Chapter Ten
~Chance~
Mahogany snuggled her perfect ass into the spoon created by my hips like she used to do when we were in bed together, as if that was the place her ass preferred to be while we slept, waking me from a sound sleep every time. Tonight was no different. Another part of me was already awake though and ready to repeat what occurred when we first walked in the door. I was all for it, but first, I needed my phone, which was on the floor on Mahogany’s side of the bed. It was like nothing had changed between us but everything had. Or the old was fitting in nicely with the new. I wasn’t sure which was the truth, but I had to check on my daughter.
The clock on Mahogany’s nightstand boasted it was two in the morning. I hadn’t planned to be gone longer than an hour or two from the hospital to wear Mahogany out right along with myself while slaking my thirst for her. Sliding into her tight canal steamrolled right over the idea of screw her then leave to get a shower at the resort before coming back for her tonight. Well, I would have except I can’t get enough of her.
“Damn it all to hell,” I grumbled. “At this rate, I’ll be begging her to marry me by tomorrow night just to put me out of my misery.”
She turned over in her sleep and mumbled, “Yes,” before settling face down on my pillow. Her answer stopped me dead in my tracks. Would she really say yes if I proposed to her?
Why in the hell was I even considering that? I shouldn’t propose to her after what she’d done… and I should’ve thought I wouldn’t propose. Right, I…
But ‘wouldn’t propose’ just would not flow through my mind, however. A slip in one simple auxiliary verb was all the warning I needed to know that my plan to get over her was unraveling. But dammit, I needed a woman who would fight with me until we were on the same page and not run when I shut down. Plus, there was nothing else I felt passionate enough about to shut down on besides having children. Unless, I included loving Mahogany, the only thing left to make me an unreasonable jerk. I wouldn’t give back Majestic now that I had her despite my original choice on the matter, but loving Mahogany… that was a deed I would undo but can’t.
I still have time though. It’s only been a day and a half since I got her back in my life. You can still do this, Chance. Give it a little more time, like one week. After that, I was out of there, whether I had stopped loving her or not. At least, I could say I tried.
With a new and hopefully doable pledge made, new plan in place, I strode around the bed, retrieving my phone from the pocket of my jeans. Texting Tommy took a second.
Me: How’s my girl doing?
Tommy: She’s fine. Asleep. You’re interrupting me trying to talk Kat into meeting me in the janitor’s closet off the hallway. Be here by six. Now go away!
Me: One more thing. Can you ask your niece to stop by the hospital this morning about nine forty-five in uniform? I’ve got a large donation to the sheriff’s office if she can make it. My family is coming and they carry a whole candy section on them. Only a real cop could make them give up the sweets because they think they are the law unto themselves. Plus my father would see it as a prank and try to one-up me.
Tommy: R U SERIOUS?????
Me: As a heart attack.
Tommy: Fine. Her name’s Astrid Powers. She’ll be there and would’ve helped out anyway. She adores Majestic too, but the money donated to the sheriff’s office won’t hurt. Stop texting me now.
I swore he was the only one that could be rude and make someone laugh while doing it, but I was unsure if Mahogany would blow a gasket if I let her sleep until six. Better to error on the side of caution. After I shook her shoulders, she turned onto her back.
“Chance, what is it?” she asked tiredly, then popped up to a sitting position. “God, what time is it?”
She wrenched around at the waist to see the time, then spewed a four-syllable curse word that would’ve offended my mother. Gasket officially blown, she threw her legs over the side of the bed.
“Why did you let me sleep so late, Chance? You knew I had to get back to the hospital! Ah shit, I can’t, you tore my only clean shirt! Give me forty-five minutes to wash and dry a few outfits and shower, then we’ll go.”
I sat down as she got up, and snared her hand in mine before she ran off. “You don’t have to rush, Mahogany. I’ve already checked in with Tommy. He said be there at six. You’ve got four more hours. Majestic is fine, sleeping, and doesn’t know you’re gone.”
