Page 57 of First Surrender

He laughs and it shocks me. A deep and loud laugh that I’d never heard before. I think I’ve entered the wrong dimension. This is not the same man who yelled at me the other night and then ignored my apology.

“You can have Dec’s party here. I don’t care. What are you going to get him?”

“Um. I don’t know yet. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, but I’m so worried about disappointing him that I haven’t pulled the trigger on anything.”

“I think he wants a bike.”

“I know that, but how’d you know that?”

“He told me he wants to learn how to ride a bike.”

My finger taps the spatula I’m using rhythmically against the pan, thinking. “I was going to get him one. I saved up but had to use the money to get him new clothes after the fire instead.”

“We’ll go in on one, from the both of us,” he offers, generously. On one hand, I hate to get any more help from him than I already have. On the other, getting a bike for Dec is important and his happiness is the only thing that really matters to me.

“Are you going to teach him how to ride it, safely? I haven’t ridden a bike since I was probably Dec’s age. My only bike was from a garage sale. It was stolen from our driveway and I never got a new one.”

He stares at me briefly, in concerned disbelief over my childhood misfortune, before responding. “Of course, I will.”

“Okay. We’ll get him a bike.” We might as well have shaken hands and called a truce.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Jackson

She had hidden away in her room all weekend long, and I couldn’t stand it. I could handle fending for myself in the kitchen, though I missed her cooking. It was the silence.

The boredom I experienced being in my home without her to talk to, to bug while she cooked, left me empty.

My brain was desperate for stimulation I couldn’t get from anywhere else. I tried to build a LEGO baseball with Dec but that turned into me watching him while simultaneously staring off into space.

I worked out three times and didn’t even break a sweat. All I could think about was the singular tear rolling down her cheek late Friday night. I didn’t realize that she possessed the emotions to cry. I thought she was invincible to sadness because of her capacity for anger.

I should have known that anything involving Dec would bring that out in her but I still caught myself worrying that it was all for show. That her apology wasn’t as genuine as it seemed and she was fooling me into thinking she was actually sorry.

All day Saturday without her had knocked all those thoughts out of my brain. I knew something was wrong when she was still holed up on Sunday. Monday morning I stayed home longenough to get Dec on the bus and then left for work assuming things would return to normal eventually.

But when I stopped home on my lunch break to see her still in bed, the dread in my gut amplified. She wasn’t the fire-filled woman I knew and it was startling to realize how deeply I cared.

Getting her out of bed was the only way I could ignore the ache in my chest that she undoubtedly caused.

Then I saw her ass. God, her ass. That perfect round skin peeking out the bottom of her t-shirt about killed me.

Luckily, she put on shorts before coming into the kitchen. Unluckily for me, she isn’t wearing a bra and the way the shirt hangs on her body is worse than a strip tease. I can see the outline of her petite chest and the points of her nipples.

Her hair is pulled up in a sloppy bun and the neck of the shirt is stretched enough that I can’t stop staring at the expanse of skin between her throat and shoulder that I have a vivid memory of biting.

The sound she made when I did still haunts me. I’m straining against my zipper behind the cover of the kitchen island just thinking about it.

Now I’m sitting here like a pervert, watching her cook, and imagining what it would be like to have her. Not for a moment, but to really have her.

Will she ever accept that I’m not out to get her? Can she?

I don’t know the answer to that and I’m too afraid to ask. If she could never truly trust me, I’d never be able to live that way. I’m fine with the arguing, her temper won’t scare me away, but I would need to know that she won’t run from me when she gets mad. Right now, I sense her need to run after every conversation, every look.

She’s one foot out the door and struggling to remember the plan from the start.

Is all of this going to be temporary?

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