked with anyone? What about Stone? Don’t you talk to him about it?”

“No, especially not him. That day …” I press my lips together, remembering. “When he calmed down, I lowered him to the floor. I managed to get her onto her back in the tub. I could tell she was still breathing. I poked her shoulder, but she didn’t even flinch. I told Stone that I would get her phone and call Dad. Told him to stand at the doorway to watch her, and if she moved to let me know. I got the cell and called Dad, but I didn’t know where we were. I had to find the keys, unlock the locks on the door, and go outside to find a street sign. Once I did that, Dad said he knew where we were, and that he was on his way. I stayed on the phone with him, but when I got back to the bathroom, the door was closed. It was locked. I knocked on it, yelling Stone’s name but nothing. I dropped the cell, frantic she had him. Afraid she was trying to kill him again. I kicked the door, screaming and yelling. It went on for what felt like forever.” I stop and take a sip of my beer, recalling the beating of my heart, so fast and so hard I thought it would burst right there outside that bathroom door and kill me before Dad could get there, before he could save us. And if Stone was hurt on the other side of the door, I figured that I deserved it. “Finally, I tried the door, and it clicked free. I pushed it open. Blood …” I shake my head. “All I saw was blood and a lot of it. She was lying in it in the bathtub, not moving, not breathing, and Stone, he was just standing there shivering all over. I grabbed him, checked his body, and when I was sure he was okay, I held him until our dad showed up.”

Hand to her chest, she gasps. “Was she?”

“Oh yeah, she was dead,” I say with a small cynical chuckle.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug. “Don’t care.”

“But Stone, he didn’t say?”

“Never. And Dad wouldn’t let the officers talk to him. It was his right. Stone was a baby. He was four.”

“And Stone never said anything?”

I shake my head. “And I never asked,” I say, leaving out the part where I smacked the razor out of Stone’s hand when I first walked into the bathroom. Something Stone and I never discuss either.