“She wakes every hour on the hour after chemo. It makes her irritable. I should be there when she wakes up. Usually, I’m the only one that can calm her.”
“She didn’t wake last night after her chemo and stem cell treatment, and she has the stem cells working this time too, remember? Just breathe for a minute. If Tommy calls, I’ll be woke, so I’ll hear the phone, then wake you, and we’ll go.”
I started to worry Mahogany had been doing too much by herself for too long, taking on too much when she wouldn’t have if she had let me in on her secret. How often had she jumped up to run to the hospital in the middle of the night? How many hours, no, days of sleep had she lost since Majestic’s illness began? How much did she have left before her body shut down and took the break she wouldn’t allow it? I didn’t need two sick family members on my hands.
“Mahogany, if I promise someone will always be with Majestic until you get to the hospital in the morning, will you sleep for a little while longer? I know you need it. I’ll even drive the Dodge. Majestic needs you to be”
She swiped at her eyes. “Chance, I’ve heard this all before from Dr. Blane.”
“Then maybe you should listen this time. Majestic doesn’t just have you to depend on to be there for her anymore. She has me. And Tommy and Kat. My family after tomorrow. Let us be there for her so you can take care of yourself. I promise not to sneak her any chocolate… today. I can’t say what I’ll do tomorrow.”
She exhaled. “I better not find out you’ve given her more chocolate.”
“You won’t. I promise.”
Her piercing stare stabbed through the darkness blanketing the room to rest on my face. “Why does that not make me feel better?”
“It shouldn’t make you feel better. Majestic has a way about her that just makes you want to give her everything.”
“That’s the damn softie in you.” She dropped her head suddenly, muttered something I couldn’t understand, the moonlight creeping through the blinds to caress her spine. “I need to start a load of clothes.”
That again.
“No, Mahogany, you need to sleep. I can start a load of clothes… I think. The dials on the washing machine are self-explanatory, right? Don’t get mad if your white underwear are pink the next time you see them though.”
What are you doing, Chance? You’re not supposed to be offering to take care of her personally. But I wanted to. Taking care of Mahogany was taking care of Majestic, who needed her mother. I was going to keep justifying my suggestions of doing things for Mahogany myself by saying it was for Majestic’s sake until I didn’t need Majestic’s mother too. Denial was not just a river in Africa.
“Oh, hell no, Chance, if you’re asking if the washer is self-explanatory, you still haven’t used one in all this time, so stay away from mine. I can’t afford to replace anymore clothes you ruin or the machine. It came with the apartment.”
“Okay, I’ll stay away from the washer and replace your shirt but only if you sleep. If you don’t get back in the bed, hundreds of dollars of your clothes will be ruined on purpose the next time you do sleep. You have to close your eyes sometime.”
“You wouldn’t!”
I snickered malevolently. “I would. Would you like to test me?”
“Oh, I don’t trust you at all after you said that.”
“I don’t trust you either, Mahogany, so we’re even,” I joked but was dead serious, although I trusted me a lot less than I trusted her.
I didn’t want to trust her at all when she had complete control of me: I stayed away when I thought she wantd me to, came when she alled, and had no idea what I’d be doing next.
“I wish you would take a chance and trust me, Chance, then we could stop this crazy idea you have of us dating. It’s not like you can knock me up again, so you would see I’m not as bad or as deceitful as you think and we could work on becoming at least friends for Majestic’s sake.” Her voice was small, as if how I felt about her really bothered her.
What she had just asked of me bothered me much more.
“Friends!” I laughed humorlessly and loudly at that.
Was she nuts? I can’t be friends with someone I can’t stand to see another man around simply because she wasn’t the other half a couple that included me anymore. I didn’t want to fuck my friends every minute of the day until we both were cross-eyed and trembling. Damn sure was not about to stop dating her. The happiness I got out of it was tinged with agony because she still technically wasn’t mine, but still, this was the happiest I had been in years. Nope, not about to let that go. The part of my brain that held my strategy for healing my brokenness demanded that I add ‘yet’ to the end of ‘not about to let that go’, so I tried… but couldn’t.
“You and I will never be just friends, Mahogany.”
“I see,” she whispered, a trace of pain in her hushed tone.
When she sniffed as if starting to cry, I got concerned. “Mahogany.”
She shushed me, then cleared her throat, fingers gripping mine tighter. “Sorry. I’m fine.”
“Sorry about what? What did I do?”
Whatever emotion had overtaken her, I had ignited it, and now, I was sorry too. When I shouldn’t be. Her ‘yes’ had flipped on my kindness and concern for her wellbeing that I had deliberately turned off before I arrived in Colorado. I was a fucking softie for sure, which didn’t work well with my plan. This was not good.
“You didn’t do anything but be honest,” she whispered.
“True.” Partly true anyway.
She didn’t need to know that I would probably be hers until I died, possibly afterwards too. Hell, I didn’t want to know it, just be mad with her but couldn’t ignore that she needed me to be more helpful to her than hurtful, or I’d hurt Majestic. Mahogany was taking precedent over my brokenness regardless of what I needed for her, or I wasn’t as broken anymore.
“And I appreciate your honesty, Chance.”
Yeah, well, I didn’t want her to appreciate it, I wanted her to fight to change my mind about her. Fight for me. For us. Our family. She didn’t, instead laying back down and pulling the covers up to her neck as if she had no fight left in her. Suddenly, I was deathly afraid that I’d accomplished what I started out to do: push her away enough times to break something inside her too.
Oh hell, what happened to ‘screwing, closure, leave’? There was nothing about fighting for me and anyone else in there anywhere. It didn’t start out that way, but it sure as hell ended up as that. Apparently, revenge was a double-edged sword and a shovel: while I fought to cure myself of her, I’d dug up what I truly craved from her, doing more damage to us both in the process.
Immediately, my heart sought ways to undo the harm I had caused, starting with telling her the truth. Or maybe I should start telling it to myself, admitting that nothing happened to my mantra of ‘screwing, closure, leave’, nor did I ever imbed it in my psyche. It was just a ruse that I grabbed onto in a desperate moment when I was trying to hold on to my bitterness laying like a cloak over my own eyes, making it easy to convince myself that being with her then leaving her was actually an option. The ruse had come undone by one word from her mouth, that sleepy ‘yes’ to a proposal, which she doesn’t even remember or knew I was being flip about when I spoke it. My eyes that were wide open but covered at the same time were just opened now to my own selfishness. Wasn’t a pretty sight: I wanted to believe she was never who I thought she was when I got her first voicemail, never who I needed her to be, and I had to believe that in order to treat her badly.
I lasted a whole day and a half in semi-bastard mode but I was still ashamed, along with finding it ironic that sh believed I had fallen short too the whole time we’d been apart. At least she didn’t hold my shortcomings against me, while I let myself be turned inside out by her faults. Allowed myself to get so angry about Majestic, no, not her but me still loving Mahogany. Now, I had made things worse between her and I by intending to use her to loosen her grip on me. Well, she turned out to be more loving than I ever imagined if she’d marry me even when I was trying my hardest to be that cold son of a bitch that ran her off in the first place. She was much more than selfless, by choosing to save Majestic from me when she thought she had to, even when she had no support anywhere. She was more than devoted, raising our child alone, taking on all that entailed along with risking her health to be there for our daughter. Mahogany’s loyalty knew no bounds if she could choose to reveal her deceit when she knew it meant she had to pull the last person she wanted into their lives: me. Or so I thought I was the last person she wanted. That drowsy ‘yes’ she gave me said something else entirely.
She became more self-sacrificing than I knew was possible when agreeing to help me find closure from a relationship gone sideways, and yet, I tossed her away every time I couldn’t understand why my traitorous heart was holding on to her. That part of me knew, even when I wouldn’t let myself see, that by dating me she was fighting to bring happiness to Majestic and me. Although, she didn’t have to concern herself with my wellbeing because there was no Mahogany and me anymore. My happiness no longer her responsibility. I made it hers nonetheless, and she took on the burden, showing far more inner strength than I ever possessed. If I lost her for good now, I had no one to blame but my ego, which was dented, bruised, and vengeful when I came to Colorado. But my heart was smart enough to not let my pride get in the way of loving Mahogany. At least one part of me got it right, loved my child the minute I knew she existed.
While I was acknowledging that, I might as well confess that while Mahogany had been fighting for the happiness of our family whether we all were together in one household or not, I was simply fighting her and her hold on me. Nothing whatsoever to do with Majestic. Mahogany had no idea what I would do next once I learned of Majestic’s existence or when I suggested dating to get over her, but she didn’t let that stop her from doing what she thought was right. She would always do what she thought was right, and I would be stupid to let a woman with that quality slip through my fingers again. Couldn’t ask for more than that from anyone, and it was up to me to make her see that I would do the right thing as well, right by her side… if she would have me.
“I’ll sleep ‘til six, then wake me, Chance.” She flipped over, facing the wall across from the window and away from me.
I knew she thought I didn’t want her back, but she would get no rest if I did what I wanted to right now: take her in my arms and tell her that she was my everything and I still can’t breathe without her. I rather she rested than keep her woke a moment longer. Tomorrow, I’d tell her for sure, or better yet, show her.
“Okay. See you when you wake up.”
“Yeah,” she murmured, not knowing I was creating another plan as she laid still as death near me.
Dating for us was just the beginning. With patience, I would ease her into our happily ever after… somehow.
********
~Mahogany~
Chance’s tormenting words ‘you and I will never be friends, Mahogany’ resonated in my head like the hook to the saddest love song as I stared at the wall. The bassline was the bittersweet, steady throb between my thighs, a leftover from the extreme pleasure he had given me while using me. And that broke my heart. Working like hell to keep my emotions in check eventually tired me out. I drifted off, then found myself slipping back into consciousness more exhausted than usual, without even the foggiest of ideas of how I slept at all after he had split my heart right down the middle with his brutal truth and brought me to tears that I had to quickly shake off last night.
At this rate, I didn’t think he was ever going to get over me having Majestic, and there was only so much of me I was going to sacrifice for removing his pain fueled by my betrayal and breaking of his trust. Ultimately breaking his heart. Mine was aching too, and with nowhere to run to lick my wounds, I readied myself to face the day and Chance. The throb I went to sleep to still rolled through me, serving as a reminder that Chance would only connect with me on a physical level now, not cellular. I had torn us apart at the core and there was no mending the rips.
Opening my eyes brought me to the sight of him folding what looked like one of my t-shirts at the foot of my bed. Short stacks of neatly-folded clothing littered the mattress at my feet. That can’t be right, which meant I was seeing some unreal shit happening, so I shut my eyes again and would try opening them again to actual reality in a second.
“No going back to sleep, sleepy head. Time to get up,” he commanded sweetly, with no animosity in his tone.
That was odd enough to make me to do as told and think I had woken up in an alternate reality. In whatever reality this was, if Chance was here, Majestic still existed and Tommy and Kat were waiting to be relieved of babysitting duties. I moved to an upright position while holding the sheet to my chest. Yep, there were clean clothes that I didn’t wash myself on my bed.
“Are you folding my clothes?”
‘Who in the hell washed them?’ might be the better question, which no longer mattered when he released the old Chance’s smile. The one where he was a good guy who was accommodating instead of demanding to be accommodated. The sexy uplift of his lips, free of the predatory threat that I had seen more times than I care to count lately, was captivating and creating a longing for the old days when I would’ve started something with his mouth that he would’ve gladly finished then held me afterwards. This wasn’t the old days though, won’t ever be again.
“Yes, Mahogany, they’re yours and I washed them too, even when I told you I wouldn’t. I had nothing else to do since work is on hold until I have you and Majestic straightened out. There’s still another load in the dryer. You can fold them if you want to. This is boring as hell.”
Unable to prevent it, I cracked up, sniggering all over the place. “It is boring but somebody has to do it, so yeah, I’ll get the next load after I come back from the hospital today. Thank you for the loads you did do. I just hope you ruined the granny panties and not the expensive lacey ones you bought for…”
Stop with the damn reminiscing already. That’s in the past and all you got is the present. But something was wrong with this present: Chance seemed content in it.
He placed the shirt down on a pile then fisted the bed. “All of your panties are fine. I sorted by color and washed everything in the appropriate temperature. I believe I spent more time reading the instruction on the tags for washing your clothes than washing them.”
A yawn broke from me. “You did better than me. I’m usually too tired to do more than throw a pile of similar colors in and hope they don’t bleed on each other. Nothing’s new of mine so I don’t need much hope thankfully. But I get real uneasy when Majestic’s stuff is in there. Your kid used to stretch out like there was Miracle-gro in her shoes before she got sick.”
“So, Majestic has new stuff and you don’t? Do you want new clothes?”
And the generous Chance was back along with his smile that I preferred. Seemed too good to be true, and I wasn’t going to get sucked up in his mood swings only to be blindsided when the self-centered Chance reemerged and pushed me away again.
“I’m good with what I have, Chance. Work uniforms, t-shirts, and jeans are perfect for this life.”
“What happens if you get another life?” Dude was asking a lot of questions that pertained to dreams not in reaching distance yet.
“I’ll worry about the clothes that go with a new life when I get a new life.”
“Hmmph. Okay. Well, you got five minutes before we have to ride. I’ve already showered at the resort and eaten. Your breakfast biscuit from Tommy’s is in the microwave. How fast can you get ready?”
I blinked, shocked he was feeding me too, and wondering should I eat the food. He did have it in for me. “I need six minutes instead of five I think. I’m a little sluggish here.”
“That’s because you need more sleep and I shouldn’t have attacked you last night at the door. Sorry not sorry.”
If that was attacking, that crime would never be reported. His half-assed apology drew a grin from me.
“What is wrong with you this morning, Chance? Did you not get enough sleep?”
It was a breath of fresh air to be able to get along with him for a change however. Maybe I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth and should accept him as he comes until he’s gone.
“Nothing is wrong with me. I’ll sleep when Majestic is home. Besides, if I had gone back to sleep after last night with you, I wouldn’t be woke right now, and me shaking the bed to wake you on time wouldn’t have happened.”
At least he was in a better mood this time after sex. What did I do differently? Whatever it was, it was the least I could do for him after all I had done to him and it won’t add anymore black marks that he already has against me. With my ego swelling to the size of a mountain, I threw the covers back, then groaned when tenderness manifested in my center as I got up.
“You okay, Mahogany?”
I stood upright, not minding the aches at all. “Yep. Shaking the bed works every time for Majestic too when she sleeps with me and gets up before I do. If I’d known the damn crib would end up just collecting dust, I’d have used the money I spent on it for diapers and groceries.”
“My family is coming to the hospital around ten.” Did he have any idea that he had just quietly revealed a shit show in the making?
The lightness of the atmosphere around us shifted to pensive and strained. I grunted my displeasure with his statement, then impounded myself in the bathroom. His family was a variety of more intense and weaker forms of Chance—his mother the more intense version who didn’t acknowledge me when I came to family functions. I made excuses to not attend after I realized the only invitations I got for the Middleton events came from Chance through word of mouth, when everyone else got their invites in the mail. I didn’t have to be told by Dania Middleton that she didn’t think I wasn’t good enough for her son or that she didn’t want me around. That certainly wouldn’t have changed after the bomb I had dropped on her son. She may be even more upset to have learned that her bloodline was now attached to mine.
While brushing my teeth under the hot cascade of water I hoped would eased my soreness, I decided to make it my business to blend into the woodwork while his family was there and to wear more than jeans and t-shirts in their presence, so I didn’t feel sloppy and underdressed while I tried to press myself into the wall. They wouldn’t be here for long if all went well.